Adulting (Don't Do It)

Once upon a time (read: when I was sixteen), I was so eager to grow up. I wanted to be trusted to make my own decisions, to go where I wanted and do what I wanted without being accountable to anyone. I wanted to get out of my hometown and live on my own. To have a successful career, to travel, to meet new people and try new things and just be whatever I wanted.
The whole idea of being an adult simply oozed freedom.

Well. How wrong was I.

Here I am, seven years later, avoiding all of the things I still have to do today and writing a blog post over a bowl of soup. Boo is having her 'rest time', watching "Despicable Me" so that will give me another forty-five minutes or so of clear (read: child-free) brain time. I have placement things to do, housewife things to do, and project things to do; each time I cross one off my list, another seems to write itself just underneath.

I could, in fact, do nothing. I could drink tea and crochet hats until the cows come home (so to speak. No, husband, I do not mean you). But there are consequences.

See, that is where life gets you. As a youth, you don't really get the idea that one day there will be consequences that actually exist in the real world. Not like 'if you don't clean your room I'm going to do it for you (which means going through your stuff)'. Or 'doing badly in this exam means you'll get a bad score for uni offers (which, despite what we keep telling you, will not in fact ruin the rest of your life)'.

Oh no. In the adult world, there are actual consequences. Like, if you don't pay your rent, you will not have accommodation. Or, if you don't actively work towards getting a career by studying or applying for jobs, you won't actually get one. Or, if you don't do the dishes or the laundry, you and your family will be naked and hungry.

Being an adult is not this carefree, latte-sipping, traveling-pants-wearing, dream-job-having, free-spirit living in a perfect world I'd imagined. No. It's an exhausted, cranky, stretched-too-thin creature who is driven by fear of being naked and hungry.

The moral of this ramble, dear friends, is this: don't start being an adult - because once you do, there is no stopping. Just don't do it.