Growing Pains of a 20-Something

Is it just me, or do you also have no idea what you're doing but you're doing it anyway?

[is-it-just-mee]

The Delusion of Wealth

Is it just me or does everyone also picture their life in a way where they're rich in the future? All my life I've assumed that I was going to be rich when I get older. It's always been "when I'm rich" and not "if I'm rich". What was I on? I think my dad is to blame. His life is a rags to riches story. He grew up in absolute poverty in a small village but he educated himself and went abroad to pursue his studies, got a job, flourished financially, then transferred back to be the dutiful son to his parents. I don't know if we were rich rich, but we could definitely afford everything we wanted to. My dad wanted to make sure we knew that just because you could afford it, doesn't mean you should. Yet I still hold the assumption or rather aspiration to want to be rich so that if I could, I would. I had an unexpectedly long and open conversation with my boss yesterday and he is also someone with a rags to riches life. He started working in a cycle rental company and got inspired to do wedding decoration from someone who worked there, and now he own his own business. This man is rich. These stories make you subconsciously believe that if you work hard enough, you will also make it eventually and you can be rich. But here's the reality check: that was the fucking 80s.

It was different for them. The world just does not work that way anymore. The economy is different. The job market is different. Everyone does everything so the competition is crazy, and to top that off there's AI to steal or undervalue your jobs. Even if I were to start a business (which at this point seems like the only way to get rich), no one even has that kind of spending power anymore to buy your stuff. Everyone in the economy as a whole is broke and barely hanging on by a thread. You know how you see those movies, the ones that try to teach you that the one who is content with his simple life is much happier than the one who pushes himself to do more and have more? I don't know what I think about that. I want to be rich but I'm also grateful for everything I have. Can't a girl want more though? Do I start living like this is all I can realistically have or do I continue to live with the delusion that maybe one day, I can own a house and an art studio and buy nutella without having to check the price tag twice? Fuck it, I choose delusion.

[is-it-just-mee]

Lonely by Design

Is it just me or is adulthood inherently lonely? Almost like it's designed to run on solitude.

It feels like the older you get, the less likely you are to make new friends coz the people around either already have friends or are simply too tired to go through the process of building a friendship from scratch. So everyone ends up just staying in their lane until and unless you specifically have a rare case of good chemistry with someone and you start letting yourself be tight.

People act like friendships are meant for children. Grown ass adults don't have "best friends". How often do you find your parents "hanging out" with their friends. Married couples act like socialization is a task on their to-do list.

I don't want want to become one of those adults. I want to be able to keep my existing friends and be able to make new ones and just have good healthy friendships all around me at every stage of life. It can't be that hard. But why does it feel like it's going to be?

One things for sure. The older you get, the more time you will be spending with yourself. You can't escape that part so you have to make the most of it. You have to learn to enjoy your own company and to feel content with it. You have to learn to romanticize solitude or "me-time" so to say, coz you're gonna get a lot of it. You have to learn to be able to sit with your thoughts and not feel the constant need to drown it out with entertainment. You have to learn to be comfortable with doing things yourself and embodying your own main character energy even in the midst of people. Coz when you do, that's when you really lean into your situation and start to thrive.

That's what prevents you from becoming the grumpy adult who's always complaining about adulting. Instead, you enjoy the little things that make adulthood what it is.

Note to self: Take the upper hand.

[is-it-just-mee]

Mental Real Estate

Is it just me or does it feel like you're constantly trying to remember things or keep up with stuff or be on top of something and most of the time, you don’t even know what?

So far, the most striking thing about adulthood has been the fact that you are somehow never not accountable for something. You don’t really get to kick up your feet and expect to be told what to do. Most things in your life only happen on your initiative. And for that, you need to remember dates, note down tasks, call numbers, go to places, meet people and have difficult conversations in specific ways. The worst part is, you can’t even afford to not do any of those things because if you don't, you’re the only one who loses from it.

So your brain is over-saturated, your mind is constantly running and you’re never really taking a break even if you think you are. Need a moment? My two cents: Transfer some of that mental real estate onto paper, or digital lists so that you brain can create space for some actual thoughts, ideas, reflections and creative expressions. Coz if you keep letting your brain do all the heavy lifting, that’s all it’s ever going to be used for. And just like that, we become mundane and monotonous adults who don’t even realize what we spent our time and energy on.

[is-it-just-mee]

Navigating Friendships

Is it just me or do adult friendships feel like they require a lot more maintenance than they did before.

I mean, it makes sense in a way coz you’re not always around each other anymore since school or college got over, so you would need to put in extra effort to share the same kind of dynamic, but at the same time it also doesn’t make sense coz as an adult you clearly have a lot more going on in life and it just becomes so overwhelming to be on top of everything and be answerable to a friend at the same time about why you don’t call enough?

Sure there is that whole saying that “If they care, they’ll make time” but that just feels really unfair and puts a lot of unnecessary pressure. There is genuinely a lot on my plate and do I wish I could share that with someone? Of course. But do I want my friendship to become nothing but a vent bag? No. So I choose to make contact when I can offer both the good and the bad, but I think that’s whats causing an issue on the timeline and I have lost a couple of friendships over the last two years alone, just because of this.

Fortunately, there are still a few friends of mine who understand exactly that and also function in the same way I do which is that even if we don’t talk everyday, whenever we do talk, we always pick up from the same point we left it at. The intensity of our relationship doesn’t change, just the pace of it. It works for them, it works for me and it allows all of us to balance the chaos of our lives and our personal relationships in harmony. But will they last? Well, there’s only one way to find out. 🤷

[is-it-just-mee]

Hey there :) If you somehow found this blog, just know, I truly appreciate your curiosity (coz I chose not to tell anyone about it).

Is it just me or does turning 18 do almost absolutely nothing to make you feel like an adult? Unless of course you drink or drive or have a bank account, in which case, you're a step ahead the rest of us.

You physically inherit adult characteristics, when you hit puberty and you legally become an adult when you turn 18, but mentally, you only really start feeling like an adult when you're about to finish your education, and you look at life on the other side of graduation staring back at you like it's rainbow road on Mario Kart, where there's no rules but plenty of repercussions. Man, that was a long sentence.

Not enough people tell you what's gonna hit you when you step out of a sheltered and financed comfort zone into the "real world" as they call it, where it's constantly trial and error except the errors now come with a much bigger price to pay. We get little to no guidelines to navigate our way in this wildly erratic phase of our lives, mostly because I think, by design, we're meant to figure it out on our own.

So I started this blog as a way to help myself navigate this nervous, confused, chaotic yet exciting and immensely empowering feeling of entering "Adulthood" as a twenty something.

Do you feel the same way?