Get your adult on

| posted on August 3, 2017

THE day I became an “adult”, I spent the afternoon choosing between a six-pack of iced doughnuts and a tier of profiteroles for dessert.

I feel like I didn’t quite understand what being an adult meant.

I mean yes, I get to make the decision between the iced doughnut and the profiterole, but is it the right thing to do?

Adulthood, which sometimes coincides with your 18th birthday, also means the ability to choose to simply eat cake for breakfast. This is a dangerous power for just anyone to possess.

My point here is that there are way too many decisions you have to start making when you turn 18, and to be perfectly honest, it is quite overwhelming.

Let me tell you a story.

Once upon a time in the magical land of Ash World, there was a girl who turned 18 and was expected to have some clue as to what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

(Spoiler alert, she totally did not know what to do.)

After many nights spent having an existential crisis on repeat and pondering how much money she could make creating lame slogan t-shirts from under the comfort of her electric blanket, the girl finally decided to do the one thing she had absolutely refused to do: ask for advice.

Hours of talking with her mum and best friend (sounds clichéd yes, but it’s true) helped her kind of figure out what she wanted to do.

She decided that instead of sitting around and moping all the time, she would finally get it together.

How that was going to occur, was still a mystery.

Being an adult means taking hold of being entirely responsible for yourself.

This means that you get to decide whether you tackle a tertiary education, try to save for a deposit on a house, move across the country, backpack through Guatemala, buy a cat or decide to live without Netflix.

I’ll keep this one short and sweet.

Don’t be afraid to ask questions; if there is a person at your work or the lady who makes the best coffee at your favourite café that looks like they have it together, ask them how they decided everything.

Figure out what would make you happy.

Do you enjoy learning? Consider tertiary education.

Do you work well with people? Consider looking towards a job in customer service.

Do you often hurt your knee playing footy on the weekend? Maybe it’s time to look for another sport. Do you have a passion for exploring and travel? Maybe check out travel warnings for Guatemala (or maybe pick somewhere else).

Working out when you need to start making decisions and figuring out what decisions you actually need to make is hard.

I decided one day that I wanted to organise a passport, sort out health insurance, apply for cross-institutional study and fix my tangled necklace rack.

All at once.

#mentalcrisis

To be perfectly honest, things will come to you when they need sorting out, and you will figure it out along the way.

No, that’s not an excuse to let everything slide and put off until later.

Just don’t let it overwhelm you. One step at a time.

Adult away my little adultians! (See. Short and sweet).