Quirkbag Collection #38 – 03.04.26
I recently turned 21. What a magic number that is. That one day in someone’s lifetime is probably the biggest age milestone that humans celebrate. But just imagine the disappointment being number 22 (then again, 22 is the title of a song by Taylor Swift).
Apart from marking the start of adulthood, whether we like it or not, perhaps it also symbolises the beginning of one’s adventure in life, as intended by society.
What Does Adulting Even Mean?
Turning 21 can bring the epitome of joy and celebration. But no one really tells you “then what?”. What comes after turning into an adult?
Most romanticised answers are “freedom”, “love”, “adventure”, “independence”. But really, the average person older than 21 might say “stress”, “work”, “responsibility”, “tired”.
Reality sets in for all of us somehow. And sure, life can become far better over the years with nicer jobs and lifestyles. Maybe that’s nearer to 41.
I met a young adult at work recently and on becoming an adult having to work, the response was indeed “yea it sucks”. But of course, it’s just one opinion.
It’s stressful to think about adulthood being linked with independence, especially as a switch that we can just ‘turn on’. Nothing in life is really like that.
Independence is inculcated and nurtured rather than ‘awarded’ by virtue of age. We learn as we go, independence comes when we learn to manage ourselves. And that can be really scary.
One day you’re taking the bus home when you’re 12 and now you have to learn how to file taxes before you end up like Al Capone. (We don’t learn either after blowing the candles on our cake.)
If adulting means being completely responsible and independent and mature, there is probably no shortage of those older than 21 but aren’t actually adulting yet.
Growing Into An Adult
I used to think that age was like an adventure video game. Every year is like a quest chapter that unlocks once you complete the previous one and the game awards you new stuff. Age and adulting do not work like that. Many can attest that life rewards you with lessons after beating you down.
If you’re waiting for something magical to just happen in life at 18, or 21, or any age, it’s probably not happening. It’ll definitely not happen just because your birthday passed. Nothing just happens because of age. Maybe except chronic knee pain.
Adulting can be so hard because our lives drastically change before we’re prepared. We’re not seen as young students anymore, not given as much benefit of doubt and everyone seems to expect more. Our problems change, life circumstances change, our friends change, our lifestyle changes. But what about us? You.
Did you change as fast as everything else?
Probably not.
It’s easy to pass casual judgement “how is he so childish when he’s 21?” based on sporadic observations, however compelling they may be. But as if maturity, or independence, or anything, just comes naturally to the birthday boy when the sun rises on his birthday.
Maturing, growing, becoming independent, and adulting in general takes time. Some of us take decades, as insane as it might sound. I remember peers who were miles ahead in adulting even in JC, making their own life decisions, taking charge of the direction of their lives and surfing the tides of life.
I was not like them. Nor were most of us at 18. I was busy figuring out how to do better in the system while they unwittingly figured out how to do better in their life.
The exceptions are rare. That’s why they are exceptions.
Making Friends As A New Adult?
Adulthood is a broad period of our lifetime. Spanning basically from 21 till death, adulthood is a one-way street.
As I grow older, I realise that relationships aren’t so easily labelled anymore. The people you know cannot comfortably be grouped as “friends”. In pre-school or kindergarten, everyone had to be friends. Everyone was referred to as each other’s friends, as the environment intended.
But as far as I’ve heard, that’s not the workplace. No, the workplace is serious business. It’s meant for work. We must all sit in front of computers and be busy for 8 hours a day unless we get chosen to sit at a bigger desk with other people for a few of the 8 hours.
At work, the assumption is that you don’t need friends to do the job. You don’t need the environment to make friends, because you should automatically take care of that as part of adulting. But we all know friendships can be seasonal.
I doubt anyone finds friendships easier in adulthood. Having to ‘manage them’ as though they are work appointments because our time is too preciously dedicated to work, that’s a little sad. Without intentionally drawing lines to design our lives to fully be ourselves, it’s truly so easy to fall into the trappings of a conventional, mediocre, boring version of life.
If your life were a painting, the saddest part is when everyone who you have ever met, stranger or otherwise, gets a single brush stroke in it, and your entire painting is a mess created by others rather than by your own vision.
Better to make your own messy painting than accept that of others, right?
Dealing With Adulting
With university starting soon, I can’t help but think it’s the last checkpoint before the vast ocean of work ahead, whatever form that might take.
It remains scary, as it is to many others (perhaps including the reader, you), to think that beyond university, from the point of graduation to your death, you are going to be alone in your “adulting”. There’s communities of people with similar pursuits, clubs of those with common interests, but it’s not the same as that “school” environment anymore. There aren’t the same people who would stay in your class till the end of the year.
“We are in the same boat”, but it seems that the boat has somehow shrunk down so much.
It is unsurprising that most work relationships stay work-related. Maybe because it is easier to maintain that hierarchy. To keep the “professionalism”. The focus is after all on the work, and not the people in the workplace. Unlike school, people would rather keep their jobs to sustain a lifestyle than to treat it as a place for fun and bonding and disregard the stakes.
Embracing An Irreversible Change
The most important aspect of being an adult is probably self-awareness. Being aware of the ugly mess that is some of our mental states, the randomness of our lives’ daily circumstances, the impact that we have on others and vice versa. We carry a lot of what we learnt and grew up with in school with us into this realm of adulthood. But the game has changed.
No one taught us that life is now completely in your hands, to do as you wish, as you can, once you graduate from the system’s game. Everything in adulting is for you to find out – and there’s a lot – none of which is quite covered as a subject in school. It’s just too hard.
Adulting is new to me, as it once was to everyone. With blogs like this and the proliferation of media and content, it’s getting easier to learn the hard-won life lessons in this age than it was for the previous generation. Just think of all the perspectives, ideas, advice and regrets people share online and how you can seek wisdom from them. Here’s some.
Figuring out what to do in adulthood is probably the single most recurring topic for those who are adulting. And I guess I am figuring that out for myself too, alongside this blog.
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Hi! I’m Zac, the guy behind this serendipitous, quirky blog. I’m currently on a quest to find out more about myself before Uni begins – who I am and what life has to offer. This blog is my little space where I step out of my comfort zone to share my thoughts and life experiences. I hope you enjoy reading the weekly posts. Share them if you like, or not.
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