Adulting: 10 Things We Should Be Doing But Hate

At age 20something my daily "adulting" routine looks a little like this:

- Going to bed early so I can wake up early.

- Setting my alarm so I'll have sufficient time to wake up, eat, and get dressed before work.

- Missing my alarm then rushing to eat, shower, get dressed and be on my way to start work at 9 am.

But this friends, is merely the tip of the iceberg. We haven't even gotten to the part where I oversleep and skip breakfast but still end up late for work. Or the days I forget to iron my work clothes in advance and end up having to pull an outfit together last minute from my few pieces of clothing that thankfully are wrinkle-free.

Welcome to the world of adulting where 20somethings are now required to do all the grown-up stuff we thought we'd love but in reality hate. A world where our parents are no longer around to do all the chores we didn't have to do when we lived with them, and days of waking up to unexpected money in your bank account are a thing of the past.

In keeping with the true spirit of adulting, here are 10 things we’re expected to do as adults but hate, and despite how much we hate them they won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.

1. Pay Bills

I’m sorry I don’t remember asking to be born. Furthermore, after years of forcing me to attend school, why is it that my decision to lay around in bed all day suddenly doesn’t cut it anymore? Not only do you want me to “get a job” but the minimum wages said job pays me, you want me to use that to pay bills? Is it crack? Is it crack you smoke?

I mean yeah, I do enjoy having a place to sleep at night so I guess paying rent is important, and I really don’t know how I’d be surviving at home without water, internet, and electricity but, just because I need things doesn’t mean I like having to pay for them.

2. Wake Up Early

Remember the good old days when you could set your Uni classes for early afternoon or late evening so you could sleep the morning away? Well as an adult you don’t really have that luxury anymore. When I just started working I use to look forward to weekends because A) I didn’t have to go to work and B) I didn’t have to wake up early.

Ha! BIG mistake. While it’s true that I don’t have to go to work. I still have to do work, because I have to catch up on all the chores I didn’t get to do during the week. And of course, even if I wanted to sleep in late, my body that struggles to wake up in the morning without her alarm is awake and ready to go from as early as 6 am on weekends. What the hell is happening? *screams inwardly* Can’t a girl catch a break?

3. Job Hunt

By far one of my least favourite adulting things to do, is job hunt. It is frustrating enough to have to be scouting through job sites, company websites, social media pages, and newspapers to find job listings, but the whole process becomes even more tedious when you get no response for the jobs you do apply for.

I don’t know about you but for me job hunting is a constant cycle of finding a job listing I think I’m qualified for, applying to said listing with high hopes of getting the job, which is later followed by weeks or even months of radio silence from the company. A cycle that goes on and on threatening to have my anxiety literally burst right out of me. Why is it that some peoples job search can end within weeks while others have to stretch on for months on end?

4. Budget

Once you enter the adulting phase of your life, what really happens is you jump headfirst into a rabbit hole of endless responsibilities. Chief amongst these responsibilities is finding money to pay your bills and to sustain yourself. This means that you need to develop some level of financial awareness so that your expenses at no point in time exceed your income.

Neither do you spend all your income paying for expenses with no opportunity to accumulate any savings. In the adulting world, the navigation between these two very important activities is generally achieved by creating a budget. While creating budgets can be a great tool for managing your finances, they can also sometimes make you feel trapped. You worked so hard to earn your money and here comes a piece of paper telling you how it should be spent. I definitely have a love-hate relationship when it comes to budgets.

5. Cook Our Own Meals

I use to hate living in a household where one pot was cooked. Because what this really meant was anything mommy cooked whether I liked it or not, I had two options: eat to my heart’s content, or die from starvation (not literally ofc). Back then like the child I obviously was I imagined living on my own and being able to eat whatever I wanted to.

Now that I’m here, however, I HATE IT. Having to cook for yourself is actually not half as fun as I imagined it would have been. Mostly because having to cook is my second least favourite house chore, second only to washing plates (which is a house chore from hell). I also never know exactly what I want. Not to mention, the fact that having to cook for just one person is actually pretty depressing. Plus after a long day of work, I am already tired so having to cook is the last thing I want to be doing.

6. Do Laundry

You never truly realize how good you have life when you are able to wake up every morning to freshly washed clothes. That is of course, until one day you wake up with no clean clothes to wear and it finally hits you. If you ever want to see your clean clothes again, you’re the one who’s going to have to tame the mountain of dirty clothes that’s gearing up to put you out of your room.

Sigh. I don’t have much against doing my own laundry but damn does it really have to be this time-consuming? I could literally think of a hundred other ways I’d prefer to spend my Saturday mornings and believe me washing, hanging, and folding laundry would not make the cut.

7. Make Our Own Medical Appointments

Life was so much simpler when we were children and all we had to do was show up to whatever medical appointment our parents had scheduled for us. We didn’t have to worry about making time to attend, because let’s be honest our schedules were highly dependent on what our parents said we should be doing anyway.

Neither did we have to worry about transportation, because again our parents would either take us themselves or schedule someone to go with us. Nor did we have to remember when our last Doctor’s visit was because we had mommy or daddy to do it for us. I can’t say this enough, I really took the lack of responsibilities I had as a child for granted. I am now starting to appreciate the things my parents did for me as a child a 100 times more these days.

8. Grocery Shop

Now don’t get me wrong, I love food, but having to go to the grocery store not so much. You see the problem is, grocery stores afford a wide variety of food that you can purchase. If you aren’t careful you will pick up things you actually need and things you don’t.

Getting the things you need is great and all but the problem lies when you get things you don’t need. Not only do you put an unnecessary strain on your pocket but, those grocery store bills can really be killer sometimes. It’s like if you’re alive the world is expensive and if you’re dead it’s still expensive. Either way, you still can’t win.

9. Spend Our Own Money

I don’t know who needs to hear this but, YOU ARE GROWN. Spending your own money to do stuff is completely normal. I get it though. No matter how independent you are, how well off you become, everybody likes to be spoiled and not have to spend their own money at least some of the time.

Alas, however, this is one of the growing pains that adulting comes with. Our parents have already spent money on us all our lives. So now it’s about that time to not only start to invest in ourselves but once we are financially stable, also reinvest in our parents.

10. Think About The Future

When you become a 20something your life starts to change. It’s no longer just when I grow up I want to be a …. Because now you have grown up. This means you can’t just make irrational decisions which chances are will affect you in the future. Your mind has to always be 10 steps ahead of the game. If your end goal is to work for 2 years while saving to buy your car, well you’re going to have to cut back on some of the in the now expenses that are wants instead of needs.

I’m pretty sure I don’t need to tell you this, but always thinking about the future can become very draining. Sometimes if you aren’t careful you’ll end up spending so much time living in the future that you allow your present to pass you on the wayside. This is exactly why thinking about the future had to make my top 10 list of adulting things we should be doing but hate. Sometimes your girl just needs a break.

I know you probably read this post and were able to relate with most if not all the things I listed we should be doing as adults but hate. Truth is however this list is not exhaustive because adulting is a marathon, not a sprint.

If you can think of anything else we should be doing as adults but hate, I’d love to hear it so feel free to share them in the comments below.

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#Adulting #Survivingyour20s #20SomethingandThriving