The Misery of Being a Grown-Up

The realities of being a grown-up!

Those bills need to be paid, today. You need to call somebody about that drip in the basement. You need to go back to the grocery store and tell them your receipt doesn't reflect that awesome BOGO promotion there was so much signage for you'd be blind to miss it--but yet, somehow, their computer system still did. You need to speak to a manager because the service, or the food, or something at this restaurant is truly sub-par and your experience has been awful because of it.

And those are just the little things. What about the big decisions? Should we remodel or move? Lease or own? Family of three, four or more? Stay together or call it quits? Keep working that emotionally-draining job or take a leap of faith that something better is out there?

Being a grown-up is hard. No matter how much responsibility your parents may have given you from how early an age, it truly hits home when it is your problems, your family, your life. There are so many things, big and little, that we are responsible for and accountable to every day. What a drag!

Am I advocating we all become hippie-slackers and say "whatever," shirking all the responsibilities that come with being a grown-up? Or that you hop in the car and drive off, far, far, far away from it all, to some remote place where you can live out your days in solitude?

Of course I'm not promoting those things (even though we've all had our days where we've considered these alternatives). We probably all know a few people who have, in a sense, given up on being a grown-up and those people sort of drag this world down, don't they?

What I'm advocating for is, once you've taken care of all the responsibilities you can reasonably fit in a day, you take some time to do something you enjoy--something that is fun for you, be it reading, running, biking, meditating, shopping, etc. Something that you really want to do. We owe it to ourselves to channel our inner child, to have fun, to play. We're all better off for it.