Being an adult and why it's awesome/awful

Hey everybody!

Today I'm taking my blog to a media-less direction, and I'm going to list the 7 things I learned about being an adult so far. Some of them are awesome, some of them are terrible. I have to admit that as much as I miss being an irresponsible college student, being an adult has its perks.

7. Doing your own shopping is great

Heck yeah Costco, you're awsome

I don't know if you could consider this a good or a bad thing, but I love doing my own food shopping. Yes of course it's easier at school when everything is prepared for you, but sometimes I get cravings that I used to be too lazy to satisfy. I could be in the mood for pasta (not shitty dining hall pasta, really pasta) and instead of going to the supermarket and buying it, I'd just settle for whatever they had on campus. Now I don't have the luxury of settling, so I buy the things I want and eat the things I want. It's healthier (maybe) and makes me feel better about my, albeit incredibly poor, eating habits. Yay adulthood!
I've also found Costco to be one of the single greatest stores of all time. A big yay for that one.

6. Not being surrounded by friends 24/7 isn't great
This is both a good and bad thing. It might just be me, but I don't have too many friends that live in my immediate vicinity since I've moved out of my parents place. That means if I want to hang out with a friend it usually requires effort, something I don't like to exert often. That leads to a lot of boring weekends where my highlight is not sleeping for 13 hours and doing something productive. So while it's a bummer that I don't always get to have as much fun on the weekends like I used to, it means that my work no longer suffers. Now on Saturdays and Sundays I can actually do some work to put me ahead at my job (which was the biggest lie I was ever told in college, "work on the weekends so you won't do as much during the week."). I guess that's a yay adulthood for being productive, but also a boo adulthood for taking away a chunk of my social life.

5. BILLS are awful

Go home bills, you're drunk

Bills are the worst. I have pretty much all of them set up electronically, so when I open up my email on the days that my electric bill rolls in I cry a bit on the inside. You take a lot for granted when you're at school, mainly things like heat and water. I could shower for 20-30 minutes easy when at school, now it's more of a rare occurrence (although I do indulge in long showers more often than I should.) Electricity is a huge drain on your income as well, watching TV or playing video games for 4 hours straight now affects your bill just as much as your brain. At school I could care less about marathoning 5 episodes of Game of Thrones because I didn't pay for the absurd amount of electricity it takes to do that. Bills snap you back to reality, even if they do teach you "fiscal responsibility" and all that jazz. Boo adulthood.

4. Watching your bank account grow (sort of) is very nice
While I did save some money while I was in school a good portion of my paychecks went to either booze or the occasional dinner with friends off campus. That being said I didn't really accumulate much in terms of savings while in school. Now, the total opposite is happening. My paychecks are much bigger and I don't spend all my money on luxuries, so each pay day I actually see my account increase instead of staying relatively the same. So yay adulthood for sure. I did notice that there is a certain threshold that you reach with your earnings, once you've hit a certain amount in your bank account it's hard to get more on top of it. Bills and other expenses cause your account to stay at close to the same level, even if that level is more money than you've ever had. Growth has its limits, and to that I say boo. Having money to spend though, that's a big yay for adulthood.

3.  A lack of physical activity is common, and bad

Me basically every day

This may just be me, but I have become downright slothful after graduating. Especially during the winter it's hard to find the drive to work out. I've played organized sports my whole life, and that lack of structure makes it hard to get out and exercise. There are a lot of "after work" type leagues that I can join, but that requires money and much more effort in terms of transportation. It could be that I was just really lazy all along and the level of physical activity I did in school was solely a result of my environment, but I don't want to believe that's who I am. Putting in that extra effort to get just as much, if not less exercise doesn't seem worth it to me. For that I have become more couch-potato like every day. I hope that warmer weather brings more exercise, but for now boo adulthood.

2. The hours of 6pm-whenever I go to bed are glorious
When you're at school the general schedule is class, then work, then fun, then bed. It differs from person to person (mine being class, nap, goof off, work, bed), but in the adult world your daily schedule is pretty rigid. You wake up, go to work, go home, do whatever you want, then bed. Your responsibilities basically end as soon as you leave the workplace, and those glorious 6 or so hours you have after work can be spent however you want. It's weird to think that after graduating you actually have less responsibilities, but at least for me that's totally true. That's the biggest yay for adulthood I can give.

1. Adulthood isn't as bad as I thought it would be

Welcome to Adulthood!
Where everything might not be awful.

Have low expectations, it honestly helps. You hear these horror stories of people not able to find jobs, living at home for extended periods of time, wishing they could just go back to school, and above all being miserable. If you really go into graduation thinking like that than actually getting a job will feel so much sweeter. I'm generally an optimist, a fairly large one at that, and I have serious pessimism going into the working world. So when I finally got hired, got my own apartment, started making my own money, and exercising my freedom as a working adult everything felt so much better. Sometimes I wish I could go back to school and make everything "easy" again, but for now the adult world has treated me well. Let's just hope it stays that way.