I’m meant to be an adult but I don’t feel like one

First things first – it won’t seem like it but that’s normal.

If you ever talk to someone older than you are I’m sure you’ll hear the same thing from them. I’ve heard older people saying that they still feel like they should be able to do everything they could when they were 22 but now they’re 42, or 52, or 62.

They don’t feel their age, and that's all fine. So it’s fine for you to not feel like you’re the age you are.

Secondly, there’s no real change – it’s not like you go from Not an Adult to An Adult in the space of minutes when it’s your birthday.

It takes time and it’s something that will come as you get older and have more responsibilities. Heck, I have feeling now and I’m getting ready to move and to finish my time in an academic setting (for now). I feel like I’m somehow not adult enough to be doing this and that it’s all big and scary.

Talk to me in three months and I might still feel the same way, talk to me in a year and three months and I’ll probably feel that way about something new, but I’ll have dealt with it all. And that’s what growing up is, it’s not suddenly only ever thinking about bills and how to keep your house running and work, it’s doing those things but still getting excited to sit down and watch your favourite show. It’s putting on an album you love while cleaning to keep you in the swing of things. It’s looking at what you have to do and working out the best way to do it.

I don’t doubt that even when I’m 50 I’ll still look around when someone needs an adult for someone that’s more of an adult than I am, realise “oh no I’m the adult” and then do whatever needs to be done. I do that now. I do that all of the time now. And some day you will too.

My advice for how to deal with this? Talk to people! Get their perspective on how it was to grow up and get more responsibility. Chances are they can help you with a lot more than you first realised. And write a note for yourself to check in a few years and remind yourself of how far you’ve come in that time.

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Hey! Tara here and thanks for checking out my blog. I update every Tuesday with posts about studying tips, advice and talk about productivity and organisation too. If you want to keep up to date with my latest blog posts I’d love it if you subscribed to this blog.

#adult #adulting #growingup