It's not Adulting, It's just real life

The word Adulting annoys me. I feel like our generation has swayed so far from the times when people took personal responsibility for their lives and their actions, myself included. We seem to have been sucked into the world of convenience, which has also somehow made us think that just because we can order shoes and cute duvets to our doorsteps in a few clicks, means that everything else should be just as easy, including our jobs. That is a big mistake.

I worry about bringing up my hypothetical future children in a world that doesn't expect them to know how to write cursive or entertain themselves with wooden blocks. I also worry that this mentality will translate into a belief that we don't have to work hard for things. I feel like I am already becoming a product of it myself. I feel like I should be more successful, but I am already working in 3 different jobs at once and I can't imagine having more time on my hands. Or maybe I am just weak? That I am fooling myself and I don't really work as hard as I should be. Maybe I expect too much of myself? I honestly don't know. I think to be sure I may need someone to follow me around for a few weeks to see how productive I really am. Or therapy. 

Obviously these are privileged problems to have. I am very grateful that my basic needs like food, water,  safety, and health care are taken care of so I can worry about this stuff. When I am not contemplating how to not raise spoiled children who aren't freaks because their Mom made them play with Lego while everyone else had an iPad, my worrying energy is usually focused on money. Not having it, what I should be spending my limited supply on, how I could be making more of it. Having a mortgage is kind of terrifying, even though it is extremely gratifying to live in a house I can call my own, but there is no way I would have been able to do that without my partner. It is seriously rough out there for anyone trying to get their foot in the door on a property, especially if they are doing it on their own. (How many 30 year olds have $100,000 lying around for a down payment!?) Putting away money for RRSPs gives me anxiety because all those helpful retirement calculators are telling me what I already know, which is that I am not saving enough, and as being self-employed doesn't really offer the greatest pension plan options, I am not sure how to solve that yet.

When I hit my 20s, I started to realize there were so many things I needed to know that I had no idea how to do that I was very unprepared for and/or had never even heard of. Why are we not taught these practical life skills we need in high school? How to do our taxes. What CPP and OAS are and when they kick in. How much to put away for RRSPs. How a credit card works. How to apply for a student loan. What a mortgage is and how to make sure you are getting a good rate.  Maybe I am just out of touch and all these things are being added to required curriculum these days, or they always were and just not at my school. Or maybe I was taught many of these things and forgot them all.

It's not Adulting, it's just real  life. Nearly every person in the world at some point has to go from learning small things like tying their shoelaces, to big things like managing their money. I feel like this term makes it sound like we're not expected to be responsible until we are checking off the boxes that make us an "adult." Like we can just defer things like saving because we're "not ready yet." Well our RRSPs don't care if we're ready or not, they are just watching our limited saving time tick away that we are never going to get back. I'm not saying everyone needs to go out and get a career where they climb the corporate ladder just to get a paycheque; I left that lifestyle a long time ago and I still don't think that becoming an adult requires you to check off some imaginary list of items (degree, career, house, kids, golden retriever). But in addition to chasing our dreams and chasing sunsets, we also need to be practical. Even if all you can afford is $25/month into a TFSA, do it now. When your beater car breaks down, you'll be happy you have a little extra cash hanging around. And if you never need it, it is just good sense.

It's not just money stuff either, that is just mostly what comes to mind when my anxiety about the future rears it's head. I also think we should be taught to set goals and make concrete plans to accomplish them. We should be taught how to meal plan and cook so we don't get scurvy. We should know how to change a tire, how to get help when we are depressed, how to make an exercise plan, and how to grow a few basic vegetables. This list could get really long, and everyone defines what should and should not be essential life skills based on their opinions, experiences, and circumstance. These are just a few that come to mind.

I am not saying that I am any better at this stuff than the next person, I am still trying to figure it all out too. Some days all I want to do is binge watch Vampire Diaries on Netflix and eat cheese right from the block instead of doing laundry and going for a run. I'm probably totally ignorant about most of the topics I brought up and I am constantly discovering new ones that I haven't thought of yet. I just want to learn to be my best-self so I can avoid raising a bunch of entitled humans who are used to getting everything they want from a screen with barely lifting a finger, instead of instilling in my kids the kind of work ethic that my parents showed me. Talk to me in a few years when I am actually tackling these life lessons,  maybe it will be all sorted out. Or maybe I will end up a hypocrite and my kids will be glued to their devices. Elon Musk will probably have invented microchips that will be implanted in our heads by then anyways, so I should probably just stop worrying about it because my kids will be super computers. For now, I will just work on learning these things for myself and see what happens.