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What Does It Truly Mean When Someone Says “Adulting Sucks”?

A brief look into the bleak world of adulthood.

By Kyle SmithPublished 2 years ago Updated 2 years ago 5 min read
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What Does It Truly Mean When Someone Says “Adulting Sucks”?
Photo by José Martín Ramírez Carrasco on Unsplash

Drawing of the author as a peanut

Ever wish for your childhood back?

Play was the most important element of being a kid growing up. So much so that there’s a billion dollar industry around the concept. Whenever I walk pass a toy section at a place like Walmart and view all of the colorful toys of dinosaurs, it gets me thinking about how short childhold seems to be. These poor kids only after all, have a short window to play, use their imagination and explore a magical world where you can be a megalomaniac and order action figures around or build and destroy kingdoms with LEGO building sets.

So once we get older, we’re repeatidly told to start “adulting“meaning for most of us, zoom meetings in our living rooms or commuting to a mundane job for 8-12 hours a day. Appearently, working hard in a high risk, low reward society of inflation puts a bad taste in the mouth for millions in the 2020’s. Stressing over 8 hours,double shifts or two jobs while raising kids and getting less than 5 hours of sleep made us into stoic stubborn human beings. Wer’re zombies waking up early in the morning unless there’s a proper sip of coffee. We drive to our boring jobs while waiting in traffic. Looking ahead of the other cars in traffic while wondering why our creative and fun selves just disappeared?

It’s not that simple

Why can’t we just for one day, play with that RC car at a parking lot of a park? Turn on that video game we were meaning to complete in story mode or secrectly play with our action figures without other adults thinking of us a creepy or weird? Has society set standards to working class adults that working and paying bill only be our primary focus of life over everything else? Since when is going to a bar, club or having get togethers putt only sources of “fun” in adulthood, but building a LEGO castle is something only for kids? I wonder who came up with the concept that , kids should be the only people to have fun while adults should just work ,be serious and pay bills? Was it the industrialist of the past who figured out how to place adults into a new way of sustaining resources that didn’t require hunting and gathering material?

Adulting need not to apply to the oligarchs, rich and influencal(except Popstars,they definitely have to “work”)

Which begs the question: Whose adulting really for? Doesn’t seem to be for those who exhibit mass amounts of wealth,influence or power,since their merits of financial prowess simply create the very rules that they themselves can break. For wealthy folks, there’s more time to indulge into the activities they enjoy the most without laboring at dull retail environments like Target or flipping burgers at Mcdonalds. I guess “adulting” only applies for the rest of us, the have nots, as a fear tactic that if we don’t repeatedly go through the labor cycle of working 40 hours a week, that we’ll end up homeless.

Adulting isn’t so promiment in these EU Super States.

Adults form other countries like France and Italy usually have 3 hour breaks during work because personal life is valued more in those regions of the world.The EU or just culturally,it’s acceptable to go home near these huge breaks to eat a meal with family or a love one before returning to work. Also, car culture isn’t a huge thing in big European countries so it doens’t take long to get from work to home to fully enjoy that segment of the day. Whereas in America, your work and title IS your life and our breaks are only limited to 30 minutes or one hour. Because the American motto has been “live to work”while a few EU countries have the opposite motto “work to live”. Perhaps American companies could learn from our European counterparts, yet they‘re stubborn. That’s why the great resignation is rampit in the states.

Because when you walk around Paris and take a look at how more relax people are out there, it’s probably because most of their needs are met. Whereas in big markets like New York, hustle and bustle is top priority, so fun is reduced to night clubs, bars or social gathering if there’s time on an adult’s schedule to attend those activities. Yet American companies haven’t learned which is why major cities are emptying in favor for more affordable rural areas or why gen Z refuses to apply to Burger King.

Gen Z has Peter Pan Syndrome

The way things were for the last 50 years has faded away int ot the abyss that was yesterday and won’t be coming back. More people are awakening to alternatives to employment and what it means to work but also have time for a personal life too. Boomers and other gnerations that preceded them have forgot how to have fun and were spoiled by the relics of early 20th centurie’s idea what lif ought to be for working class people. We’re beginning to see a new perpective on valuing moments and experiences that their 9-5 jobs never afforded them. For instance,traveling to countries where work isn’t the primary focus in life or hiking around Thailand and enjoying GMO, non mansatos ingredient. People are starting to prioritize the people and hobbies they value to the most in life.

What COVID-19 has allowed us to realize is how life is too fragile to be wasting it slaving at a mindless job most of us have no passion to work at. Infact, we learned that adulting shouldn’t just mean working for a job that brings us no real meaning or sense of community. Unfortunately, the only way these days to leave the trap of a bleak future at Target or Mcdonalds Is in fact, a college education, which already is unattainable for most folks because of the student debt traps that come with a piece of paper that offically certifies us to premium access to better working conditions In America.

Inflation, a new war getting only bigger each day and high gas prices doesn’t help create a more fun and vibrant environment for adults in the states, and we may not get. To that point until at least 2030 at the latest. In the meantime we can dream a little of our childhood among this new reality of gloom and bleakness.

humanity
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About the Creator

Kyle Smith

I’m an entrepreneur,up and coming manga artist, and an Apple tech guy.

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