Having your shit together - Adulting Mythbusters

So you have graduated college, or university, and at your age your parents were married and had two babies, a house, a car, a job. What do you have? A minimal looking white Instagram account is not an acceptable answer.

In case you've missed the introduction to this series you can catch up by simply clicking here. It will open in a new page so it will be super easy to keep reading this page! Do I sound too enthusiast? All right I'll keep it down.

In my hometown I always joke with my girlfriends saying that we all have something the others don't and together we'd be perfect! One has a house, one has a job, another one has a husband, one has kid(s), and I have a degree (and a car! Beware!). If you put us together we could live the perfect adult life. Truth is that lacking one or more of the mentioned aspects doesn't make it any less adult-ing.

When you are young it's natural to look up to role models. Real ones, not celebrities with a private plane, a Ferrari, a mansion in the Hamptons and a penthouse in Vegas. Good luck comparing your achievements to theirs. Keeping it real, chances are that your role models are older than you and look like they reached that phase in life that is scientifically called: having their shit together. By the time you are their age, and you should 'have your shit together' as well, you realise you are not even close to such biological evolution. Going back to ask them how they did it is not a valid option because adulthood is a normal thing for them now. They file their taxes, juggle their health and car insurance, know how much softener to add in the washing machine, and remember when the next dentist appointment is. 

I can't even remember where I've put the house key! True story.

The only reasonable thing to do is to speak up and relate to people your age, friends you have since primary school, neighbours you shared the bus ride home everyday, co-workers, cousins. They will tell you that they have no idea how to adult either or how they got where they are in life. If they claim otherwise, they are blatantly lying. Of course, one might have a job and a house in London, ask more and you will find out it's a three month 'contract' as night waiter and he is sharing the sofa with an exchange student from Brazil. Or worse, is unhappy with his well paid job and really misses home even if from the outside everything looks flawless. Plus, who can tell what this 'shit' that you have to have together is? Is it a full time job? A house? A family? Feeling active and adventurous or secure and protected? This is starting to sound like a deodorant advertisement, isn't it?

The moral is: don't judge by the appearance and don't compare your achievements to that foolish idea of having your shit together. Everyone's shit is different. If you can, learn from other people's experience, be open minded, and if everything fails try CTRL+SHIFT+C 'motherlode'.


Image: by Martina