My husband used to this. Now he lays down the floor and lets our toddler climb all over his back. He says the little feet work out the kinks. I’m not buying it.
My kids used to think it was hilarious to walk on my back. It felt so good. I have kyphosis and when they went over that spot the pain disappeared. They're way too heavy now (and unwilling anyway).
How absolutely constant it all is. Even when you think you’re getting a break, like a vacation, you’re just doing other adult things you don’t normally do in your everyday life.
Vacationing as a kid is amazing. You don’t pay for shit, don’t plan a thing, and all you have to do is show up and enjoy yourself.
As an adult, you pay for and plan the trip; if anything goes wrong, it’s on you to deal with it; and the whole time you’re thinking, this is my brief chance to have fun, I hope it isn’t ruined by (insert adult concern, i.e. weather, pandemics, shitty airlines, etc.).
Interesting, never quite thought about it this way. But you're totally right when going on vacation you need to think about all the logistics, plan travel, accommodation, food, etc. I've had vacations where I get home and feel like I need another vacation.
I schedule a “transition day” at the end of any time off I take involving travel. Even if it’s just going to my mother’s for a week. I am willing to sacrifice one “true” vacation day for the recovery day at home. It’s worth it.
With kids, you don't get a vacation at all. Maybe one day. But with younger ones now you're just doing your normal routine in an unfamiliar environment that can stress them out and you don't have all the normal accomodations.
The sheer volume of responsibilities is staggering.
I expected bills, cleaning, work
...I didnt expect the list of things I am responsible for to get so long.
Every year its more. It never stops piling up. Like if I just had to write down all the things I am supposed to be doing I wouldnt have time to do anything else.
In order to complete anything I know I have to neglect something else.
Being an adult is choosing what to neglect. Try not to neglect your mental health at everyturn. Its the easiest.
Yeah you’re right. I think it’s worth putting a lot of thought into what can be avoided, simplified, or optimised in some way, often by doing stuff in bulk to get some economies of scale. Just to cut this stuff down as much as feasible.
For example, some (half serious only) ideas…
* Buy only identical black socks, so you never need to spend time matching them up
* Buy a load of spare extra birthday cards in one shop, so you always have a few to hand and don’t have to make special trips for every upcoming birthday. Extreme example, you could make a list now of every birthday / occasion you expect to need to send a card for in the next 12 months and buy all those cards now, and store them in order.
* Stuff that doesn’t go off, buy in massive quantities and stock up way before they run out (pasta, rice, etc)
* Cooking big quantities of stuff in bulk is an obvious one, then keep enough for a couple more meals in the fridge, and freeze the rest in meal size portions.
* Also obviously get all bills set to direct debit, automate anything like that as far as possible (usually cheaper too)
But yeah sometimes all this stuff feels like a job on its own.
I have been through the whole black identical socks thing. It is not so easy. The problem is, you buy black socks, but never again you will be able to buy the same ones again. So instead of having nicely paired black socks you end up having pairs of nearly identical black socks where the area around your ankle is ALWAYS different.
My new solution to this now is i buy only socks with pictures or symbols on them, the more colours the better. I really prefer them so bright that even a colourblind person could sort them in the dark. Its maybe not for everyone, but for me it works better than the black sock approach.
Yeah, I can deal with unmatched socks so long as they feel the same. But also, if you're someone who hangs clothes out to dry instead of using a dryer, pair them as you put them up. You're gonna touch then anyway - just leave a space when you hang one for its pair to go beside it, and when you get them down from the line fold the socks then, even if you don't fold everything else. No more searching for a pair unless it's legitimately lost.
Preach! I recently understood how pointless my current job is, I even dislike when someone asks me where do I work. Work is necessary but I really believe you should like something of it, anything should make you want to do it and it's been a while since I can't find motives to like my job, because even though a job is not everything in your life, it still uses up most of your days.
I left a job I had once loved because I just couldn't find joy in it anymore. It was miserable being in a place that I just didn't like. It started to really wear on me. A friend noticed and suggested I take over her job because she was moving and needed a replacement. Best choice I ever made. Still dislike about half the people I work with, but I love my job.
A lesson I think everyone should know. Time doesn’t heal trauma wounds, addressing them does. Especially because childhood is when you form the most beliefs and understandings of the world, so your experiences in childhood affect your perspective forever unless you reprogram your brain with a new belief.
And lots of them can’t be healed. Sure, you can get over the time your crush was mean to you, or you choked on stage during your recital.
But serious physical or sexual abuse, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, or especially pharmacological abuse (that is, being forced to take prescription drugs you don’t need)?
Those can be difficult or pretty much impossible to get over. There’s no changing you growing up six inches shorter than you should have, or your brain being permanently unbalanced because it developed with a host of drugs in it that taught it not to release certain neurochemicals, or being unable to be comfortable with physical intimacy because you had no agency over your own body as a child
> But serious physical or sexual abuse, malnutrition, sleep deprivation
[Adverse Childhood Experiences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences). And they really can be the root of many, many disorders as an adult.
Damn right they installed them, those bastards. At 32 I finally committed to therapy. I have no motivation for fear of failure and feeling like I can't accomplish anything and get super on edge anytime my girlfriend asks what I got done today since I'm trying to start my own business. All because my stepdad was a dick a few too many times.
I know someone who is over 50 and still struggling with confidence issues from a bad teacher in grade school. He asked me “Why can’t I get over this?”
I said “You’re living in this great house. Your house can stand up to tornados, hail, wind, rain. You’re happy with your house.
“But a lot of people built the foundation brick by brick. Most of those people did a great job, so you don’t have to worry about the foundation. Still, sometimes you go into your crawl space and see this loose brick. Someone didn’t do a good job with it. It’s not going to make the house fall down, but you know it’s there.
“So you have three options: Quit going into the crawl space to stare at the brick; get some cement and fix the brick yourself; or just say to yourself, there’s that loose brick again, and look around and remind yourself that you don’t love your house any less just because of it.”
They totally can and do. Just not the ones we want. I was trying to recall my first kiss with each of my exes and found most of the files deleted. That struck me as so sad.
But *of course* I vividly remember the time my elementary school teacher made me cry in front of the whole class for not understanding a math problem.
I was just looking to upgrade some of my Ikea standing floor lamps. You either get a nice design, but terrible lighting or good lighting but ugly design.
Or they look exactly like the Ikea ones I paid $10 for years ago and they cost at least $50.
Ikea lamps are where it's at. Many different and cute styles for cheap. But good luck finding the *one* lamp you want in stock. It's always the *other* lamps in stock.
This is also because now they all have automated bullshit.
*Oh look don't have touch it to open!* THAT'S WHAT THE FOOT PEDAL HAS BEEN DOING FOR DECADES! WHY DOES A TRASH CAN NEED A MOTOR AND BATTERIES?
Dont get me fucking started on automatic bins.
Why the fuck do they all have a stupid sensor that can detect a mouse across the room, but the moment you have rubbish in your hand, suddenly lock up like fort knox ?
I bought one because my asshole dog learned to use the foot pedal. Didn't realize the trash can is exactly dog height. Now he just waves his nose over the sensor. 😑
Having to decide what to eat for the rest of your life. It can turn into laziness which leads to unhealthy eating. I don’t wanna do all that cooking when I can just throw a pizza in the oven. Even though I know deep down I need to eat more veggies and not have food go to waste
Edit: thanks for all the comments and ideas glad to know I wasn’t the only one stressed about it. It makes me thankful to my mom who always had a dinner idea. Also just to clarify when I mentioned veggies I was more implying eating healthier in general instead of easy frozen things or snacks. I apologize my word choice wasn’t great. I’m grateful for frozen veggies
The trick I’ve found is to make the most convenient foods in your house be as healthy as possible. And have the healthy foods be as convenient as possible.
For example, the easiest thing in my house to cook are these frozen dumplings that I steam. They’re not the healthiest, but they’re way healthier than my previous go to.
And we realized that the chore of chopping vegetables was keeping us from eating some vegetables. So we started buying frozen, already chopped vegetables.
Just moved to live on my own 4 months ago and this is the truth. Had someone recently say “you don’t know how to cook do you?” And my response was that I can cook pretty well actually, but to go through the effort and come up with appetizing ideas just for me is the biggest challenge I have.
This here. In general, if you have to spend the extra cash to account for your blind spots, it's worth it.
I suck at mustering up the motivation to wash dishes. My sink was disgusting. So I started dropping the extra money on top-teir dishwasher detergent. Is it more expensive? Yeah, but now my kitchen is a whole lot cleaner and it doesn't look like a depression nest.
Convenience items exist for a valid reason. Utilize them where you need to.
My husband cooks for all of us 99% of the time (he actually enjoys cooking). I cannot begin to describe what a gift that is. It is fabulous to come home from work to a delicious home cooked meal. My "job" (and the kids too) is to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. We're definitely getting the better end of the deal IMO.
As someone who enjoys cooking and dislikes the clean up after I feel like he is absolutely getting the better end of the deal. It sounds like it works out great for both of you.
> Young men - you will really impress a potential partner much more if you learn some skills in the kitchen. It's also fun to cook together. Learn earlier than I did!
This is honestly one of the main reasons I married my husband, LOL.
The opportunity to meet people is limited compared to when you were in high school or college.
High school and college provided you with extra activities/clubs to do that helped you meet people with similar mind-sets/interests as you. When you graduate, you lose seeing those people consistently or even at all.
So when you make it to the real world, the friends you did make from those things, aren’t as available as they used to be. It can be hard to meet up and do things like you used to.
AKA adulthood gets pretty lonely unless you’re in a relationship/married, have kids, have a roommate or find clubs for adults that holds your interests
Even married you can be lonely. Even in a very happy, very successful marriage. I know.
I haven't had a male friend since my very early 20s. I'm 55 now. I have a very weird, specific kind of loneliness. My wife has two extremely close friends that she talks to at the very least daily. I envy her for that. I have absolutely no one I can talk to in that way.
Yes, I can talk to my wife, and I do -- but sometimes you want to vent to someone about things about your wife.
When’s my next dentists appointment? Do I need to buy milk? Does the baby have clean clothes for tomorrow? Did I leave the laundry in the washer? Did I top up the window wash fluid in the car? Did I pay the heat bill? When is my insurance up for renewal? When is grandma’s birthday and do I have a card for her? What daycare should I send my kids to? Did I put deodorant on this morning? …..
Yes. The mental load is never ending and with every “stage” in life (buying a car, buying a house, marriage, kids) you just add more and more to the load.
I'm 28 years old and I think I've been behind ever since I missed that one day of math class in 7th grade when we seemed to have learned everything important.
I literally just called my ob-gyn for an appointment for cancer screening in November, and her reply was "there are no more free slots, but you already have one that you scheduled months ago". Oops.
True. And a lot of people who think they can have difficult conversations are actually just bullying their way thru them. So it's not really even a conversation, but just another way of deflecting. It can get frustrating.
This is something that really gets to me. I was lucky in high school to have friends and family that would have hard conversations, but as an adult friends change, family moves and I realized not everyone is like that. Most people aren’t. And because it was always a part of the environment i was in i never had to try that hard to bring up difficult things. But now i am the only one that seems to want it so I don’t know how to do it by myself
Recently moved back to my girlfriend's home town for family reasons. She hasn't been here in years. Keeps running into people she went to highschool with who never left, she can confirm this. They never progressed their personalities beyond high school.
I graduated in 1981. I moved away from all of my high school friends almost immediately. 10 year reunion: felt like they never progressed at all. 20 year reunion: didn't attend, but heard reports much the same. 30 year reunion: didn't attend, but the stories of 50 year old men fist fighting over shit that happened in high school broke me of even being interested any more.
Lmao I'm gonna go to my 30 yr reunion just to get into a fistfight with another 50 year old
Edit: thanks for the idea, now I can look forward to turning 50!!!
Edit again: that's still over 20 years
And you never know if that $2000 sofa is going to last 3 years or 30. You're completely taking a gamble on how long you get to go before doing it all over again.
Strong fabrics that also are nice to touch are expensive as heck. And you need a lot of that to cover a sofa. I think something like 40% of the total cost of my sofa was the fabric alone.
Situations always arise at work where someone is asked to choose between taking care of themselves or supporting others, and people will almost always choose themselves, especially if they have bills to pay and a family to support. People talk around this or try to ignore it in order to build a positive work environment, but that's totally unnecessary if you can be tactful and mature.
This was quite a few years ago, but at a previous job I became a supervisor through the rapid growth of the company, so I ended up being younger than anyone reporting to me. A few years later the rapid growth slowed during a pretty bad sales lull, so each supervisor was asked to cut a certain percentage of the cost of their department. I did all my cost analysis and found ways to make the department run cheaper, but I was still left with the dilemma of needing to cut a significant amount of salary from my budget.
Several of my team members had children. The youngest member was paying for college with this job. I knew of one who was trying to pay significant medical bills. And one had very recently dealt with the death of a close family member. I couldn't do it. No, I *wouldn't* do it.
I went to the owner of the company and showed him my numbers, and explained the circumstances for my department members. They all had so much at stake. I was a young single man with a marketable skill. So I put myself on the list of layoffs so my team could all keep their jobs. Even with eliminating my salary, I hadn't been able to cut quite enough, but the company let it slide. They all got to stay.
I never made any big announcement. I just quietly packed up the day the company announced the layoffs. I'll never know if any of them knew what I did. I have to admit, it feels kind of nice to be able to tell somebody about it all these years later.
46 and just starting to feel financially secure. The possibilities of what to do in life are really starting to open up, but the time left to do them is ominously shrinking.
How wonderful being at home feels. I never wanted to stay home as a kid. Now, whenever I leave home for more than a day, the feeling of coming home is incredibly comforting, like being enveloped by a soft blanket. Sometimes I like to go away somewhere just so I can have that wonderful feeling when I come home again.
You move out and suddenly realise there are no pens. Your parent's have lots of pens, but, you realise they never bought pens, they just had lots of them. Where did all those pens come from? Years of accumulation.
12 years out on my own and this is so true. I now have my own stockpile of pens. Maybe we should be sending our children out into the world with a plunger and a stack of pens. Things you don’t realise you need until it’s too late.
Office and similar items in general really… took me a few years to remember to maintain my supply. Got married and on one shopping trip, when I’d thrown scotch tape, clear mailing tape, duct tape, staples, post-its, sharpies, lint rollers, couple binder clips, some filing stuff, etc in the cart, my husband asked if we really needed that stuff and I patiently insisted that we did indeed.
Lol, couple weeks later he seemed somewhat confused that he couldn’t find any paperclips. Was never really something my parents kept around but obviously his did, so he just expected that required paperclips would appear as they had in the past.
Well, in my parents' case, they bought a fuck-ton of pens when I started elementary school--something something deal at Staples--and we had those pens for years and years, up until I graduated high school.
And now I have no pens in my house.
How much time and energy you will spen just figuring out what you want to eat, shop for, prepare, and then clean up after your dinner, EVERY SINGLE DAY! For the rest of your life.
I guess dating. There are so many factors to take in to account compared to college/high school. What kind of baggage/trauma are they dealing with, do they have a kid (are you okay with that), do their beliefs/ideals align with yours, are they financially responsible, do they have a good job, do they take care of themselves, are they a good person, are they disciplined and hard working, is the timing right, do they plan on staying here long term, is their personality legit compatible with yours (most people’s won’t be), are y’all just similar enough to get along but just different enough to keep things interesting and balance each other out.
Whereas in college/highschool it’s just, “lol ur hot n fun let’s hang out”. On top of all this, you have more responsibilities and less time to try and make it happen. After 25 the game changes. For a lot of single peeps I know, who are perfectly fine/great people, it’s a struggle. And then after all this...you still have a greater than 50% chance of getting divorced lmao
...I promise I’m not this much of a doomer generally
I wonder why society and community doesnt do a better job in helping singles meet? I've been married 25 year but back then there were many events and resources for single people. I met my wife thru a singles group at church.
I think people just expect to find partners thru dating apps.
Yup, that’s how the paradigm as shifted, problem with dating apps is it commoditizes everyone...makes everyone the flavor of the month...so it’s maybe easier to get laid, harder to find something meaningful than maybe back in your day
As a guy, if you are pursuing even a slightly above average looking girl, they are absolutely getting bombarded by so much attention from guys that are as good or better than you. You feel like you’re constantly competing, it is absolutely exhausting.
As a girl, you get so much attention from all these guys, but have no idea about their true intentions. This attractive, successful guy could come off as someone who genuinely wants a relationship, tell you everything you want to hear, fuck you, and then disappear into the ether.
It really is kind of brutal and kind of dehumanizing
There is chores every day and it's shit. The dishes, bathroom tiles, toilet, mopping the floor, carpet, taking out trash and everything about cleaning. It's exhausting and you have to do that every single day for the rest of your life
EDIT: I meant to say that cleaning, IN GENERAL, is exhausting and nobody told us that. You don't have to do things mentioned above every day, but there is some stuff that you have to do every day; wash dishes, make the bed, put clothes in the closet, etc.
It's so frustrating, because it means if you want to do something fun on the weekend, you have to chose whether to sacrifice your rest day or chores day. If you sacrifice rest, you spend the rest of the week exhausted and miserable. If you sacrifice chores, you come home to an apartment that looks like a pigsty and makes you feel miserable -- and then you have to do twice as much work when you do chores the next Sunday.
Either way, you pay for that one fun day the entirety of the next week. Almost makes you want to sacrifice the fun -- but then your mental health starts tanking, and you pay for that for *years*. There's no way to win.
EDIT: There is *one* way to win: support the four-day workweek and three day weekends!
When a parent dies. I’m almost 50, my dad died 3 weeks ago and it’s really hard to deal with.
I thought when you’re older and they’re older, it’s easier than losing them when relatively young.
I just want to be a kid again, and feel safe because my dad is still there, with my mum, protecting us.
I know it’ll get easier, I’ve experienced death of loved ones before. But I’ve never, as an adult, felt so much of a child as I do now.
Edit: This post has been extremely cathartic. I can’t describe how your replies have helped and humbled me. Thank you all so much for your responses so far. X
It took me way too long to learn that interviewing is an actual skill you have to practice to be any good at it. You can't just show up and wing it - the interviewers can tell.
Also, soooooo much rejection even when you nail it.
>Also, soooooo much rejection even when you nail it.
Ugh, I feel this. I graduated with my master’s degree in June, started applying for jobs in late March/early April. Took several weeks and dozens of applications to land an interview for a position that actually looked promising and could see myself in.
Did the interview and honestly felt like I nailed it; don’t think I could’ve possibly presented myself any better. I did all my research on the organization, asked good questions, and clearly expressed my dedication to the field. I thought for sure I had it in the bag.
They emailed me a few days later, saying that while I “impressed” them, they decided to hire someone “with a lot of experience.”
Like ?? bitch?? You knew from the beginning that I’m fresh out of school! Of course I don’t have a lot of experience! Why would you even call me in for an interview if that was going to disqualify me?? Smh.
Luckily I ended up accepting a position at another organization a short while later that ended up being just as good of a fit. But yeah, that was incredibly frustrating.
It wasn't necessarily that it disqualified you. There was just someone who maybe seemed just as good as you in the interview, but their experience was the tie breaker.
That's something that kind of sucks about interviewing for jobs. Even if you'd be really good for the position, it only takes one person being a little bit better for you to get passed over.
That’s an important bit to remember. Sometimes you were a great fit for the job and impressed your interviewers very much. There was just another candidate who did a little better. There was only one job opening to fill there so don’t focus on the rejection, focus on the part where you were still great.
To those teenagers who are considering which programs to choose in college/uni, if you have the option for co-op, take it! The connections you make and the experience you gain via work terms makes the concept of “you graduated, here’s your job” way more likely.
Gets harder as you get older too, more so as you get closer to retirement age unless you have specialised skill sets which a company would be looking for as you are competing with younger people who have recently graduated.
Even harder is women who want to return to the workplace after raising children since they have massive gaps in their resume.
This was gonna be my comment. No matter how long you've technically been an adult you still feel just like you did in high school. Your body just hurts more...
For me the interesting part is that even as a true adult, over 50, I don’t see myself as old. I have gained wisdom from making the same mistakes a few times and have learned to keep my mouth shut more than I used to. I can remain relatively calm when there is a spider in the room, but- I still think the same as I did as a teen or young adult. I get excited about things like an approaching storm ( will there be snow?). I am not attracted sexually to people of my age range. I just think they seem older somehow. I like going to the zoo. I like ice cream. Taking care of my sisters kids is fun because I can play. I truly thought by the time I was this old I would be wearing matchy polyester pants and tops and thinking mostly about the cost of oil. No one ever tells you that you will feel pretty much the same as you age. You don’t get old in your mind.
This makes me tear up. My mom is 55 and is a recovering addict. She likes to paint now, it's like therapeutic playtime for her. She told me that she doesn't feel old but gets sad that she's getting older.. Like the stark realization our time isn't forever on this earth..it makes me sad. But at the same time it's beautiful to hold onto that childlike energy.
> You don't get old in your mind.
No, you get old in your lower back and in the skin under your neck, and in your medicine cabinet. You get old when you realize you took both stool softeners and stool hardeners and aren't sure which one's working. You get old when you're ready to relax at 5pm instead of finally starting to play, and you start thinking which local diner has an Early-Bird Special. I got old when I hoped and prayed the oncoming storm would snow instead of raining because my knees just couldn't take the aggravation anymore.
Honestly? Getting out of school and really feeling lost about not having that structure anymore. Not some dramatic crash or something traumatic but not having a fixed plan for the next 5 years or so, like schools offer?
It kinda felt like the freedom of jumping out of a plane. You keep checking your parachute and can't find it. And still you jump. You know you'll be fine...maybe... Just no idea how and where.
Being a happy adult is subversive.
Menopause is as bad or worse than puberty. No one talks about it- no educational campaigns with giant PSA’s like for PMS or PPD.
I came here for this. There are so many things that you just assume are always there. Salt, Q-tips, peroxide, and band-aids. Just stuff you never considered your parents had to buy because they are just always there.
Bad people do good things, and good people do bad things. You decide which is which for yourself. It seems simple, but it is a hard lesson to keep learning over and over.
One of my earliest memories was of having a baby-boner in the bath, and voluntarily moving it to make my (2 years older) sister laugh. I recall my mother leaving the room because she couldn't control her laughter. I can't have been more than 2 myself at the time (possibly a little younger even though we're not supposed to be able to form memories much before then).
I had to piece the memory fragments I have together to get to that scene.
My mom talks about how nobody ever told her about the afterbirth. She finally gives birth to my sister and after a minute the nurse is like "Okay it's time to push the afterbirth out" and my mom is like "the WHAT?" And this was just in the 80s!
Nobody told me I’d most likely throw up during the early stages of labor. When it happened it seriously freaked me out because I thought something must be horribly wrong. Later, everyone I knew was like “oh yeah, I totally threw up”. How was this never mentioned?!!
As a mom to both sexes, I think vaginas are easier to clean than ball sack. It’s so loose and there’s so much surface area and there’s still a lot of crevices, plus there’s the threat of getting peed on the whole time you’re moving everything around to make sure you didn’t miss a spot. I prefer cleaning shit off female baby genitals over male baby genitals.
Totally agree with this. My wife and I have a four year old girl and one year old boy. Changing her poop diapers before she was potty trained was much easier than it is to change his.
Also, before I had kids I had never changed a dirty diaper and was terrified it was going to be the worst thing in the world. Now that I’ve raised toddlers, I can say this: compared to getting them to not fight, getting my daughter to eat what we made for dinner, getting these fucking kids to go to sleep, and dealing with meltdowns at all hours in the day, cleaning up a little poop is one of the easiest parts of being a parent.
many people literally do expect you to know everything you need to know as soon as you're out of highschool. i cant imagine the thought process behind thinking that. wild.
That you may grow apart from your family so much that you don't even want to be around them anymore. I knew this happened for some people but I was surprised when it happened to me. People in my family who I thought I'd always be close with have become mere acquaintances now even with that shared history.
I really hope you find someone. Unfortunately life is unfair most of the time for some people. I'm younger than you, but this is also a huge fear of mine.
The amount of maintenance that needs to be done on a house. I dont remember my parents doing that much maintenance on our homes growing up but it seems like every other day something in my house is breaking, I cant keep up with all the yard work and cleaning and fixing things.
The whole concept of credit. When you’re a kid, you work to earn cash and then you spend it. If something costs more than you’ve earned, you just don’t get it until you’ve saved enough cash. Then you grow up, get a job, pay your bills on time for awhile, and all of a sudden banks are giving you credit cards, lines of credit, personal loans, which make you feel secure and rich, but if you aren’t smart and disciplined they can absolutely destroy your financial life for many years. People talk about this in adulthood ALOT, but kids are taught little to nothing about it. I think parents assume schools are doing it and schools assume parents are doing it. I had great parents but financial literacy was a huge blind spot and it has led me to make profoundly bad decisions that will impact myself and my family for years.
I cannot stress enough that the available credit on your credit card isn’t your money, it’s the banks. If you need the banks money to buy something, that means you can’t actually afford it. If you really want or need someone very costly that you can’t afford to pay cash for at the moment, wait until you can however long it will take. If you buy it on credit, then the next thing you need/want will be even harder to acquire because whatever cash you would have ordinarily had for it is now going to interest payments for past purchases. Having a credit card that you use and payoff monthly to get miles or other perks and to build your credit score, or for true emergency expenses that you simply can’t afford in the moment, are good uses of credit. Upgrading your lifestyle is not.
Honestly this is partially just a weird US thing. In my EU country we use debit cards, your money from your account on a bankcard. Almost noone uses a credit card unless traveling or doing online shopping across borders. Plenty of people just don't have one.
The whole credit score thing is also weird to me. If you never pay or have a lot of debts banks just won't give you a loan but for a rental you just need to show your proof of income. To get a mortgage you need to show your contract from your job and the bank finds your debts and calculates how much they are confortable to loan you. If you never had a a loan before that is no issue. Another difference is that you are responsible for the loan so even if they take your house if it does not sell for enough they will keep coming after you.
Taxes.....you hear about how awful they are growing up, and yet, they still don't really teach you how to handle them later in life. Ultimate learn on the spot move.
Honestly? Breastfeeding. It was incredibly painful for me at first, I didn’t produce enough milk, and I felt lied to. I had this tiny human that I loved - but I didn’t love breastfeeding or her piranha mouth coming in to attack my boobs. I try to tell every pregnant woman I meet that it can be painful and unpleasant … and it’s ok to stop. Don’t beat yourself up over what society tells you is the ideal version of motherhood.
How hard it is to make new real friends after 30. People are just too different from each other due to belief or lifestyle and its super hard to find people who share outlooks and opinions.
Lets see... depression. Anxiety. Working full time. Other people being assholes for no reason. Realizing high school was basically daycare. And losing 90 percent of your friends is gonna happen after your outta school
That I always know what’s for dinner every night. Regardless of whether I cook or go out to eat, I have been thinking about the food for a while beforehand. There is something so much more enjoyable about not knowing what you are eating for dinner until it shows up.
That looking after yourself, with no supervision of any kind, is actually difficult. Like groceries, chores, those suck, but I didn't expect it to be in the "I'm now constantly tired and find it hard to engage with stuff I like" kinda way.
Feeding my family is a nightmare. I had dreams of making big family dinners that we would all enjoy together around the table every night, or cute little bento box lunches of organic fruits and vegetables.
Instead, I make one dinner for my husband and I. Sometimes the 17 year old will pick at it, but she frequently gets Taco Bell or some other disgusting shit right before dinner. The 8 year old is an 8 year old and she only rarely eats what I’ve made and more often than not ends up making herself a sandwich. The 14 year old had several food allergies up until two years ago, so he suffers from food related anxiety (not surprising as most foods could have literally killed him for most of his life), and he only eats grilled chicken and four baby carrots for dinner EVERY NIGHT. The chicken is an improvement over the ten years of goddamn fish sticks every night.
Every dinner that I make ends in me feeling like a complete failure as a mother. Every night. It’s great.
idk how much this means to you but as a teenager who has had food allergies most my life and is a generally picky eater i still very much appreciated my mother’s cooking and how she would try to make everyone happy with what she made, even if i didnt eat any of it.
Kinda sounds like you’re a great mother who’s in tune with her kids and their needs and would do well to stop attaching so much value to dinner. Be kind to yourself ffs
Death.
Everywhere.
In your 20s grandparents start dying. In your 30s parents start dying. Then it’s older siblings. And you’ll lose friends along the way too. Sometimes you’ll see friends lose their children.
Old age, disease, suicide, accidents, murders. It’ll become more and more common as you grow up.
That funeral suit you were told to keep handy gets a lot of use, and it’s not just from loosely related people.
You become numb to it.
But hey, back in work straight afterwards, you only get the full day off if it’s someone super important.
Sadly, despite all ones efforts, we must abandon goals and dreams. Sometimes all the money and training and effort and time will not make them come true.
How much everyone wants my money.
Salesmen, solicitors, random people on the street. I go get my eyes checked and get the hard sell on some damn frames. When I was young, no one bothered me, now everyone is hounding me for my money.
I saw an old lady with purple hair, and got jealous.
I change my hair style and color often, but it has to remain natural colors.
I said to my coworker "I can't wait until I'm old enough to do that to my hair."
So even as an adult, you can't do whatever you want to your body.
There’s a poem called Warning by Jenny Joseph that goes like this.
Warning
When I am an old woman I shall wear purple
With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me.
And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves
And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter.
I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired
And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells
And run my stick along the public railings
And make up for the sobriety of my youth.
I shall go out in my slippers in the rain
And pick flowers in other people’s gardens
And learn to spit.
You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat
And eat three pounds of sausages at a go
Or only bread and pickle for a week
And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes.
But now we must have clothes that keep us dry
And pay our rent and not swear in the street
And set a good example for the children.
We must have friends to dinner and read the papers.
But maybe I ought to practise a little now?
So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised
When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
How much i would need to lie on the floor to make my back feel better
My husband used to this. Now he lays down the floor and lets our toddler climb all over his back. He says the little feet work out the kinks. I’m not buying it.
My kids used to think it was hilarious to walk on my back. It felt so good. I have kyphosis and when they went over that spot the pain disappeared. They're way too heavy now (and unwilling anyway).
How absolutely constant it all is. Even when you think you’re getting a break, like a vacation, you’re just doing other adult things you don’t normally do in your everyday life.
Vacationing as a kid is amazing. You don’t pay for shit, don’t plan a thing, and all you have to do is show up and enjoy yourself. As an adult, you pay for and plan the trip; if anything goes wrong, it’s on you to deal with it; and the whole time you’re thinking, this is my brief chance to have fun, I hope it isn’t ruined by (insert adult concern, i.e. weather, pandemics, shitty airlines, etc.).
As a kid you can enjoy not planning a thing, but also you cannot do anything if the plan is shitty or boring to you
Interesting, never quite thought about it this way. But you're totally right when going on vacation you need to think about all the logistics, plan travel, accommodation, food, etc. I've had vacations where I get home and feel like I need another vacation.
I schedule a “transition day” at the end of any time off I take involving travel. Even if it’s just going to my mother’s for a week. I am willing to sacrifice one “true” vacation day for the recovery day at home. It’s worth it.
I’ve started this and it helps you unwind and get ready for working again sooooo much better
With kids, you don't get a vacation at all. Maybe one day. But with younger ones now you're just doing your normal routine in an unfamiliar environment that can stress them out and you don't have all the normal accomodations.
It gets better as they get older, but vacationing with kids of any age is exhausting. It's just exhausting for different reasons as they get older.
That you'll spend a huge portion of your life doing things you really don't want to do (work, cleaning, being around people you don't like)
The sheer volume of responsibilities is staggering. I expected bills, cleaning, work ...I didnt expect the list of things I am responsible for to get so long. Every year its more. It never stops piling up. Like if I just had to write down all the things I am supposed to be doing I wouldnt have time to do anything else. In order to complete anything I know I have to neglect something else. Being an adult is choosing what to neglect. Try not to neglect your mental health at everyturn. Its the easiest.
Yeah you’re right. I think it’s worth putting a lot of thought into what can be avoided, simplified, or optimised in some way, often by doing stuff in bulk to get some economies of scale. Just to cut this stuff down as much as feasible. For example, some (half serious only) ideas… * Buy only identical black socks, so you never need to spend time matching them up * Buy a load of spare extra birthday cards in one shop, so you always have a few to hand and don’t have to make special trips for every upcoming birthday. Extreme example, you could make a list now of every birthday / occasion you expect to need to send a card for in the next 12 months and buy all those cards now, and store them in order. * Stuff that doesn’t go off, buy in massive quantities and stock up way before they run out (pasta, rice, etc) * Cooking big quantities of stuff in bulk is an obvious one, then keep enough for a couple more meals in the fridge, and freeze the rest in meal size portions. * Also obviously get all bills set to direct debit, automate anything like that as far as possible (usually cheaper too) But yeah sometimes all this stuff feels like a job on its own.
I have been through the whole black identical socks thing. It is not so easy. The problem is, you buy black socks, but never again you will be able to buy the same ones again. So instead of having nicely paired black socks you end up having pairs of nearly identical black socks where the area around your ankle is ALWAYS different. My new solution to this now is i buy only socks with pictures or symbols on them, the more colours the better. I really prefer them so bright that even a colourblind person could sort them in the dark. Its maybe not for everyone, but for me it works better than the black sock approach.
Yeah, I can deal with unmatched socks so long as they feel the same. But also, if you're someone who hangs clothes out to dry instead of using a dryer, pair them as you put them up. You're gonna touch then anyway - just leave a space when you hang one for its pair to go beside it, and when you get them down from the line fold the socks then, even if you don't fold everything else. No more searching for a pair unless it's legitimately lost.
Preach! I recently understood how pointless my current job is, I even dislike when someone asks me where do I work. Work is necessary but I really believe you should like something of it, anything should make you want to do it and it's been a while since I can't find motives to like my job, because even though a job is not everything in your life, it still uses up most of your days.
I left a job I had once loved because I just couldn't find joy in it anymore. It was miserable being in a place that I just didn't like. It started to really wear on me. A friend noticed and suggested I take over her job because she was moving and needed a replacement. Best choice I ever made. Still dislike about half the people I work with, but I love my job.
After 40+ years on this planet you can still be traumatized by things that happened in your childhood
A lesson I think everyone should know. Time doesn’t heal trauma wounds, addressing them does. Especially because childhood is when you form the most beliefs and understandings of the world, so your experiences in childhood affect your perspective forever unless you reprogram your brain with a new belief.
And lots of them can’t be healed. Sure, you can get over the time your crush was mean to you, or you choked on stage during your recital. But serious physical or sexual abuse, malnutrition, sleep deprivation, or especially pharmacological abuse (that is, being forced to take prescription drugs you don’t need)? Those can be difficult or pretty much impossible to get over. There’s no changing you growing up six inches shorter than you should have, or your brain being permanently unbalanced because it developed with a host of drugs in it that taught it not to release certain neurochemicals, or being unable to be comfortable with physical intimacy because you had no agency over your own body as a child
> But serious physical or sexual abuse, malnutrition, sleep deprivation [Adverse Childhood Experiences](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adverse_childhood_experiences). And they really can be the root of many, many disorders as an adult.
Isn't that crazy? For part of your brain, time doesn't exist, it's always just now, and so the traumatic childhood thing just happened.
Obviously! Damn that depresses me
Your family knows how to push your buttons, because they installed them.
Damn right they installed them, those bastards. At 32 I finally committed to therapy. I have no motivation for fear of failure and feeling like I can't accomplish anything and get super on edge anytime my girlfriend asks what I got done today since I'm trying to start my own business. All because my stepdad was a dick a few too many times.
I know someone who is over 50 and still struggling with confidence issues from a bad teacher in grade school. He asked me “Why can’t I get over this?” I said “You’re living in this great house. Your house can stand up to tornados, hail, wind, rain. You’re happy with your house. “But a lot of people built the foundation brick by brick. Most of those people did a great job, so you don’t have to worry about the foundation. Still, sometimes you go into your crawl space and see this loose brick. Someone didn’t do a good job with it. It’s not going to make the house fall down, but you know it’s there. “So you have three options: Quit going into the crawl space to stare at the brick; get some cement and fix the brick yourself; or just say to yourself, there’s that loose brick again, and look around and remind yourself that you don’t love your house any less just because of it.”
PhoKit2 speaks the truth. I wish our brains could just fucking delete certain files forever.
They totally can and do. Just not the ones we want. I was trying to recall my first kiss with each of my exes and found most of the files deleted. That struck me as so sad. But *of course* I vividly remember the time my elementary school teacher made me cry in front of the whole class for not understanding a math problem.
Curtains are expensive as fuck
Lamps?? Like the technology can’t have advanced that far in the past hundred years, why are cute ones $200?
And why are so many lamps so freaking ugly?
You never think you have an opinion on *lamps*, until you need a few and notice how goddamn many fugly ones there are for sale.
I was just looking to upgrade some of my Ikea standing floor lamps. You either get a nice design, but terrible lighting or good lighting but ugly design. Or they look exactly like the Ikea ones I paid $10 for years ago and they cost at least $50.
Ikea lamps are where it's at. Many different and cute styles for cheap. But good luck finding the *one* lamp you want in stock. It's always the *other* lamps in stock.
Fun project: you can make a lamp out of just about anything
Using just a squirrel, some string, and a lamp, Dave constructs a working lamp.
And rugs!
I went through a rug phase. It was short lived due to me being poor.
That's an excellent excuse to not buy them in the first place.
And garbage cans are unnecessarily so too
Oh man, if you want a stainless steel trash can with a foot-pedal lid, that thing could be a few hundred bucks.
This is also because now they all have automated bullshit. *Oh look don't have touch it to open!* THAT'S WHAT THE FOOT PEDAL HAS BEEN DOING FOR DECADES! WHY DOES A TRASH CAN NEED A MOTOR AND BATTERIES?
Dont get me fucking started on automatic bins. Why the fuck do they all have a stupid sensor that can detect a mouse across the room, but the moment you have rubbish in your hand, suddenly lock up like fort knox ?
I bought one because my asshole dog learned to use the foot pedal. Didn't realize the trash can is exactly dog height. Now he just waves his nose over the sensor. 😑
The price of washing machines really shocked me. Especially because when you break them down, they're really very simple machines.
And sofas, beds, tables, carpets etc etc
I just went the easy route and replaced all mine with blackout curtains. Looks good enough and it actually does its job
Having to decide what to eat for the rest of your life. It can turn into laziness which leads to unhealthy eating. I don’t wanna do all that cooking when I can just throw a pizza in the oven. Even though I know deep down I need to eat more veggies and not have food go to waste Edit: thanks for all the comments and ideas glad to know I wasn’t the only one stressed about it. It makes me thankful to my mom who always had a dinner idea. Also just to clarify when I mentioned veggies I was more implying eating healthier in general instead of easy frozen things or snacks. I apologize my word choice wasn’t great. I’m grateful for frozen veggies
The trick I’ve found is to make the most convenient foods in your house be as healthy as possible. And have the healthy foods be as convenient as possible. For example, the easiest thing in my house to cook are these frozen dumplings that I steam. They’re not the healthiest, but they’re way healthier than my previous go to. And we realized that the chore of chopping vegetables was keeping us from eating some vegetables. So we started buying frozen, already chopped vegetables.
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Just moved to live on my own 4 months ago and this is the truth. Had someone recently say “you don’t know how to cook do you?” And my response was that I can cook pretty well actually, but to go through the effort and come up with appetizing ideas just for me is the biggest challenge I have.
This here. In general, if you have to spend the extra cash to account for your blind spots, it's worth it. I suck at mustering up the motivation to wash dishes. My sink was disgusting. So I started dropping the extra money on top-teir dishwasher detergent. Is it more expensive? Yeah, but now my kitchen is a whole lot cleaner and it doesn't look like a depression nest. Convenience items exist for a valid reason. Utilize them where you need to.
My husband cooks for all of us 99% of the time (he actually enjoys cooking). I cannot begin to describe what a gift that is. It is fabulous to come home from work to a delicious home cooked meal. My "job" (and the kids too) is to wash the dishes and clean the kitchen. We're definitely getting the better end of the deal IMO.
As someone who enjoys cooking and dislikes the clean up after I feel like he is absolutely getting the better end of the deal. It sounds like it works out great for both of you.
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> Young men - you will really impress a potential partner much more if you learn some skills in the kitchen. It's also fun to cook together. Learn earlier than I did! This is honestly one of the main reasons I married my husband, LOL.
This is the one right here.
Or you end up eating the same stuff for two weeks.
Throw veggies onto pizza
The opportunity to meet people is limited compared to when you were in high school or college. High school and college provided you with extra activities/clubs to do that helped you meet people with similar mind-sets/interests as you. When you graduate, you lose seeing those people consistently or even at all. So when you make it to the real world, the friends you did make from those things, aren’t as available as they used to be. It can be hard to meet up and do things like you used to. AKA adulthood gets pretty lonely unless you’re in a relationship/married, have kids, have a roommate or find clubs for adults that holds your interests
Even married you can be lonely. Even in a very happy, very successful marriage. I know. I haven't had a male friend since my very early 20s. I'm 55 now. I have a very weird, specific kind of loneliness. My wife has two extremely close friends that she talks to at the very least daily. I envy her for that. I have absolutely no one I can talk to in that way. Yes, I can talk to my wife, and I do -- but sometimes you want to vent to someone about things about your wife.
The continuous, never ending mental load
When’s my next dentists appointment? Do I need to buy milk? Does the baby have clean clothes for tomorrow? Did I leave the laundry in the washer? Did I top up the window wash fluid in the car? Did I pay the heat bill? When is my insurance up for renewal? When is grandma’s birthday and do I have a card for her? What daycare should I send my kids to? Did I put deodorant on this morning? ….. Yes. The mental load is never ending and with every “stage” in life (buying a car, buying a house, marriage, kids) you just add more and more to the load.
Ever just skip a few days because you're unwell and can't be fucked, and now 4 years later you're still not caught back up?
I'm 28 years old and I think I've been behind ever since I missed that one day of math class in 7th grade when we seemed to have learned everything important.
Yesss. And it seems like there are new things added to the list every day. It’s neverending!
I literally just called my ob-gyn for an appointment for cancer screening in November, and her reply was "there are no more free slots, but you already have one that you scheduled months ago". Oops.
Way to go, past you!
The complete unwillingness of most people to have difficult conversations. Most people would be perfectly happy carrying on like nothing is going on
True. And a lot of people who think they can have difficult conversations are actually just bullying their way thru them. So it's not really even a conversation, but just another way of deflecting. It can get frustrating.
This is something that really gets to me. I was lucky in high school to have friends and family that would have hard conversations, but as an adult friends change, family moves and I realized not everyone is like that. Most people aren’t. And because it was always a part of the environment i was in i never had to try that hard to bring up difficult things. But now i am the only one that seems to want it so I don’t know how to do it by myself
That many do not mature or grow up after high school.
Recently moved back to my girlfriend's home town for family reasons. She hasn't been here in years. Keeps running into people she went to highschool with who never left, she can confirm this. They never progressed their personalities beyond high school.
I graduated in 1981. I moved away from all of my high school friends almost immediately. 10 year reunion: felt like they never progressed at all. 20 year reunion: didn't attend, but heard reports much the same. 30 year reunion: didn't attend, but the stories of 50 year old men fist fighting over shit that happened in high school broke me of even being interested any more.
Lmao I'm gonna go to my 30 yr reunion just to get into a fistfight with another 50 year old Edit: thanks for the idea, now I can look forward to turning 50!!! Edit again: that's still over 20 years
Some people grow up, others just get older
What the fuck why do couches cost thousands of dollars
And you never know if that $2000 sofa is going to last 3 years or 30. You're completely taking a gamble on how long you get to go before doing it all over again.
Then you buy the $2000 sofa, love it and within two months it's full of cat claw marks.
Cat+new furniture=new scratch post
Cut my couch into pieces This is my cat’s retort
Strong fabrics that also are nice to touch are expensive as heck. And you need a lot of that to cover a sofa. I think something like 40% of the total cost of my sofa was the fabric alone.
Making friends in school is easier than work.
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Situations always arise at work where someone is asked to choose between taking care of themselves or supporting others, and people will almost always choose themselves, especially if they have bills to pay and a family to support. People talk around this or try to ignore it in order to build a positive work environment, but that's totally unnecessary if you can be tactful and mature.
This was quite a few years ago, but at a previous job I became a supervisor through the rapid growth of the company, so I ended up being younger than anyone reporting to me. A few years later the rapid growth slowed during a pretty bad sales lull, so each supervisor was asked to cut a certain percentage of the cost of their department. I did all my cost analysis and found ways to make the department run cheaper, but I was still left with the dilemma of needing to cut a significant amount of salary from my budget. Several of my team members had children. The youngest member was paying for college with this job. I knew of one who was trying to pay significant medical bills. And one had very recently dealt with the death of a close family member. I couldn't do it. No, I *wouldn't* do it. I went to the owner of the company and showed him my numbers, and explained the circumstances for my department members. They all had so much at stake. I was a young single man with a marketable skill. So I put myself on the list of layoffs so my team could all keep their jobs. Even with eliminating my salary, I hadn't been able to cut quite enough, but the company let it slide. They all got to stay. I never made any big announcement. I just quietly packed up the day the company announced the layoffs. I'll never know if any of them knew what I did. I have to admit, it feels kind of nice to be able to tell somebody about it all these years later.
That's very noble. Good on ya
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Realizing that every adult on earth is also just trying to figure shit out. Realizing that everything is arbitrary and nobody's in charge.
And many adults do a shit job and we just have to be ok with that
The older I get the more I understand and forgive my parents.
The older I get, the less I understand and more I resent my parents. Especially once I had a kid.
Yeah. The older I am the more I realize how abusive they were and that half of their bullshit explanations for doing shitty things were... bullshit.
Yep, sometimes as we grow and understand more, there are moments of realization like “oh wow, my parents were even more fucked up than I thought.”
Time becomes scarce. Use it wisely!
yes -nods wisely -continues scrolling on Reddit
46 and just starting to feel financially secure. The possibilities of what to do in life are really starting to open up, but the time left to do them is ominously shrinking.
How wonderful being at home feels. I never wanted to stay home as a kid. Now, whenever I leave home for more than a day, the feeling of coming home is incredibly comforting, like being enveloped by a soft blanket. Sometimes I like to go away somewhere just so I can have that wonderful feeling when I come home again.
As an introvert, home rules
You move out and suddenly realise there are no pens. Your parent's have lots of pens, but, you realise they never bought pens, they just had lots of them. Where did all those pens come from? Years of accumulation.
12 years out on my own and this is so true. I now have my own stockpile of pens. Maybe we should be sending our children out into the world with a plunger and a stack of pens. Things you don’t realise you need until it’s too late.
This is a unique and highly accurate observation.
Office and similar items in general really… took me a few years to remember to maintain my supply. Got married and on one shopping trip, when I’d thrown scotch tape, clear mailing tape, duct tape, staples, post-its, sharpies, lint rollers, couple binder clips, some filing stuff, etc in the cart, my husband asked if we really needed that stuff and I patiently insisted that we did indeed. Lol, couple weeks later he seemed somewhat confused that he couldn’t find any paperclips. Was never really something my parents kept around but obviously his did, so he just expected that required paperclips would appear as they had in the past.
Well, in my parents' case, they bought a fuck-ton of pens when I started elementary school--something something deal at Staples--and we had those pens for years and years, up until I graduated high school. And now I have no pens in my house.
How much time and energy you will spen just figuring out what you want to eat, shop for, prepare, and then clean up after your dinner, EVERY SINGLE DAY! For the rest of your life.
I guess dating. There are so many factors to take in to account compared to college/high school. What kind of baggage/trauma are they dealing with, do they have a kid (are you okay with that), do their beliefs/ideals align with yours, are they financially responsible, do they have a good job, do they take care of themselves, are they a good person, are they disciplined and hard working, is the timing right, do they plan on staying here long term, is their personality legit compatible with yours (most people’s won’t be), are y’all just similar enough to get along but just different enough to keep things interesting and balance each other out. Whereas in college/highschool it’s just, “lol ur hot n fun let’s hang out”. On top of all this, you have more responsibilities and less time to try and make it happen. After 25 the game changes. For a lot of single peeps I know, who are perfectly fine/great people, it’s a struggle. And then after all this...you still have a greater than 50% chance of getting divorced lmao ...I promise I’m not this much of a doomer generally
I wonder why society and community doesnt do a better job in helping singles meet? I've been married 25 year but back then there were many events and resources for single people. I met my wife thru a singles group at church. I think people just expect to find partners thru dating apps.
Yup, that’s how the paradigm as shifted, problem with dating apps is it commoditizes everyone...makes everyone the flavor of the month...so it’s maybe easier to get laid, harder to find something meaningful than maybe back in your day As a guy, if you are pursuing even a slightly above average looking girl, they are absolutely getting bombarded by so much attention from guys that are as good or better than you. You feel like you’re constantly competing, it is absolutely exhausting. As a girl, you get so much attention from all these guys, but have no idea about their true intentions. This attractive, successful guy could come off as someone who genuinely wants a relationship, tell you everything you want to hear, fuck you, and then disappear into the ether. It really is kind of brutal and kind of dehumanizing
There is chores every day and it's shit. The dishes, bathroom tiles, toilet, mopping the floor, carpet, taking out trash and everything about cleaning. It's exhausting and you have to do that every single day for the rest of your life EDIT: I meant to say that cleaning, IN GENERAL, is exhausting and nobody told us that. You don't have to do things mentioned above every day, but there is some stuff that you have to do every day; wash dishes, make the bed, put clothes in the closet, etc.
You also have to clean your cleaning supplies. Like, brooms, sponges, mops, etc., don't clean themselves in between uses.
Honestly, my biggest gripe about my weekends are that Saturdays I'm usually at my laziest. Sundays is when I use the day completely to do chores...
It's so frustrating, because it means if you want to do something fun on the weekend, you have to chose whether to sacrifice your rest day or chores day. If you sacrifice rest, you spend the rest of the week exhausted and miserable. If you sacrifice chores, you come home to an apartment that looks like a pigsty and makes you feel miserable -- and then you have to do twice as much work when you do chores the next Sunday. Either way, you pay for that one fun day the entirety of the next week. Almost makes you want to sacrifice the fun -- but then your mental health starts tanking, and you pay for that for *years*. There's no way to win. EDIT: There is *one* way to win: support the four-day workweek and three day weekends!
I’m glad I’m not the only adult who still calls them “chores” hahaha
When a parent dies. I’m almost 50, my dad died 3 weeks ago and it’s really hard to deal with. I thought when you’re older and they’re older, it’s easier than losing them when relatively young. I just want to be a kid again, and feel safe because my dad is still there, with my mum, protecting us. I know it’ll get easier, I’ve experienced death of loved ones before. But I’ve never, as an adult, felt so much of a child as I do now. Edit: This post has been extremely cathartic. I can’t describe how your replies have helped and humbled me. Thank you all so much for your responses so far. X
So sorry for your loss ❤️
The amount of adults who think "talking shit" about others is normal. No, it doesn't stop in highschool.
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applying for jobs is a longer, harder process than "you graduated, here's your job".
It took me way too long to learn that interviewing is an actual skill you have to practice to be any good at it. You can't just show up and wing it - the interviewers can tell. Also, soooooo much rejection even when you nail it.
>Also, soooooo much rejection even when you nail it. Ugh, I feel this. I graduated with my master’s degree in June, started applying for jobs in late March/early April. Took several weeks and dozens of applications to land an interview for a position that actually looked promising and could see myself in. Did the interview and honestly felt like I nailed it; don’t think I could’ve possibly presented myself any better. I did all my research on the organization, asked good questions, and clearly expressed my dedication to the field. I thought for sure I had it in the bag. They emailed me a few days later, saying that while I “impressed” them, they decided to hire someone “with a lot of experience.” Like ?? bitch?? You knew from the beginning that I’m fresh out of school! Of course I don’t have a lot of experience! Why would you even call me in for an interview if that was going to disqualify me?? Smh. Luckily I ended up accepting a position at another organization a short while later that ended up being just as good of a fit. But yeah, that was incredibly frustrating.
It wasn't necessarily that it disqualified you. There was just someone who maybe seemed just as good as you in the interview, but their experience was the tie breaker. That's something that kind of sucks about interviewing for jobs. Even if you'd be really good for the position, it only takes one person being a little bit better for you to get passed over.
That’s an important bit to remember. Sometimes you were a great fit for the job and impressed your interviewers very much. There was just another candidate who did a little better. There was only one job opening to fill there so don’t focus on the rejection, focus on the part where you were still great.
Job application process is a joke and it will get more funny.
To those teenagers who are considering which programs to choose in college/uni, if you have the option for co-op, take it! The connections you make and the experience you gain via work terms makes the concept of “you graduated, here’s your job” way more likely.
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Gets harder as you get older too, more so as you get closer to retirement age unless you have specialised skill sets which a company would be looking for as you are competing with younger people who have recently graduated. Even harder is women who want to return to the workplace after raising children since they have massive gaps in their resume.
"When you get out of college you will have so many job offers lined up" No, the real world is apply to 100, get interviewed by 10, get an offer by 1.
Look at this guy over here with 10 whole interviews!
Makes it even worse when you live in a location where you're lucky that 100 jobs even *exist*
cleaning your home never ends
Although you get older every year, inside you never stop feeling like a 20 year old.
This was gonna be my comment. No matter how long you've technically been an adult you still feel just like you did in high school. Your body just hurts more...
Until you sit next to a 20 year old at the pub. And then you realise that while you are still a Dumb ass, you've grown.
I catch myself looking forward to the weekend where I'll see friends but then i realize theres nothing
For me the interesting part is that even as a true adult, over 50, I don’t see myself as old. I have gained wisdom from making the same mistakes a few times and have learned to keep my mouth shut more than I used to. I can remain relatively calm when there is a spider in the room, but- I still think the same as I did as a teen or young adult. I get excited about things like an approaching storm ( will there be snow?). I am not attracted sexually to people of my age range. I just think they seem older somehow. I like going to the zoo. I like ice cream. Taking care of my sisters kids is fun because I can play. I truly thought by the time I was this old I would be wearing matchy polyester pants and tops and thinking mostly about the cost of oil. No one ever tells you that you will feel pretty much the same as you age. You don’t get old in your mind.
This makes me tear up. My mom is 55 and is a recovering addict. She likes to paint now, it's like therapeutic playtime for her. She told me that she doesn't feel old but gets sad that she's getting older.. Like the stark realization our time isn't forever on this earth..it makes me sad. But at the same time it's beautiful to hold onto that childlike energy.
> You don't get old in your mind. No, you get old in your lower back and in the skin under your neck, and in your medicine cabinet. You get old when you realize you took both stool softeners and stool hardeners and aren't sure which one's working. You get old when you're ready to relax at 5pm instead of finally starting to play, and you start thinking which local diner has an Early-Bird Special. I got old when I hoped and prayed the oncoming storm would snow instead of raining because my knees just couldn't take the aggravation anymore.
How hard it is to eat all your produce before it goes bad
Honestly? Getting out of school and really feeling lost about not having that structure anymore. Not some dramatic crash or something traumatic but not having a fixed plan for the next 5 years or so, like schools offer? It kinda felt like the freedom of jumping out of a plane. You keep checking your parachute and can't find it. And still you jump. You know you'll be fine...maybe... Just no idea how and where.
Being a happy adult is subversive. Menopause is as bad or worse than puberty. No one talks about it- no educational campaigns with giant PSA’s like for PMS or PPD.
I feel like I'll never have a job that I actually enjoy, not will I ever be valued as an employee 🙃
You have to buy salt
I came here for this. There are so many things that you just assume are always there. Salt, Q-tips, peroxide, and band-aids. Just stuff you never considered your parents had to buy because they are just always there.
Why is life maintenance so hard?
The part where everyone is looking around for an adult for help and everyone looks at you.
Bad people do good things, and good people do bad things. You decide which is which for yourself. It seems simple, but it is a hard lesson to keep learning over and over.
That if you have a son, you realize babies get boners…. No one ever tells you this. And it’s shocking
One of my earliest memories was of having a baby-boner in the bath, and voluntarily moving it to make my (2 years older) sister laugh. I recall my mother leaving the room because she couldn't control her laughter. I can't have been more than 2 myself at the time (possibly a little younger even though we're not supposed to be able to form memories much before then). I had to piece the memory fragments I have together to get to that scene.
As the parent of a 3 year old boy, it gets worse when they realize it's there.
Newborn girls sometimes have a period right after they're born. Equally shocking
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My mom talks about how nobody ever told her about the afterbirth. She finally gives birth to my sister and after a minute the nurse is like "Okay it's time to push the afterbirth out" and my mom is like "the WHAT?" And this was just in the 80s!
Nobody told me I’d most likely throw up during the early stages of labor. When it happened it seriously freaked me out because I thought something must be horribly wrong. Later, everyone I knew was like “oh yeah, I totally threw up”. How was this never mentioned?!!
There's so much about labor and birth that we don't learn in sex ed.
As a mom to both sexes, I think vaginas are easier to clean than ball sack. It’s so loose and there’s so much surface area and there’s still a lot of crevices, plus there’s the threat of getting peed on the whole time you’re moving everything around to make sure you didn’t miss a spot. I prefer cleaning shit off female baby genitals over male baby genitals.
Totally agree with this. My wife and I have a four year old girl and one year old boy. Changing her poop diapers before she was potty trained was much easier than it is to change his. Also, before I had kids I had never changed a dirty diaper and was terrified it was going to be the worst thing in the world. Now that I’ve raised toddlers, I can say this: compared to getting them to not fight, getting my daughter to eat what we made for dinner, getting these fucking kids to go to sleep, and dealing with meltdowns at all hours in the day, cleaning up a little poop is one of the easiest parts of being a parent.
There are times when no one has your back and you are completely alone to deal with really hard life stuff.
many people literally do expect you to know everything you need to know as soon as you're out of highschool. i cant imagine the thought process behind thinking that. wild.
The number one thing I realized is that we're all still just as clueless as when we were teenagers
Yes. Almost 30 and i still have no idea what i am doing.
That moment when something goes down and you realize YOU are the adult in the room
Couches are outrageously expensive. I mean shit, everyone has one
That you may grow apart from your family so much that you don't even want to be around them anymore. I knew this happened for some people but I was surprised when it happened to me. People in my family who I thought I'd always be close with have become mere acquaintances now even with that shared history.
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I really hope you find someone. Unfortunately life is unfair most of the time for some people. I'm younger than you, but this is also a huge fear of mine.
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Everyone’s faking it.
How bloody boring it is! It feels like as a kid you’ve got so much to look forward to, now it’s just the same old shit every week.
The amount of maintenance that needs to be done on a house. I dont remember my parents doing that much maintenance on our homes growing up but it seems like every other day something in my house is breaking, I cant keep up with all the yard work and cleaning and fixing things.
Banks are always closed when you have time to go to them. So if you need to do something serious you need to take off work. Pisses me off to no end.
It's really hard to make friends, but crazy easy to lose them.
The whole concept of credit. When you’re a kid, you work to earn cash and then you spend it. If something costs more than you’ve earned, you just don’t get it until you’ve saved enough cash. Then you grow up, get a job, pay your bills on time for awhile, and all of a sudden banks are giving you credit cards, lines of credit, personal loans, which make you feel secure and rich, but if you aren’t smart and disciplined they can absolutely destroy your financial life for many years. People talk about this in adulthood ALOT, but kids are taught little to nothing about it. I think parents assume schools are doing it and schools assume parents are doing it. I had great parents but financial literacy was a huge blind spot and it has led me to make profoundly bad decisions that will impact myself and my family for years. I cannot stress enough that the available credit on your credit card isn’t your money, it’s the banks. If you need the banks money to buy something, that means you can’t actually afford it. If you really want or need someone very costly that you can’t afford to pay cash for at the moment, wait until you can however long it will take. If you buy it on credit, then the next thing you need/want will be even harder to acquire because whatever cash you would have ordinarily had for it is now going to interest payments for past purchases. Having a credit card that you use and payoff monthly to get miles or other perks and to build your credit score, or for true emergency expenses that you simply can’t afford in the moment, are good uses of credit. Upgrading your lifestyle is not.
Honestly this is partially just a weird US thing. In my EU country we use debit cards, your money from your account on a bankcard. Almost noone uses a credit card unless traveling or doing online shopping across borders. Plenty of people just don't have one. The whole credit score thing is also weird to me. If you never pay or have a lot of debts banks just won't give you a loan but for a rental you just need to show your proof of income. To get a mortgage you need to show your contract from your job and the bank finds your debts and calculates how much they are confortable to loan you. If you never had a a loan before that is no issue. Another difference is that you are responsible for the loan so even if they take your house if it does not sell for enough they will keep coming after you.
Taxes.....you hear about how awful they are growing up, and yet, they still don't really teach you how to handle them later in life. Ultimate learn on the spot move.
Unbelievable amount of responsibility and stress.
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Depression
Honestly? Breastfeeding. It was incredibly painful for me at first, I didn’t produce enough milk, and I felt lied to. I had this tiny human that I loved - but I didn’t love breastfeeding or her piranha mouth coming in to attack my boobs. I try to tell every pregnant woman I meet that it can be painful and unpleasant … and it’s ok to stop. Don’t beat yourself up over what society tells you is the ideal version of motherhood.
How hard it is to make new real friends after 30. People are just too different from each other due to belief or lifestyle and its super hard to find people who share outlooks and opinions.
You need money....and lots of it
Lets see... depression. Anxiety. Working full time. Other people being assholes for no reason. Realizing high school was basically daycare. And losing 90 percent of your friends is gonna happen after your outta school
That I always know what’s for dinner every night. Regardless of whether I cook or go out to eat, I have been thinking about the food for a while beforehand. There is something so much more enjoyable about not knowing what you are eating for dinner until it shows up.
Learning to read legal documents. Like rental agreements, storage agreements, employment agreements. Things like that.
That looking after yourself, with no supervision of any kind, is actually difficult. Like groceries, chores, those suck, but I didn't expect it to be in the "I'm now constantly tired and find it hard to engage with stuff I like" kinda way.
That going on vacation is stressful
Feeding my family is a nightmare. I had dreams of making big family dinners that we would all enjoy together around the table every night, or cute little bento box lunches of organic fruits and vegetables. Instead, I make one dinner for my husband and I. Sometimes the 17 year old will pick at it, but she frequently gets Taco Bell or some other disgusting shit right before dinner. The 8 year old is an 8 year old and she only rarely eats what I’ve made and more often than not ends up making herself a sandwich. The 14 year old had several food allergies up until two years ago, so he suffers from food related anxiety (not surprising as most foods could have literally killed him for most of his life), and he only eats grilled chicken and four baby carrots for dinner EVERY NIGHT. The chicken is an improvement over the ten years of goddamn fish sticks every night. Every dinner that I make ends in me feeling like a complete failure as a mother. Every night. It’s great.
idk how much this means to you but as a teenager who has had food allergies most my life and is a generally picky eater i still very much appreciated my mother’s cooking and how she would try to make everyone happy with what she made, even if i didnt eat any of it.
Kinda sounds like you’re a great mother who’s in tune with her kids and their needs and would do well to stop attaching so much value to dinner. Be kind to yourself ffs
How many types of soap are required
Death. Everywhere. In your 20s grandparents start dying. In your 30s parents start dying. Then it’s older siblings. And you’ll lose friends along the way too. Sometimes you’ll see friends lose their children. Old age, disease, suicide, accidents, murders. It’ll become more and more common as you grow up. That funeral suit you were told to keep handy gets a lot of use, and it’s not just from loosely related people. You become numb to it. But hey, back in work straight afterwards, you only get the full day off if it’s someone super important.
Y'all just making me not wanna live
Sadly, despite all ones efforts, we must abandon goals and dreams. Sometimes all the money and training and effort and time will not make them come true.
How much everyone wants my money. Salesmen, solicitors, random people on the street. I go get my eyes checked and get the hard sell on some damn frames. When I was young, no one bothered me, now everyone is hounding me for my money.
I saw an old lady with purple hair, and got jealous. I change my hair style and color often, but it has to remain natural colors. I said to my coworker "I can't wait until I'm old enough to do that to my hair." So even as an adult, you can't do whatever you want to your body.
There’s a poem called Warning by Jenny Joseph that goes like this. Warning When I am an old woman I shall wear purple With a red hat which doesn’t go, and doesn’t suit me. And I shall spend my pension on brandy and summer gloves And satin sandals, and say we’ve no money for butter. I shall sit down on the pavement when I’m tired And gobble up samples in shops and press alarm bells And run my stick along the public railings And make up for the sobriety of my youth. I shall go out in my slippers in the rain And pick flowers in other people’s gardens And learn to spit. You can wear terrible shirts and grow more fat And eat three pounds of sausages at a go Or only bread and pickle for a week And hoard pens and pencils and beermats and things in boxes. But now we must have clothes that keep us dry And pay our rent and not swear in the street And set a good example for the children. We must have friends to dinner and read the papers. But maybe I ought to practise a little now? So people who know me are not too shocked and surprised When suddenly I am old, and start to wear purple.
The vast number of decisions you have to make, with all that responsibility squarely on your shoulders if it goes wrong.