Part of the problem with keeping a diary is that the
thoughts that run untamed in your brain take up permanent residence on paper;
somehow it makes them more final. A
thought can come and go through your consciousness without leaving much of a
footprint. Even if it does, the
tide-of-time washes over it and it can be gone again, without anyone ever
knowing it was there. A pen and paper,
or a keyboard has some sense of permanence.
It reinforces the links together in to a chain that becomes much more
difficult to break; you can push thoughts to one side, but when they’re written
down, you lose most – if not all – of the pushing power.
I don’t mean to say that thoughts we may harbour in our
hearts or in a diary cannot later change or be found to be untrue; time changes
many things and opinions are incredibly flexible.
Over the last few years, living my life as an adult
post-university-pre-mid-life-crisis, I've wondered on many occasions what it
actually means to be a grown up. How
should a grown up act? How do they
behave? Is maturity the same thing as
being grown up? People said I was a
mature teenager; does that mean I've done all my growing up? Is growing up the same thing as getting
old? That last question in particular is
plaguing me of late. Having made the
mistake of immortalising it on the page, it now won’t let me alone.
When I was 19 I had a kitchen accident that left me with a
rather unsightly scar on my right hand.
I broke a glass that sliced across my fifth digit gifting me with a
lovely talking point (should conversation die at a party, I can always whip out
the conversational ice-breaker of “Do you have any interesting scars?” and
delight a crowd with how I tore my hand up trying to do house work. This opportunity has yet to be afforded to
me, but I live for that day!). Given the
way I chose to hold my phone – sort of balancing against that finger, fingers
curved around – or in the cold weather, I have noticed this winter how much it
aches. I've noticed how old people talk
about the cold setting in to their joints, giving them troubles. It set in my finger this winter.
 |
| Scar on my right finger. Even my hands are looking old today... Where is my moisturiser? |
It’s not just an aching finger, along with a question of
what it means to get old that makes me feel that way.
Since the passing of my Grandmother in November last year,
I've been forced to think about my own life.
Where am I going? What am I
doing? No, I'm not suffering from a case
of sleepwalking or intense amnesia. I've
had a rolling set of realisations that have led me to a point where I have to
accept the way things truly are. This
life I'm living is not what I want.
I was gifted a full time job when I left university. I walked into it through coincidence. I needed a full time job and where I was
already working part time needed a person.
Ding-ding. After that, I reacted
constantly to situations at work, never really thinking about what I truly
wanted to do with my life. I toyed with
the thought of teacher training (a thought which continues to dart around in my
brain from time to time) but never really planning what I really wanted to
do. The universe gave me a kick in the
ass when I lost my job and one of the most horrid periods of my life was being
without one. Character building is the
more poetic way of describing a situation that nearly broke my spirit but
somehow I muddled through.
A friend happened to be a team leader for a place that was hiring, the place I
ended up working. He let me know of a
vacancy in his department and I interviewed.
Despite the impression some people may have given, I wasn't handed the
job through a convenient connection and I've stood my ground there since. Despite a lot of moaning I do about my work,
I do like my job. I get to talk to vast
variety of people on a daily basis who I wouldn't get to speak to any other way
and, naively perhaps, I like to think I help people. That’s the thought I like to carry through
after a bad day.
I've had various living situations. I've flat shared with friends, house shared
with family and friends, each time through a necessity of theirs or mine and
I've reacted to the situations as they unfolded in front of me. Like with my job history, my habitat has been
a knock-on effect due to factors beyond my control.
Relationships and my utterly abysmal choice in men is
another example. In my adult life, I've
rolled from one bad relationship to another with inappropriate people (they
weren't axe murders or criminals, just not the right guys for me) for the sake
of being with someone because that’s what grown-ups do, isn't it?
All of these situations have something in common. First of all, they’re all aspects of being a
grown-up; looking for a good living situation, finding the right job and looking
for the perfect partner are all things grown-up people want. Whilst all of them are grown-up pursuits, my
realisation this week is that my attitude towards them has not been.
The PS2 game Kingdom Heats II is far superior to its predecessor in my
opinion and the chief reason for this would be the huge improvements made to
the fighting aspects of the game play.
The most useful introduction was the ‘Reaction Command’; during specific
fight scenarios, certain activities were available to you in order to better
blat the enemy. The problem is that my
life has been a constant series of ‘reaction commands’ under duress. Not a physical fight against minions of
darkness, no, but still, adverse circumstances presented themselves to me and I
was forced to react to them. I may have
mentioned in my blog before that I have a tendency to ignore my instincts and
make bad choices.
I may have also mentioned before that I love making
lists. Part of how I get through
stressful periods at work is through making lists of what I need to do and
complete in order to ensure I don’t forget anything. I love a good list. It allows me to plan ahead and
prioritise. It dawned on me last year
that the fulfilment I get from ticking items off my list at work could easily
apply at home if I needed to get things done; I have a weekly list of things to
do now to make sure I don’t waste my time and it’s working for me (Item 2 for
this week is to write an entry for my blog; just saying…).
There was a fluttering of the “light bulb moment” in the autumn,
that never fully materialised and it was in relation to looking for a
relationship. I date the wrong men. Fact.
Why do I keep dating the wrong men?
Not a clue. This led me to the
inevitable thought that I ought to stop dating (period) until I had concluded what
I want from myself and, in turn, from a partner, before going to find one,
idealising him, later to realise what a waste of time that had all been.
The real eureka moment I have been having has only really
started in the last few weeks; I haven’t been planning for what I want. I haven’t given it any time or
consideration. I have brief moments of
lovely ideas of how life might be in the next few years. That’s day dreaming, not planning. Similarly to work, to ensure that amongst the
many other things that might be going on, I get the work done I need to do, I
set myself some goals for what I want to achieve; some of them are time bound,
some of them are not; some of them are creatively orientated, some of them are
financial. I realised that if I was
going to get the life I wanted, I wasn't ever going to be able to do that if I
kept reacting to life instead of making the things I truly want a reality.
I'm in a house-share and I want to live alone. I'm planning and organising to ensure that
becomes a reality. I love to write, but
I wasn't giving myself the time I needed to do it, so I made changes to ensure
I didn't have that excuse. I love to
read but I wasn't and the books on my shelf gathered dust; I'm now trying hard
to get through Game of Thrones even if the print is tiny and the pages are
huge. I want to go on holiday somewhere
abroad because I've never been but I don’t have a passport; the application
pack is now in the post so that I can get one.
I want to learn to drive for the freedom and job opportunities it will
afford me. That one has to go on the
back burner because the desire to live alone is more fulfilling to me. It is on the list though!
For some reason it’s incredibly hard to list what we really
want, particularly in a forum where other people can read it – anyone that
reads this might think I'm really selfish or silly for wanting these
things. So what? It’s my life and no one else has to want
these things… but I do.
The final moment of realisation I had was to know that planning is what being a grown up is; feeling
confident and comfortable in myself (perhaps with a little support) to be able
to admit what I really want and the balls to try. I can’t live with people for the rest of my
life because I made a hash of living alone the first time. If it is what I want, I’ll find a way to make
it work. If I want to write and draw,
I’ll make time to do it. If I want to
read about the Mother of Dragons instead of just watching it, I’ll get my book
out on the train and before bed. For me,
being a grown up and an adult is the choice to stop giving yourself excuses to
not do the things we really want and make the changes we want to see.
Am I scared? Course I
am. I love a good rut – they’re comfy to
sit in when you shape out your butt groove.
They’re also consistent and lined with excuses. Sitting and staying in my rut won’t get me
what I want though. And I don’t want to
spend the rest of my adult life complaining that I don’t have the things I
really want.
What does being a grown up feel like? Terrifying. I love it.
