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Growing Up – Onwards and Upwards, Older and Wiser?

Growing up sucks.

Those were the days, when the biggest decisions you had to make all week were whether to watch Live and Kicking or Diggit on Saturday morning and whether it should be accompanied by Coco pops or Frosties.

As you get older though, your life is bombarded with life changers like “Do I want to go to University?” or “What career path do I want to follow?”

Leave it out!

I’ve never been very good at making decisions personally. After dropping out of University once, following the realisation that my course was not for me; I am now two thirds of my way through Mission “Get a Degree” number two. So far so good, but I’m still struggling to get my head around quite what it is that I want to do with my life when I finish. I think it’s fair to say that I don’t really feel like I have life sussed just yet and I’ve no doubt that I’m not alone on this.

Sure, I’m enjoying the freedom and opportunities that getting older brings, though I can’t help but think that things were so much easier when I was at school. Despite not thinking it at the time; (because who REALLY enjoys being rudely awoken by an alarm clock to listen to boring teachers drone on about semantics and algebra?) I now realise how easy I had it back then. I got to see my friends every day, took home comforts for granted and the everyday nuisances such as bills and rent were yet to enter my life.

Things have changed a lot since then. At 22, it seems that lots of my old peers have ventured from this town which was once their home; leaving it feel somewhat empty on my return in the Uni breaks. Many have graduated from University and working elsewhere; whereas an abundance of them have opted to travel the world, making me extremely envious as photos of their trips to the far reaches of the world frequent my Facebook news-feed each day.

I’m currently at home for the summer holidays, in the same town that I have lived in all of my life, give or take a few years I spent in India as a child; yet it now feels somewhat alien. Where I used to be able to walk into a pub on a Friday night and bump into a dozen or so friends and old school mates, I now find myself surrounded by unfamiliar faces, of those who I swear should still be in nappies rather than downing pints.

I guess this is what being in your twenties is all about though, things will change and you need to form your own life for yourself. There is more in the world than the familiarity of the town you grew up in and I am ready to embrace where life takes me.

Growing up sucks is OK.

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