Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Life Lessons: Feeding your inner-child

Let me tell you a secret.

Most of the time, I don't like being a grown up.

I dislike many things about being an adult, like the fact that you make all this money, just to give away half of it to rent, paying bills, your child's needs and taxes. I felt so much richer as a kid being given P500 a week by my parents because it was all mine and everything I did with it was for me and I had no responsibilities towards anyone, no electricity bills to pay and didn't have to budget for gas and laundry and all of that boring stuff.

Sometimes, I hate having to be responsible all the time. Ok, I'm not, but my "irresponsible-ness" is no longer on the levels of my teenage self. "Obviously", you might say, but hey, I know people older than me who still live like they are 16 years old. I miss being able to do anything and not think about what consequences I might have to face after. Or heck, knowing there are consequences, but not giving a fuck and doing it anyway.

I am thankful for all my jobs but sometimes, I hate working. I want to go back to school and travel and travel and travel until my body can physically no longer bring itself to get on another train, plane, bus, boat or car. I want money to fall from the sky so I can do all of this.

There are days when I want to stay in bed and not do anything for the next week or so except eat Cheetos and watch bad television shows. As an adult, I know I can no longer do this but I do spend entire mornings dreaming about being able to.

I'm sure a lot of you can relate to this and I'm not the only one who sneers at grown up life from time to time. (At least I hope I'm not the only one!) so what I do is, I try to, in my own way, counter all these things I dislike about being an adult and sneakily feed my inner child.

I hate paying bills and losing half my money to responsible paying. So, what I do is I will get tattoos. Ink can be expensive and some can't believe the amount one pays to get tatted up, so for me, this is the ultimate defiance to adulthood and something that my parents said I would regret all the time (16 years later I still haven't) It's an expensive purchase that is all for ME and makes me happy.

When my jobs require me to travel, I always make it a point to stay longer and be able to have fun. I am irresponsible when I am out of the country because I am alone and don't need to go home to anyone or anything. So if I want to drink until 5 am, I will do it...when I'm not in Manila. I stuff myself with more food than my body needs...because I can. My boundaries are pretty set at this point in my life as to what I will do and not allow myself to do (no drugs, casual sex and all of that stuff...) but within those boundaries, I am a free woman and I will take advantage of this freedom.

Once a week, on a WEEKDAY, I will allow myself to do nothing responsible. Even if I have articles due, or meetings I should set, I will spend time watching whatever reality show or cooking show is on for most of the morning, blog, cook, drink rum coke at 3 pm and dance around the house in my pajamas in the middle of the day. Sounds stupid, yes, but I need this to keep my sanity. I make up for the work I didn't do anyway. As a freelancer, I actually don't have a schedule, but that also means I could be furiously typing up an article or finishing a project at 2 am on a Saturday. I think it's fair.

I gave up fast food this year....but on drunken nights....I eat a double cheeseburger.

I hate being an adult sometimes, but I guess for the most part, it's not so bad. At least at this age, I have the money to pay to act like a kid when I need to and still get all the benefits of being a grown up like independence and real relationships and friendships. I can safely say I love myself for who I am and not  what I think I should be, and I really could not care less about what other people think. That's more than I can say for my child self.

Maybe being an adult is not so bad after all. Now let me go eat breakfast. My ice cream is melting. ;p



1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Hey. You're not alone in this :)