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This is Why I'll Never be an Adult
- interesse 16y agoas long as daddies check is arriving every month...
- barredo 16y agoI also let a few emails unanswered for days sometimes. I don't know what the perfect solution to avoid that happening again. But i'm sure it starts with answering them.
- Alex3917 16y agoSometimes I get the feeling that the combination of school, drugs, the Internet, the standard american diet, and lack of exercise has left the vast majority of the population with some form of mild brain damage. Although the fact that most Americans are basically retarded, we live in a police state, and society is collapsing doesn't help much with the motivation either.
- derefr 16y agoMost prominently, almost everyone now has social anxiety disorder. It really does exist (i.e. it's symptomatically a lot worse than just "shyness" or "introversion") and it seems like more people are developing it with each generation. Perhaps evolution is finally adapting us to city life by making us more and more neurotic?
- Tycho 16y agoI remember when I used to wonder what my life would be like if the internet hadn't been invented yet. But I'm so past that now - these days I wonder how everyone's lives would be like without such heavy internet usage.
- aaronblohowiak 16y agoThat is hilarious for this of us who remember life before Internet. :)
- zyb09 16y agoSometimes it really can be hard to cope with all the norms, rules, responsibilities and bureaucracy involved in modern city life and we are definitely not cut out for this. But on the other hand humans are very adaptive beings and just a quick look in the history books will tell you that we're pretty much living in the best, richest, democratic & peaceful times ever happened on this planet (at least if you live anywhere in the US or EU). You know stuff could be so much worse, so just always be optimistic and appreciate you weren't born during the dark ages. Sometimes I even think in 200 years or so people will look back at the early 21st century and call it the 'golden age' of prosperity.
- MichaelSalib 16y agoI wonder to what extent this is new and to what extent this is just being exposed now by changing social norms. I get the sense that rampant alcohol abuse was much more prevalent a few decades ago than it is now. If everyone was constantly self-medicating with alcohol, that might mask all manner of anxieties, social and otherwise.
- daeken 16y agoWhat leads you to believe that this is a new thing, and not the standard state of affairs for humans?
- Alex3917 16y agoSchool only dates back until 1914 or so. Modern psychoactive drugs weren't around until the 50s. The Internet and lack of exercise are both new. Can't comment much on our diets, but I know crops from modern farms have a lot less nutrients than food grown the traditional way. As for most Americans being basically retarded, just look at the decline in reading ability over time. As for America being a police state, the numbers (and laws) speak for themselves. As for society collapsing, the decline in critical thinking ability, reading ability, the national debt, environmental degradation, lack of long term planning, infrastructure collapse, etc. all point in the same direction. In any event, the generation coming of age today is the first generation in American history whose parents believe their children will have worse lives than they did.
- jmillikin 16y agoSchool only dates back until 1914 or so. In the US, tax-supported public schools have existed since before the Revolution, and Europe and China had high-quality school systems hundreds of years before that. Education wasn't available to farm workers or other laborers, of course, but there were enough middle-class people to support reasonably competent education. Modern psychoactive drugs weren't around until the 50s. People have been getting high for thousands of years, on anything they can find. It's probably the second oldest recreational activity, next to sex. If anything, modern strides towards quality control and safety have made getting high safer than it ever has been. The Internet and lack of exercise are both new. The Internet is new, but scholarship isn't. Monks spent years copying manuscripts by hand, which is difficult but involves very little physical effort. Can't comment much on our diets, but I know crops from modern farms have a lot less nutrients than food grown the traditional way. [citation needed]. Seriously, this is the sort of absurd claim you find on health-nut sites. Do you also believe cell phones cause cancer, or that vaccines cause autism?
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- staunch 16y agoDiscipline: I'm not sure if I don't want it because I don't have it, or if I really just don't want it.
- fizx 16y agoI too suffer from this, and am looking for a sustainable way out. This must be how obese people feel about their weight. If anyone else has solutions please post away. Strangely, the solution that's made the biggest difference in outside-work lifestyle for me is writing tests before code at work. More tests means less debugging, which means less stress. Most of my relapses happen after a stressful day of debugging under deadline.
- aaronblohowiak 16y agoRealize you are in control. Track your behavior. Slowly make the numbers trend in a better direction. The hard part is being honest with yourself.
- dunstad 16y agoI won't pretend to know much about responsibility, but creativity like that needs to be nourished.
- SandB0x 16y agoBrutal self-honesty is enlightening.
- jamiequint 16y agoTaking a day to set up online bill pay, and paying other people to clean your house and do your laundry is one of the best decisions you can make. It seems expensive, but when you really look at the benefits to your life I really think you end up better off.
- gcheong 16y agoI think this is adulthood.
- koanarc 16y agoI hope so, or else I don't really know any adults.
- kiba 16y agoLet the robots do it. Or at least, I planned for robots to do it. Right now, I don't have a proper screwdriver for dismantling the RC car so I can start building my first robot. I have everything else like an iron solder, leads, three cooper wires spool, a light sensors, and an arduino, LED. I am missing a vaccum cleaner(to dismantle), sonar and other useful sensors, etc. I am also working on my web application development skill like mad so I can develop an RPG for real life. One thing I already accomplished: Feeling like a ninja using emacs because I make an effort to learn one new thing everyday about emacs.
- kiba 16y agoI wonder why would anyone vote down my post.
- SandB0x 16y agoBaby steps. To dig yourself out of a rut, you need to set yourself small achievable goals. Once you achieve those, your confidence grows and you can move on to the next goal. If you keep trying to change everything in your life at once, you will probably fail and fall into the cycle shown in the article/comic. Baby steps. Also, go to the gym. My mind is so much clearer and I am so much calmer when I exercise.
- koanarc 16y agoProblems common to most of us, I think, though I can't say I've ever framed them as a matter of adulthood so much as a matter of motivation. Having something to look forward to, something that feels like a net gain to one's subconscious cost/benefit analysis, is probably the most important factor when it comes to deciding whether or not to get out of bed in the morning.
- Daniel_Newby 16y agoThe copyright notice at the bottom of the comments is great too!
- mkramlich 16y agoI try to strip things down to the essentials: 1. the things I must do (like eat, or die) 2. the things I should do (like exercise, or get unhealthy and weak and scrawny) 3. the things I want to do (to be me, natural, happy) If I can't put a task in one of those 3 buckets, I usually don't do it at all. Or at least, it's a lower priority. 4. everything else. blah. meh.
- grumpycanuck 16y agoI'm sure I'm going to get flamed and/or down-modded for taking the contrarian postion on this. Shame on me for choosing to accept the challenge of being an adult in our modern society. If you think that going to the bank, doing your laundry, and answering emails in a timely manner is some sort of accomplishment or difficult, then you need to take a look in the mirror and realize that you are looking at the problem. It's called "being responsible for yourself". Tough concept for many people apparently. I'm 39, been married for 12 years, and have two kids. I choose to be responsible because my kids can't do their own laundry or buy their own groceries. These are 5 and 10 year-old kids, not adults. Am I perfectly organized? Not even close. But I don't sit here and justify my failures like the girl who writes that blog. Yoda was right: do or do not, kids. There is no try. Before you get all mad, I understand there are people who have mental or physical illnesses that makes doing these everyday, routine chores difficult. These people have my sympathies and understanding. The rest of us have no excuse. Yes, I include myself in "the rest of us." Yes, much of every day life is not fun. I don't particular enjoy being a responsible adult, but if the alternative is the kind of ranting, over-the-top situations in that blog post (and on that blog in general), I'll take being a responsible adult. Grocery shopping is hard? Responding to emails is hard?!? Going to the bank is hard?!?!? This person who lives on the internet cannot order groceries online, answer emails or pay their bills online? Oh, that's right, they can never be an adult. Because it's too hard or something. Okay, back to Facebook and rating pictures of cute kittens. I'm sure there is a "responsible adult" out there who "cleans up" after this person. Resenting it while doing it too, I'm sure. Don't blame it on TV or the internet or the poor diet North Americans eat or the "bureaucracy involved in modern city life". Millions of other people are in the same circumstances or worse and somehow manage to rise above it all, and have fridges with food, clean clothes, and money in their bank account. And they do it all by themselves too.
- _delirium 16y agoMaybe I know the wrong people, but the people I know who actually manage it best seem to be in stable relationships with a more old-school division of responsibility (though sometimes the traditional gender roles are 100% flipped). Basically, one person is in charge of finding a way to bring in money, and the other person is in charge of groceries/bills/bank/etc.--- and, importantly, each can for the most part assume that the other side of the equation isn't their responsibility, so the money-earner can assume that daily life magically stays on track, while the daily-life-maintainer can assume that money magically appears.
- starkfist 16y agoThe truly financially successful people I know have figured out a way to outsource all of this type of mundane day to day thing, except for maybe something they enjoy as a hobby, like cooking. (I also know a weird guy who just likes ironing shirts.) It goes beyond this. REALLY rich people have executive assistants to do their mundane work related stuff too. But anyway, everyone I know who is rich has someone to clean their house, do their laundry, book them plane tickets, do their taxes, manage their money, field their phone calls, schedule meetings and other appointments, etc. It's not lack of maturity to want to avoid all this crap... it's actually a big time sink and not anything that will get you anywhere in life. It's important to get done but as soon as you can you should pay someone else to do it. However, putting it all off to surf the internet is also the wrong approach. I look forward to the day when I'm rich enough to pay someone else to read hacker news and post comments for me.
- pyre 16y agoThe 'maturity' part comes with doing things that need to get done, but aren't necessarily fun. Delegating those things to other people when you can afford it (or at least when your time is better spent elsewhere) is also part of maturity. The 'lack of maturity' part comes from just ignoring those things because they aren't fun.
- rue 16y ago> Delegating those things to other people when you can afford it (or at least when your time is better spent elsewhere) is also part of maturity. How is that? There are plenty of completely "immature" people who can afford it. And plenty of "mature" people who cannot.
- pyre 16y agoMaybe I should have specified, but maturity is a sliding scale. It's not pass-fail. Someone can be immature enough not to take care of the 'unfun' things if they have to do them manually, but be 'mature' enough to delegate them when they can afford it. Someone can be so immature that they don't even bother to delegate it even if they can afford to... It's also maturity to be able to recognize that your time might be better spent elsewhere rather than demanding that you be the one to do it yourself.
- daten 16y agoIs this author serious? I don't consider answering emails, doing laundry, keeping the house clean, paying the bills on time or doing other tasks like going to the bank to be much harder than breathing or tying my shoes in the morning. These are simple necessary tasks. They are done routinely and can be done without much thought or effort. I'm seriously concerned for someone who has this much trouble with these basic parts of life. Is this a mental disorder? or just laziness to a level I haven't seen? I agree with the author's choice of title though. If I had to imagine someone who has trouble with such simple tasks, a child is what I imagine.
- ericd 16y agoIn my case, I... a) never really think about these things until it comes to my attention that they need to be done. This tends to be well after other people (my girlfriend, for example) notice that they need to be done. It just doesn't really bother me. b) don't really care about most of that stuff anyway - productivity with regards to things that have an effect outside my little habitat matter to me a lot more than these trivialities. As long as I know where things are, cleaning (except where unsanitary) mostly just wastes time for very little real benefit.
- Poleris 16y agoNote the title of her blog.
- daten 16y agoI did note the title in my post. And I agree the title is a key part of the author's story. I still appreciate your reply and the others that tried to help me better understand where the author is coming from. I'm still left wondering if she would be happier if she spent less time thinking about chores and errands and just did them. I feel like these things aren't a big deal to me because I don't sit around evaluating how "fun" they are or if I can procrastinate. I just do them, usually while thinking about unrelated things that I do actually care about while I'm doing them. And thanks to whoever was nice enough to downvote my post. I'm sorry I didn't jump on the "I'm lazy too" bandwagon for easy karma. =(
- makmanalp 16y agoIn case anyone doesn't know of her alots yet: http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better-than-you-at-everything.html http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2010/04/alot-is-better...
- moultano 16y agoMy biggest problem is mail. I HATE getting mail. I wish there was some way to make it illegal to send it to me. Processing the endless quantities of crap every day probably detracts more from my happiness than anything else in my life. I most loath having to figure out if pieces of mail from my bank are important in any way or just another preapproved credit card that I will never need in my life. The biggest effect is second order. If I don't process it immediately, it piles up on the desk where I normally study. Once it has piled up, it becomes a barrier to studying, and I stop doing serious learning too.
- jrockway 16y agoOh, that's easy. If the mail doesn't have the word "revenue" (as in "internal revenue service" or "department of revenue") on the envelope, you don't need to open it.
- joe_the_user 16y agoI can count the mail I have to answer in three months on two hands. And that is far, far too much. I hate it. Stamps!? Envelopes? Pen and paper?!?! Sheesh... Yes, yes, abolish snail mail now... (and I'm not gen Y by any means, snail mail was frickin annoying back it was the only mail)
- dmoney 16y agoMy advice is to get a second desk and put all the mail there. Other than the space it takes up, keeping your mail in a pile is a pretty efficient system. The important stuff like this month's bills are usually near the top, while stuff that's not that important has probably been buried by a few layers.
- meese_ 16y ago"Life is like highschool with money." — Frank Zappa
- shrikant 16y ago"Go to the bank"? Who does that any more? I'm in India, and it is running on close to a year since I had to physically visit a bank. And even then it was something something so mundane that it could've been done over the 'phone, but I just happened to be right in front of a branch.
- sofal 16y agoTry not to zero in on the specific 'bank' example she used. She probably only used it because 'bank' is one of the first things that came to her mind when thinking of 'responsible adult stuff'. The examples she gave were exaggeratedly simplistic for comedic effect: email, go to the bank, and clean stuff. It's funny. It's like a metaphor for 'stuff that adults do', alright?
- dkarl 16y agoI get no satisfaction from doing something I've done before. Work sucks: if it's something I know how to do, I hate doing it, and I drag my feet, and it sucks. So I volunteer for things and get in over my head, and people get impatient with me while I get over the learning curve, and that sucks too. Nobody wants to pay me just to learn to do stuff I don't know how to do yet, but doing something I already know how to do feels like death. In other words, I'm either incompetent or I'm bored out of my skull, and often the results are the same. I've performed significantly worse at my job the last couple of years than I did five years ago, because I just don't care. I feel the same whether I do a good job or a bad job. I don't get any satisfaction out of doing a good job, because, well, what have I proved? That I have a high threshold for boredom? That's not something to be proud of. The same principle applies to all the practical stuff in life. "This morning you have to go to the bank, wash the dishes, do your laundry, go to Home Depot, and file an insurance claim. If you don't, you're an irresponsible slob." "And if I do?" "Then you're not an irresponsible slob. Not because of those things, anyway. You've got a whole list of things this afternoon that you could possibly screw up but could not possibly accomplish in a way worth taking pride in."
- kd0amg 16y agoNobody wants to pay me just to learn to do stuff I don't know how to do yet So far, this is about what grad school has felt like.
- aohtsab 16y agoThis just reminded me to look into online grocery/misc shopping -- my plan is to analyse my shopping/use patterns and then try to automate that. I can't agree with this post enough -- I really hate grocery shopping. I don't mind running necessary errands, except for when I have other things (coding, projects, etc) on my mind. The 'real world' of unswept floors and dirty dishes becomes a distraction that weighs on my mind when I need to focus. I wish there was some way I could delegate these tasks, but even if I had the money for that, a lot of this stuff just seems too personal to let someone else handle.
- pizzaman 16y agothe best time saver if you don't have a dishwasher: use throw away cutlery & plates. saved me a lot of time. people that don't hate doing chores, simply look at them like a game. It does make them feel good, to have everything under control, a clean house, all bills paid...and i think you can train yourself that you will also feel that way and you will want to have everything neatly done. It's like going to the gym, if you go for a while, you will miss it when you stop going. But i don't want to train myself to give annoying, boring things a meaning. i guess it all changes when you have kids, then you have to do that stuff.
- gensym 16y agoUgh. Your time must be pretty darn important if we should get petroleum out of the earth, turn it into dishware, haul it to your home, haul it from your home and into the landfill just to save you the two minutes it would take to actually wash the stuff. Part of being a grownup is learning to enjoy living responsibly.
- tomjen3 16y agoI love how everybody tells you as a kid that you must do so and so, but that when you grow up you can decided. Then you grow up, and they start telling you "part of being an adult/grown-up is X" or "you have to do Y" or else. No, fuck that shit. I didn't waste 18 years as a minor just to have random people tell me what to do and I can see that the blog author hasn't either. Now I will go and fill this apartment with playpen balls.
- khafra 16y agoPart of the cost of disposable dishware may be externalized. But except for that, the environmental impact of throwing away dishes after one use differs from the environmental impact of buying and disposing of detergent and using energy to heat water and rinse dishes only by the difference in cost between the two methods.