So, I woke up Tuesday morning trying hard to recover from a hangover and as i scrolled through my text from the previous night, I caught a glimpse of my bestie’s text. “I can’t believe my mum told me I need to start getting serious with my life, I need to look for a job and settle down”. As I read the text, my overnight counselling with my mum become clear. Mind you, before I turned 23, I begun to read tips on how to adult. I wanted to be the best adult version of myself. I started taking make up tutorial classes, dressing and baking classes and even went to the extent of learning how to walk in high heels. I had heard ‘myths’ of how adulting can be so hectic and I wanted a new drama series for my life but certainly not one on Adulting.

Urban Dictionary defines ‘adulting’ as “to do grown-up things and hold responsibilities such as a 9-5 job, a mortgage/rent, a car payment, or anything else that makes one think of grown-ups” whiles the Oxford dictionary defines it as “the practice of behaving in a way characteristic of a responsible adult, especially the accomplishment of mundane but necessary tasks”. Even with those definitions, I still think the praises showered on ‘ADULTING’ is so high. In adulting, you can’t scream ‘holy crap’ when watching a cartoon, you would be told to grow up.

It is terrible to call growth, adulting. It is okay if you have moved from working in your nightwear till noon, to wearing a decent dress, but that does not make you an adult. It is good to have a new piggy bank where you now keep your coins, rather than spend them, it still does not make you an adult. I am happy you have stopped eating take-outs from the street, or that you have graduated from eating in a polythene bag to eating in a takeaway pack, but no need to say you are ‘adulting’ because those are not the selection criteria for adulting.

Imagine my mum waking me up at dawn for what she calls Adult counselling. She started, “now that you’re turning 23, you need to know your weekly upkeep has been reduced by 10 percent because your dad and I want you to learn how to work and take care of yourself. Secondly, you have to stop watching cartoons all day and use the time for something better like, what your older siblings are doing; get a real job, get married, have children, etc. Finally, growing up is harder than you think so you have to start thinking as a grown up and leave your childish attitude at 22”. I sat through the counselling, quietly, wondering why mum will cut my sleep short for this. I can virtually feel my braining moving within my skull, because I was still trying hard to understand what had just happened. Is adulting this hard? I gave a sigh and thought to myself, “I guess I’m still learning to get used to this new thing called adulting”.

Is the derision entirely unwarranted? Well, no, it isn’t. ‘Adulting’ is a terribly fake word which has been overexaggerated. It’s not hard to understand why our generation has this attitude toward growing up. Many of us have been shielded from the full responsibilities of adulthood. Unlike our parents’ generation. Arguable, quite a number of us are not forced to, for instance, pay rent or provide for ourselves immediately after university education. Even so, that does not mean we don’t know what adulting is. I guess we just prefer to call it something else. So, pardon me if I scream through my movies, it’s what gives me the feel, sorry if I still want an Alice in Wonderland series for a gift, go slow on your adult education class when I cry over a ‘Sandra’ ice-cream. You may not understand but adulting is dealt with in different ways.

Tell me, how was your ADULTING like😘?