To adult or not to adult that is the question, whether it is immature to live in your youth and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous hangovers or take arms against a sea of problems. And by opposing end them? To die, to sleep, no more and by a sleep to say we end the heartache and the thousand natural shocks that is heir to a hangover. It is a consummation devoutly to wish it away. To die, to sleep, to sleep, perchance to dream. There’s the rub, for in that sleep of hangover what dreams may come. When we have shuffled off to our jobs, it must give us pause, there’s the respect that makes calamity of such a long life. There’s something to be said for trying to relive your youth while you walk the earth in an older man’s body.
Yeah ok we may have just bastardised some of Shakespeare’s best work but heck who hasn’t had a crack at modernising that man’s greatest works into something that the youth of today can relate to or even understand. Then again with all their technology and instant gratification, freedom of choice and want it right now society they live in. No wonder they lack maturity and the ability to be part of society from time to time. Hence why we need to make the choice to adult or not to adult these days and it is just that a choice. In today’s society you can be anyone you want,anything you want and do pretty much anything you want, freedom of choice is at an all time high along with divorce, teenage pregnancy, drug addiction and sexually transmitted infections.
Last week we spoke of hopes and dreams and this week we thought we’d follow up with growing up and being an adult. It might have something to do with all the sore heads and hangovers experienced by the writers here at A Mind of Its Own over the past couple of weeks ok the past month. In what has seemed like celebration after celebration the minds have grown weary and the body a little sore as they are poisoned with the flavours of the world. A journey around the world through alcohol but without the flights and hotels, the sights and sounds but with all the hangover experiences that often come from being in a city and sampling the local delights. But what is it all for? To numb the pain or quieten the mind? We all have our reasons and often a time throughout our lives we fall into the people we were not the people we have become.
And so we decided that this here blog you are now reading needed to be written in order for us all to give pause and question our actions and behaviours. Particularly those of the past couple of months as we attempt to drink our weight in beer, wine, whiskey, vodka and well anything containing alcohol someone joked that there was licking of wet wipes, we can promise you there wasn’t. There was cause for some celebration but a lot of it was an excuse to reclaim some of our youth as we tried to keep up with the younger blokes and prove to ourselves that we aren’t past it or ready for nights at home with a cup of tea instead of a pint of beer. As they say, It’s all for the character and the arrogant afterglow. What your parents handed down to you to handle. Make sure you carry torches when their putting out your candles, predictions can be unkind but unwind them still. Don’t erase the part of you that’s responsible for your will.
So as we sit here looking over what the last couple of months have brought us in terms of personal and professional development or lack there of. The lessons learnt and the lessons that needed to be learnt one thing has become more and more apparent. We are people that need to adult not just because as we type this out we realise that we are getting older and older every minute but more so because we want to follow our hopes and dreams. One thing we have learnt is that they certainly don’t come at the bottom of a bottle like trinket in a box of cereal. Reliving your youth every weekend certainly won’t help you reach those dreams, particularly if you are spending some of your weekend hungover and feeling sorry for yourself or hugging the royal dalton.
We aren’t saying that you shouldn’t let your hair down and have a good time every now and again but like all things, it’s something that should be done in moderation not just for your body but for your mind as well. Alcohol is a depressant expect for tequila apparently. Not everyone will agree with this approach and that’s ok because it depends on what you want out of life. The saying “Live your best life” is something that will resonate with everyone. It’s just whether we choose to adult and live that best life following those hopes and dreams. For some people this will mean making changes to their lives for the better. For others it will just mean continuing on doing what they have always done day in day out since they made the decision to grow up and act their age. And then we have the people that just decide to go the other way and hold onto their youth refusing to grow up.
We have never been ones to lecture or instruct, in fact we have always attempted to be the ones to start a conversation and get our readers thinking. The whole idea behind a mind of its own was to get people to think about things and start talking about them. Start talking about the things that no one wants to talk about or that have a stigma around them. We’ve written about mental health issues and will continue to shed some light, as well as start the conversation around them and the stigma that comes with them. The more we talk about these things the more common knowledge and accepting it becomes within the populace. And so as part of our decision to adult we will post a blog each week and continue to shed light for the people of the world. It’s not our duty or purpose it’s our want to write along with our ability to write that allows us to do so.
What does choosing to adult look like you ask? Well it’s different for each and everyone of us. For the writers here it’s drinking a little less, looking after our bodies, exercising a little more and frequently, eating healthier, along with being open and honest. Following our truth and allowing us to become more and more open with ourselves and those around us. Finding that vulnerability that we haven’t had or wanted to have in our lives. Knowing that it’s ok to not be ok from time to time and most of all striving towards all the things we want in our lives. It means not questioning everything that happens in life and accepting the person we are, flaws and all because the more you try to change that person, the more you lose who you truly are in this world. And in a world as superficial as the one we currently live in where social media only shows us the good in people’s lives it’s pretty easy to lose the true you in all of that.
Being an adult or adulting doesn’t mean you have to become boring and have no fun at all but it does mean that you need to start prioritising what’s truly important to you in this world and the next. You begin to see life in a different manner and begin to put others before you. You sacrifice the little things in order to get the big things or the things that are most required for you and those that you love. Most of us begin to make good decisions and prepare for the future we put money away for a rainy day, we pay our bills, we make time for those we want to spend our time with. It means doing the things you often don’t want to do, like the days when you just want to lounge around in bed and know that you have to get up and go to work whether you like it or not. It’s all part of being an adult. With age comes responsibility to yourself and to others, it’s just the way it is. You can choose to adult or you can choose to continue to act like a child and never grow up like Peter Pan in Never never land.
We’ve said it once, we’ll say it again and we’ll probably said it until we are blue in the face, everything in life comes down to a choice. You hold all the power and you get to make the initial choice that puts you on the path. Without action the best intentions in the world are nothing more than that, intentions said by the man Jordan Belfort himself. So you can choose to sit around and talk about things all day, every day or you can be a person of action who actually wants to get on with things and be an adult. Be you and follow your hopes and dreams. If you want to write, write, you want to dance, dance. If you want to practice law or medicine, do it. But the point is to do something and stop being people that talk about things. Actions speak louder than words as they say ladies and gentleman. It’s time to adult and time to stand up if that’s what you want to do. You can party every now and then but for now it’s time to write the next chapter in your book of life.
Equally if you want to be the centre of attention and the person everyone knows will be up for some fun go ahead no one is going to stop you but don’t be surprised when people question you about growing up or being someone you are not. Whilst it might upset you perhaps people know you and see you for who you truly are. Something that you’ll learn as you mature and decide to adult full time and not just part time as you make your way to work. Or when you hangout with friends and family who have all made the step in the direction to adult or at least attempt to do so. You’ll question things and you’ll want answers to questions that you may never get but guess what? That’s life sunshine not everything is going to happen the way you want it to. You’ll have good times and bad that’s just the way it is welcome to the world of growing up and being an adult now either shit or get off the pot!
So what’s the point of all this, well the point is that at some point in life we all have to grow up but it’s up to us when we choose to do so and much we choose to do so. Life is what we make it and growing up is a choice we choose to make at some point throughout life. It just comes along at different times for all of us. Some of us realise on a night out that we have grown up and are ready to wind it back. The young drunken kids stumbling past us are a constant reminded that we are too old for this shit. The 4 day hangovers are just another reminder but what it really is reminds us that we are ready to truly settle down is the want to be better people. Not that any of us would change the lives we’ve had. They’ve made us the people we are and allowed us to do the things we have including write this blog week in week out.
The writers of this blog are attempting to grow up, attempting to adult and looking to reach for their hopes and dreams. It starts with this blog and finishes with the book the bossman is currently writing along the way we’ll hopefully see a family and catch up with old and new friends. In the meantime we’ll pump out a conversation starter each week and get the people talking about all the things that they don’t want to talk about. Who knows next week we might even talk about the cost of tampons or sanitary pads that’ll get our male readers attention and our females readers wondering whether we’ve lost the plot finally and started to really kick the pot on the topics of the world.
Given that we are attempting to adult and be better people, we’ll stop wasting your time for the week and sign off with some rambling golden advice. Be good to yourself, be good to your friends, be good to your family and heck be good to strangers while we are at it. What’s the saying treat others how you want to be treated. It’s what a good adulting person would do right, well it’s what we’d do and it helps us lead into the next installment of A Mind of Its Own where we’ll attempt to talk about values without ranting or angry but we can’t make any promises. Adios Amigos…
A Mind of its Own... 