Adulting is easy

I typed “adulting is easy” and proved to myself that not everything is written in the internet. It’s not surprising, because in these times, millennials are having it hard. They need to move out of the comfort of their parents’ home just to pay rent that costs a third of their salary. And with a third going to taxes, and a portion to their parents’ household bills, the rest of the plot would run like a thriller story. But building a story of the hardships of millennials from their social media posts is like building a jigsaw puzzle with incomplete pieces. What we don’t post in social media should also be inputted, and the views of those who don’t post anything should also be considered.

We can start from my story — a teenager from the province who made it to a state university. It was in my 17th year that I was able to be rid of child labor. I knew college was hard, but it saved me from a lot of work. At 12 I was doing the muddy “fieldwork” in a farm — from helping plant rice to pulling weeds to harvesting palay. I took part in every process you can name. When I was 10 I was gathering golden snails, and then I made my way up the ladder, to be trusted with bigger responsibilities. I didn’t have a Friendster account, and was too dumb to send a message via Yahoo mail. I doubted if I could even write a rant.

Perhaps, making your own lunchbox is real #adulting. Doing the laundry with matching #adultingIsReal is also a valid rant. But half of the millennials don’t post rants against their employers, or how hard it is to work 12 hours straight and be paid less than the minimum wage without the overtime pay. We are missing half of the story from the people who might think adulting is, not easy, but completely normal. That was my reality: Difficult jobs with lower pay were what I embraced.

I’m a person who understands how the two different worlds exist, so the last thing I’d want to throw is judgment against the 23-year-olds who are doing their lunchbox for the first time. I can’t give a frown to the one who married prematurely and doesn’t complain. For me, adulting may not be easy, but it isn’t something to complain about. I’d rather be stuck in a traffic jam than stay at home and face indifference. I’d rather be sleep-deprived than go home deprived of opportunities. It’s normal to do the laundry on Day 7 because I’d worn different outfits for the past days. It’s normal to pay the bill after consuming things. It’s normal to slave over self-help books because you feel lost once in a while. And what about taking a sleeping supplement because you have to force yourself to sleep amid the exhaustion?

It may take a while before I can see a page in the search site, so I’d rather repeat the statement over and over until it becomes true: Adulting is easy. No one will ever say that to me, anyway. If it’s true that adulting is just a celebration of the small things, a coping mechanism of the failed promises of Gen X, later I will clean the house and make my own dinner. Don’t worry because I’ll be singing Michael Bublé while doing the dishes.

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Neil Clark V. Abelido, 22, is a sociology graduate and a rookie teacher.