This is a lighthearted post, I promise! I know the title sounds even more dreary than the last post, but bear with me on this one.
Growing up, I heard many people from family to teachers to random adults telling me to enjoy every minute of my childhood and teen years because, once I become an adult and go into the "real world," I would wish I was young again. I don't know what kind of horrible lives those people were living, but I would not trade my adulthood for a second childhood for one minute. To me, it seems horrible that those people believe the best part of their lives to be over and done with. I enjoy my present existence, and I will present five reasons why.
Firstly, there's my free time. A lot of adults will tell you that your free time goes away upon getting a job. The truth is, I have tons of free time and I enjoy it immensely. I guess it's because I don't have kids, but if you enjoy free time so much that you pine away for it, maybe you shouldn't have had kids. I mean, what did you expect? I know I plan on waiting a few more years. Anyway, back when I was in school (especially high school), I had very little free time. I would go to school for 7 hours a day, then I had marching band practice for about 2 hours every day after school. That's a 9 hour day right there. On Fridays I had football games that lasted for about 3 hours, and if you include the prep time before that and the debriefing afterwards, there's a 12+ hour day right there. Then on weekends I would either have to go to a marching competition or go work at my part-time job, which was about 9 hours, give or take. Adding all that up, I worked approximately 57 hours a week, and I wasn't able to take a day of personal time for any of it. Even when the marching season was over, I only replaced my band practice with my job, so my hours didn't change. Right now, I work a shift schedule and my work week alternates from 36 hours to 48 hours, and I accrue a heck ton of days off. I'm working a lot less and so I have much more time to goof off.
Secondly, there's the fact that I'm getting paid for said work. Except for my part-time job, of which the pay was awful and I wasn't offered benefits due to being part-time, I wasn't seeing a dime of the effort I put in. With the amount of work I do now, I can afford my own house and still have extra money to spend as I see fit. As a student, I made about eighty bucks a week, despite working longer and more frequently than I do now. Yes, I have bills and stuff, but unless you're seriously in debt (I'm not, thank goodness), even a lower middle class gent like me can afford to enjoy a few of the finer things.
Third, I'm totally free now. This is in no way an attack on my parents. They did right by me and raised me well, but I have my own rhythm for living, and my own style on how I do things. Living under someone else's roof prevents you from being your own person, and now that I'm on my own, I have more freedom to enjoy life in the manner and at the speed that I want. If I want to watch cartoons while eating ice cream at midnight, I can do that. If I want to go to the store and take care of errands, I can do it without checking in to make sure it's okay, and I can do it at 3am if I want to. If I want to cook something weird, I just go ahead and do it. Yes, most of you will probably point out that I'm married, but for my wife and I, it's very easy for us to be our own person around each other. I don't feel that my being married has in any way impeded my freedom, and I'm sure she could say the same for herself as well.
Fourth, adults take me seriously. As a kid, people may think you're smart or capable, but with all your accomplishments, you're still just a kid to them. There are kids who have gotten bachelor's degrees, kids who have patented new inventions, and even kids who have discovered new things that have baffled adults for years, but in the end, there's still that lingering idea that they're young'uns who need to wait their turn and mature a bit before they're let out into the world. At the ripe age of 26, I've pretty much proven to the world that I can handle myself on my own, and adults treat me like one of them instead of with that patronizing manner that kind of annoyed me growing up.
Last but not least, I can still be a kid if I want to. Being an adult is great. If you can handle the responsibilities, it's rewarding and fun. But every now and then I just want to kick back and watch a cartoon or play some E-rated video games. I also like to go to the beach and dig up clams or look for fish, or go to the zoo and feed the parakeets. There's no shame in it for me that I'm still connected with my younger self. It's a part of who I am, and I have always felt that if you feel like you need to grow up and let go of your childlike sense of wonder and imagination, you're seriously doing yourself a disservice. It's bad to be childish as an adult, but it's not wrong at all to be childlike.
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