Life | My First Taste of Full-Fledged Adulthood

Hi there!

So, I’m just gonna go straight into the main reason why I decided to blog again: Last night, I dreamt that my blog got taken down for being inactive and I was so upset that I woke up with a foul mood this morning. In hopes of making sure that that dream would not become a reality, I came here to breathe life back into this forsaken blog.

To those who may be wondering how on Earth could I even leave this blog unattended for almost a whole year, “life got in the way” would be such an understatement.

In my last post, I mentioned that I started working at Kaleidoscope Studio. I was only with them for three truly amazing months before I got offered a permanent job elsewhere. Even though I finally got my dream job, I was immensely sad having to leave the family who had been there for me when things were rough and I loved every moment of being with them.

Even to this day, my time with Kaleidoscope Studio has more than once helped me in my current employment. They provided me with a professional working experience and vast networking opportunities, while at the same time, opening doors for me and my friends to contribute back to the society through the means of arts and community service. I even had a chance to become their Instagram takeover guest to share my love for film photography.

As much as I had wanted to stay and help to realise the mission and vision of the company, I had to be realistic and look introspectively at my own set of goals.

Fast forward to today, I have evolved into your regular young adult professional who whines about not getting enough sleep and me-time at every chance she gets yet still goes to work early and leaves work late.

And that being said, I thought it would be fun to encapsulate the top 10 defining things that made me realise that I am now a full-fledged adult (well, almost there because I still live with my mum).

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1. Managing time between work, family and friends.

I still suck at this life skill. I thought I was going to get better at it the longer I work (it has been nine months since I started working professionally), but I always end up getting more caught up in the work itself. To my family and friends who may or may not be reading this, I’m truly sorry for not making time as of late and I hope to make it up to you one of these days.

 

2. The never-ending bills.

Seriously, I wish bills would just disappear after I pay them off, but they are always there like a constant. I only began to worry about whether or not I’d be able to save enough to pay the bills at the end of the month when I moved to the UK to study for my degree. As a scholarship student, you could barely save much from the monthly allowance, especially with how expensive the utilities, the rent and the groceries were. Then there was also the monthly trips to London I had to make for BSUnion and no, I didn’t get reimbursed for these trips.

Nevertheless, such austere times taught me a lot about the importance of saving for rainy days. Coming back to Brunei, I stopped worrying about them for a while until I got a loan for a car. 😂 But thankfully, whenever my salary comes in, the bank automatically deducts my car’s monthly payment and this completely rids me off of worrying about making overdue payments.

 

3. More involved in household responsibilities.

It wasn’t expected of me to take care of the house, but for a very long time, I have always felt more obligated than I am expected to. It wasn’t fair that I lived under the same roof as my mum without contributing and especially when I already have a monthly income.

 

4. … and getting excited about them!

I recently splurged to redecorate our living room and that was honestly the most exciting and the most adult I had ever felt and done for my family. From picking the colour of the curtains to dictating the layout of the space (it’s a pretty small house), I was more than happy to help create a space that is both functional and cosy for me and my family to hang out together. Although it’s still a work in progress, I’m already happy with how our living room looks like now!

 

5. Coffee is everything.

Coffee will always be the (second) love of my life and it has always been so since my A Level days which were six years ago. It’s almost terrifying to see how much more dependent I am on it now to get through the day this year.

I mean, look at the way it manages to sneak into my day-to-day life:

• Take a break from work: coffee.
• Concentrate on work: coffee.
• Catch up with my friend: coffee.
• Catch up with my dad: coffee.
• Hold a meeting: nescafe (but still – COFFEE).
• Write this very blogpost: coffee.

My addiction to coffee is ridiculous. I’ve taken the initiative to limit myself to one cup of coffee per day now because there was once when I already had my morning coffee and then a colleague offered to buy coffee for the whole department and I couldn’t resist free coffee. The next thing I knew was that I was palpitating madly and it felt like I was going to have a panic attack. NEVER again.

 

6. More friends got hitched!

Alhamdulillah, there has been quite a number of friends (in my batch) who got married within the past several months and I truly couldn’t have been happier for them. When I got my first wedding invitation card, I was probably more excited to receive one for the first time than I was from finding out that my own friend was getting married. Hahah!

Not to mention, many of my cousins within the same age range as me have also gotten married this year. In fact, one of them has her nikah ceremony today!

Did I mention that weddings are also my current number one place for reunions with old friends and former schoolmates? Talk about adulting!

 

7. Flashbacks come frequently.

“Oh, the good ‘ol days when we were carefree and had no worries!” Sound familiar? Lately, I can’t help but look back at the memories I made pre-employment, especially my uni days.

I miss being with my friends. I miss travelling around. I miss volunteering. I miss doing film photography and visiting Chris in town to get my films developed and scanned. I miss walking to my university. I didn’t have much and I was constantly broke, but I was happy and all I had to think about was wanting to do well in my studies.

Alhamdulillah, I’m happy with where I am now and I couldn’t have asked for more, but I miss the freedom to do all these. As I mentioned in No. 1 above, managing time as a working person is hard and I hope to do it better over time.

 

8. Nap time is happy hour!

It’s been so long since I took a nap on a weekday. Working 8 to 5 for five days a week leaves me barely enough time for me to take a nap because as soon as I leave work, I would rather do something more productive such as spending quality time with my family, catching up with a friend over dinner or reading. In order to compensate for all the sleep I’ve lost on the weekdays, I would try to sleep longer on the weekend and I read somewhere that this is a good way to recuperate. Alas, being a morning person, I would wake up early by default and sometimes way too early. So instead, I would try to nap in the afternoon on Friday and Sunday.

 

9. Running errands now means running errands.

When I was younger, I always heard my parents saying that they were going out to run errands such as sending their car for servicing, renewing our passports, or even going to the fresh market early in the morning. These are all pretty mundane things and I remember dreading them whenever my parents took me out to accompany them, but now I find myself running such errands at my own volition and not because my parents told me to.

 

10. Forgetting myself in the midst of everything.

While I’m busy working and spending time with others, I tend to forget to spend time with myself, a tendency ever since I was in uni, but until now, I never got to truly understand just how refreshing you can feel when you are able to use that free time to lounge about and simply breathe. I used to read and write a lot, work out more and eat right before I started working. So, fingers crossed that I’m able to incorporate all of these back into my daily life.

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And there you have it, what adulthood has been for me particularly after I started working. It seems trivial for me to make a big deal out of this just for making it through, but it has been a long journey for me to get here.

As a teenager, I was surrounded by so many people who didn’t believe in me and in what I could do (thank you to my dearest family and friends for always having faith in me when others could not). So just being able to make it out alive was a milestone for me, and I think we should all be allowed to celebrate our milestones in life no matter how small they are while remembering to stay humble and be kind to others.

 

Until then,