Editing Adulthood
If being adult is a continuous variable, then I just got more adult in the past week 👨
Hello!
Issue #16 of Light Gray Matter, which you’re reading right now, has to be somewhat personal, because this is the week after a momentous event in my life — i.e. quitting my job. I mentioned it last week; now the deed is done.1
At least, I guess it should have been momentous? To be honest, it doesn’t feel like that. It feels like it was the natural course of action at this point. The only logical thing to do. Which is good, right?
I’ve been paying attention to how I feel. On Friday night, after closing my virtual desktop for the last time, I had a virtual goodbye party with some colleagues,2 which was nice. But I didn’t really feel different. On Saturday, I did a day trip in the ugliest weather to a pretty ugly town just outside of the Montreal area. It was good fun, but throughout the day, a feeling of stress and uncertainty persisted, and I wondered if I had made a mistake. Then, on Sunday, I felt… perfect peace. It was amazing. And uncanny — I hadn’t felt so relaxed since at least the beginning of the covid pandemic a year ago, if not before.
In the last couple of days, I oscillated between the stress and the intense relaxation. The feelings of having maybe made a mistake, as I predicted, went fully away. I’ve been trying to figure out the origin of the stress, and I think it’s mostly due to everything I promised myself I’d get done now, but am not (as fast as I would like). It’s fine, really. I just need to avoid traps like this:
(this thread by Visa yesterday had pretty perfect timing!)
The other thing I experienced since quitting is something I would describe as “feeling adult.”
“Adult” is one of those words that have multiple meanings. It can be defined by age, as in “you are an adult the day you turn 18 years old.” But you often see people talking of “adulting,” of the process of becoming an adult, which carries connotations of maturity, independence, wisdom, and generally getting your sh*t together.
Thus you have 30-somethings who don’t feel they’re adults yet, or 16-years-old who clearly are. It’s not even clear that everyone becomes a full adult in their lifetime. Some levels of wisdom people never reach.
(a very unscientific plot of adulthood as a continuous variable between 0 and 100%. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense, I know. It also assumes there’s a perfect level of adulthood you can reach, which is directly contradicted by myself below. Please bear with me, I don’t want to redo the picture)
In any case, I feel more adult today than I did last week. I think it’s the independence. No one is telling me what to do for a big chunk of my waking hours anymore. That feels right.
Today, it seems to me that employment infantilizes people. I realize that’s a negative way to put it (and that most of my readers probably are employees… hi! You do you; don’t listen to my nonsense if it doesn’t apply to you 🙂). I’m in the right state of mind to reject employment, after all! But I don’t think it’s wrong per se. In some areas of our lives — not in all — we like to be told what to do. Independence and freedom, though desirable qualities on the surface, are scary.
(something something paternal figures something something, but I’ve never read either Freud or Jung so never mind)
I want to emphasize that I’m not trying to pass any value judgments here. Everyone should strive to be exactly as adult as they think they need to, for every area of their life. In most cases, though, we grow up over time, and we feel good about it. It’s never bad to become more mature, independent, or wise.
Your adulthood is never done. It is in a constant state of editing.
And yes, I wrote that sentence to shoehorn the title “Editing Adulthood” into the newsletter — a title I chose because it was originally just “Adulthood,” but then my browser tab read Editing “Adulthood” and I thought it was poetic. Somewhat.3
Until next week, I remain
Yours in personal growth,
Étienne
Good news, my relationship with my laptop is getting better! In fact, my relationship with most things is getting better now.
Ugh I hate how everything in this sentence is virtual.
Now of course it reads “Editing Editing Adulthood”. Also, it’s a minor miracle that I have sufficiently few tabs open to be able to actually read words on them.