The magical 30

This week I will turn 30, the magical age. Some time ago I read an article about things people would have liked to know about being an adult before they grew up, and I decided to add my own thoughts ti this topic. I suppose there never was a kid who wasn't eager to grow up but is being an adult as fun as kids seem to think? Let us see..

"When I am adult I can and I am allowed to do what I want to do". Hell no. If I could do whatever I wanted, I would be on a sandy beach drinking passion fruit margaritas. Theoretically speaking I am allowed to do that but I cannot, because I don't have time or money, especially not at the same time. It would have been nice to be warned that most of grown up life is full of compulsory things. I have to go to work, work, go home, do grocery shopping, cook dinner, prepare lunch, take a shower, do laundry etc. After all that, it's usually 6 or 7 o'clock and having been up about 12 hours I cannot find any strength to do anything I would choose to do. It's the same with money. I wish I had known that most of income goes to compulsory things, bills that have to be paid, other necessary expenses and after that there is very little to use for the things I would choose to use my money for. All in all, I guess I was a happier person before I had to take the sole responsibility for my own life and finances and I still had time for friends and hobbies and things that bring joy to life. Now I just work.

Dream job. What the fuck is a dream job? Probably the biggest myth of childhood just after Santa. Yes, I had plenty of dream jobs, such as teacher (kids are shit annoying), doctor (I am scared of seeing blood), flight attendant (motion sickness) etc. I wonder what happened to the ease with which I approached selecting my dream job. Now everything about the job market seems complicated. How can I know what I want to do when I am 40? Should I just have one job I want to do until I retire, why wouldn't I be allowed to change? I guess many people just end up doing something completely else that what they dreamed of doing. Sometimes you just have to compromise. Maybe what you do is not your dream but it gets the bills paid and bills are sure to come whether you are employed or not, so better just do something to earn my own money.

When you are adult you are going to own a house and a car and so on. Yes, you can probably own all kind of nice things but most of them come saddled with loan installments to pay and complete lack of freedom and flexibility.

When I am adult I can stay up all night. Sure I can but it's difficult to stay up late. When I am adult I can eat as much candy as I want to. Now we have found something interesting. Sure I can eat lots and lots of candy, and no one can tell me chocolate is not breakfast, but my boring alter ego tells me not to, because after all, chocolate is not a healthy breakfast. The kid me would not have cared but the adult me reminds me of the positive health effects of oatmeal.

I wish somebody had also warned me how quickly aging starts to feel in the body. If I sit for a long time, my legs gets numb and start swelling, all kinds of pains and aches appear. There will be problems with sleeping and blood pressure, there will be a lurking heart condition and the cholesterol level will be too high. Metabolism starts to slow down and I cannot eat dessert anymore because my belly is already sitting on my lap.

Some years ago I talked about being grown up with my friend and we both agreed that we had no idea it was going to be so difficult. All the decisions are mine to make and responsibilities are mine to bear and there is no guarantee I will make good decisions and no one else to blame if they are bad. At the worst life is just achieving and even at the best it's still full of joyless things. Don't grow up, it's a trap.

Challenge 6- Do something you enjoyed when you were a kid

So, here we go, challenge number 6, do something you enjoyed when you were a kid. This one was a tricky challenge. I kept thinking and thinking. What did I do? As far as I can remember, I had a happy childhood, plenty of people around me who loved me. I played with the kids next door, I watched movies, I read books, ate too much ice cream and so on. I thought I never really had my "thing". Some of my friends were musical and played an instrument, some of them were sporty. I was nothing. I didn't have a specialty. Then I remembered I was always writing. Even before I could write myself I still wanted to write, and I used to ask my grandmother to write down my stories. I have always been telling stories (so be warned, I am telling stories here in the blog, too... but with some reality in them).

In Spain roses are still trying to bloom

I loved writing at school. I don't know how is nowadays, but during my school years we wrote quite a lot. It was part of the Finnish language lessons. Sometimes our teacher gave us a topic to write about, sometimes we could write about anything that came to our little minds. Apparently I was good at it, always got excellent grades for Finnish language and especially for my stories. I kept writing until I graduated from high school and after that pretty much lost the interest, don't know why. I guess I was busy trying to figure out what to do with my life, changed field three times before settling for business (wrong choice!) and somehow I just lost the creativity that used to flow so naturally when I was younger. Grown up life is too full of compulsory things that take too much time and energy and I didn't feel like writing anymore. Since that time I have only written very sporadically, and never finished a story. My computer is full of half-told stories. I wanted to write a full book-like story when I was in Australia and managed to edit one of the raw versions that had been waiting for something to happen to it for about 4 years. I have 95 pages ready but somehow cannot find the motivation to finish the story. I have stopped believing in it.

Not many things can beat books and wine

Long story but short, the only thing I can remember I particularly enjoyed when I was a child was to write and seems like I don't enjoy it that much anymore. But hey, I am writing this blog so even at this very moment I am doing something I enjoyed when I was a child! I don't always feel like writing anything here, and don't always have thrilling things to share with you guys but I am still writing and maybe some day I will finally finish at least one story and get it published and become filthy rich.

Just as a foot note because this is supposed to be a travel blog- chocolate Satans have arrived in your grocery store, check out the demonic selection already today! The Czech Santa figure is slightly more hard core than elsewhere. Makes even the Russian Ded Moroz look like a saint..

Merry Christmas to you, too HO HO HO