I felt like a real adult at 27.... I can't quite explain what it was but I had a distinct feeling of like "oh I'm really like getting used to this life thing now, this is it, this is what you do". I went back to uni so I was still at uni then for what it's worth.

I think growing up and being an adult is about truly understanding that you are actually responsible for yourself, for your impact on the world, and for your community. It's so easy to make excuses and let yourself off the hook for your shitty behaviour and generally want to pretend that you're a child again.

An adult holds themselves accountable for what they do and understands that they and only they are responsible for what they do. And off the back of that, your duty towards yourself and others.

I firmly don't agree that growing up means you find everything really boring. That's being stuck in a rut (maybe). I think sometimes going through the motions of " being a responsible adult" (and of course the eviscerating consequences of capitalism) can lead you into "bed>travel>work>travel>slump>bed>travel>work>travel>slump etc" which kind of creates a rut.

Finally big changes where I felt very different in my life...? I'm now 42. Something that I can't explain distinctly happened at 40. It was two sided.

My self-esteem strengthened in a really nice way where I was like hang on a minute.... I've been working in and around my career for 20 years now.... I might actually know what I'm talking about and I don't need to be cagey about having decent ideas. So I stopped being like ' oh maybe you could do X , I might not be right 🥺' and moved into ' you probably want to do this, you could try it this way or that way'.

I have unbelievably run out of fucks in a very positive but slightly life devastating way because I absolutely won't be put up with feeling shat on.

And if people around me have a problem with me saying hey the way you treat me makes me feel a bit shat on, then they can just shuffle right the fuck out of my life!

This is a problem when it's your partner and your oldest friends but breaking patterns means your pattern gets disrupted. It's not great and I'm not pretending I haven't felt some real despair and the 2025 wasnt basically terrible to go through but I feel so much better for asserting my needs and reducing all the friction I used to put up with where I used to try and just deal with stuff instead of just going oh I don't want to do this. I'm able to feel excited about where I might be going. I also feel extremely scared about being alone a lot of the time.

So this is my current big shift.