Age is just a number?

Birthdays can go one of two ways: you can either embrace the age that you now are by celebrating with the people around you, or you can drown your sorrows as you’re slowly getting older, again with the people around you. Either way it’s a day you’ll remember – or not as the case may be!

But there is so much more to getting older and growing up than you think. There are unwritten expectations that you subtly have to adopt without realising. This post it particularly relevant to me as I officially left my teenage years this weekend and reached that age where you can’t be excused for childish mannerisms like you used to.

The question people always ask you on your birthday is “So, do you feel any different?” and I don’t know about you, but at the time you really don’t feel any different. You wake up in the morning and it’s all very exciting, but that’s just because you know the day is going to be celebratory in some way or another. There is nothing that hits you like a tonne of bricks, ensuring that you know you’re now a year older. Often it’s not until a few days after that you realise that you’ve got to act your age more. There will be something that happens, or things to expect that set you back into the reality that you’re not a child any more.

Leaving University is usually a big one for the twenties. Moving back home with a huge, ongoing debt and the adjustment back into ‘real life’. And often the realisation of “What the hell am I going to do with my life now?” It’s not as easy as everyone thinks to just go and get a job, but something got to change because you’re not a child anymore!

Maybe you’ll be asked to do something that you’ve never done before, you’ll take on a new role that requires the adult within you to speak out and slowly it’ll become part of your normal life, but it’s hard to get your head around in terms of not being a teenager anymore. What is expected of me now?! Even when you’re having one of those days, you now to to successfully deal with life’s ups and downs alone.

So if you’ve entered into the decade of your twenties already, or if you’re due to make the transition, have you’re wits about your when it comes to doing things differently and see if you can notice that change between your teenage years and now. After all, you are getting on a bit!