You wanna know what it feels like to get older? It feels like you become victim to thieves of time.
I remember as a kid having all the time in the world. In fact, I had so much time to do things that time seemed to pass very slowly. When something wasn’t going to come out for an entire year, it felt like an eternity when that year finally passed.
I remember all I had to do was go to school for 6 hours and come home. I also got summer vacations from school, where I could just chill out. Sometimes it would get boring, sure, but that’s only because the internet didn’t exist yet (or at least, nowhere near the state that it’s in today… that and if you wanted to use the internet, you blocked all use of the phone and drove up the phone bill).
But you know, it was great. It wasn’t perfect, but it was acceptable. I didn’t mind hanging out with friends. I had so much free time that I could share some of it with other people and not feel like I was running out.
Then suddenly middle school came. Suddenly I had more homework than ever. I was forced to manage seven classes every single day. Each class had its own homework that needed to be done. Even more of my time was eaten up at home due to the ridiculous level of homework (aka busy work) that they gave me. Oh yeah, and now there’s chores to do. Prepare to have every weekend eaten up because your stepfather is OCD and expects someone aesthetically-challenged like you to clean to his standards. Clean all day! And you still have to manage your free time vs what’s shared with your friends! Hey, sharing your free time with friends sure beat having to clean or do schoolwork. And besides… I still had summer vacation… right? Yeah… at least there was that.
Enter: high school. Now let’s up the dosage of homework, and on top of that, get a job. What the heck is going on? Summer vacation? Yeah, say goodbye to that. Now that you’re not in school, you can work more hours! Have fun standing in front of that cash register all day every day and greeting customers with the same canned greeting over and over again because your company’s marketing department is smoking crack. But you still have some time… You’ve got just a little time…
You go to school 30 hours a week, and go to work for 20… but when you get home, there’s sleep, and fun, and whatever free time you want. There are days out of the week when you don’t work… and during those times, you do homework… you have about 5 hours in a day to do whatever you want, about 3 days a week. And when summer vacation comes, you have even more free time, because your job isn’t going to work you full-time or anything.
Now it’s time to get to college. If you thought high school’s homework load was bad… Hah! College is king of useless levels of effort for homework. Read an entire textbook, then write up a 20-page thesis, which you will proofread and completely rewrite multiple times throughout the semester. Be sure to document all your sources in the absolute correct format that’s impossible for anyone to remember (and with far too many exceptions to the rule). Hey, let’s try a science class! It’s lab day, so be sure to collect all your data… now go write an essay about what you learned. But before we do that, let’s learn about discrete mathematics and calculus! Yay! Here we go, 50 math problems! And they’re all on the computer, so if you start to screw up, it’ll force the answer down your throat, and force you to try another. 50 problems turns into 80. Oh boy, a philosophy class now! Be prepared to read long lectures and entries by people who had more free time than you’ll ever have. Socrates, I hate you. Now write an essay that asks your opinion or view of what you’ve read (which is never inherently right or wrong) and still receive a lower grade because it’s, according to the teacher, “incorrect”. You logic-defying jerk…
Yeah… the list goes on. And, you still have to work too. Now you have 3-4 hours to yourself 3 days a week… it’s something!
Finally you graduate, and get a decent career job.
You move out from your parents house, and let’s skip the apartment, you’ve bought a house of your own.
If you thought you’d have more free time now, forget it. Every time you come home, there’s something new to clean, or some kind of food you need to prepare. You work 40+ hours a week, and come home, and there’s just stuff to do everywhere. Move this, clean that, call this person to straighten something out… go out and buy this expensive thing you need, pay lots of money for this other thing that broke… Yeah, any minute something’s going to break and force you into debt by having to pay money to replace it. Money you don’t have. Any day the floor will fall out from under you, and you’re gonna hit rock bottom. You’re thankful it isn’t today.
Now, get out and do lots of yard work, cuz now fall is here! And before you could ever be done with the leaves, spring and summer have arrived! Break out that lawnmower, and get ready to mow the grass every other week now! Spray that roundup on those weeds! Oh no, sugar ants have entered your home… gotta spend more money and call the exterminator… Gotta stay home too, and take a pay cut, because you have to be there for the exterminator.
And don’t forget… You still got laundry to do… Your dishes are piling up… Your pet is hungry…
Now you’re hungry! To save money, you have to prepare your own food. Let’s drive to the grocery store. You know, is it me, or is everyone at a grocery store a freakin obstacle! Get outta my way! Great, the checkout lady is slow. Oh wonderful! This customer doesn’t have American money or wants to use some special government-sponsored pay method because they fail at life! Splendid! Let’s spend even more time standing in this line!
Now let’s get home! Drag all those bags in, and find a place for ‘em all. Your kitchen sucks, so there’s very little room for anything. Oh well! Keep trying!
Now spend an hour and a half chopping up whatever vegetables you bought, and get ‘em nice and brown in the skillet. Now add the meat. Now add the seasonings. Yay! Food! Eat it! Oh but wait, all this preparation made a mess… Clean that up. Now you have too much food. Break out the tupperware… start storing it. Now clean up the pots and pans you used… Wanna eat dinner later? Get ready to clean that tupperware too!
All good? Great! Now you can finally do what you want to do- ohhhh wait… it’s midnight. Gotta get to sleep. You have to work in the morning. There’s just not enough time in the day, is there?
And to think… as a kid I always wondered why my parents drank and smoked. Now here I am with a glass of mead in one hand and an e-cigarette in the other just trying not to lose it.
I feel like my entire life, more and more time is stolen from me. I get less and less of it. And many other adults I talk to say “psh, you don’t even have a wife and kids yet!” Oh great. I can only imagine what life’ll be like then. I’ll go completely out of my mind!
Why is all this time stolen from me? Why was it given to me only to be taken away so quickly? I have maybe 2-3 hours to myself at the end of the day (and that’s if I procrastinate with stuff), and only 6 to myself on the weekends (if I continue procrastinating). Sound like a lot? I used to have 7 hours a day, with 14 on the weekends (with no procrastination).
People ask me why I “have no life”… no social life. I never go outside and do things. You know why? Because they are chores. They take away from my free time. There’s no way you can convince me that a social situation is free time. It isn’t. You’re in a situation out of your control, and you are powerless to whatever it brings to you.
Why don’t I leave my house? Why am I always in front of my computer? Because it’s all the time I have. Because that’s time I wanted to myself to do whatever I wanted. When you spend time with others, you have to share your free time with other people now. I’m feeling more and more selfish as I get older. This is time I used to have surplus amounts of… so much that I didn’t mind sharing some of it. Now I’ve had to share it with so many people, and with so many situations of things I don’t want to do that I feel like a slave.
Getting older sucks. Dear children of the world, this is an insight as to what it’s like to grow up. If you think your life is hard now, take a look at what’s around the corner. Be thankful for the time you have, because soon everything in the world will forcefully take more and more of it from you.