Why I’m in no great hurry to grow up (From Bradford Telegraph and Argus)

Why I’m in no great hurry to grow up

8:54am Wednesday 16th July 2008 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

Imagine if your life goals were handed to you on a plate tomorrow. You land your dream job, meet ‘the one’ and get a mortgage. What a nightmare that would be! My number one priorities are basking in immaturity and continuing my search for the ultimate fun.

I’ve been aware of a race to do everything first and quickest at every age because I’m usually traipsing behind the rest. I can’t believe that my friends and I used to agonise over not being allowed to go out to Yeadon Tarn on a school night to drink cider.

If only we’d known how much more fun partying would be in our late teens! Thank goodness I spent my teenage years racking up my nerd credentials. Some of my old classmates might have the equivalent of a decade’s experience on me, but I bet they’ll be grey-haired or balding in no time.

I know many 20-year-olds leading the lives I thought we would be leading when we were 30.

If, like me, you’re waddling through life’s experiences at a slow pace, my reassurance to you is that I don’t have any regrets so far. There is no comparison between the house parties in high school and the house parties that come later on. Very few who party hard at 12 still do at 21.

I’m a fully-fledged filthy smoker now but if I’d been addicted back in school I would have needed to ‘patch up’ to make it through double maths.

The way I see it, if you want a 20 year old’s pleasures when you’re 14, you have to make do with a low budget version.

By age 21, you can split young people into two groups; the ones getting ‘there’ early and the ones who have accepted that ‘there’ is a long way off.

A quick session of Facebook spying reveals the two paths people choose when the realities of postadolescence hit home.

Young people are either posing partylovers with a lengthy section dedicated to ‘favourite music’ but no employment status. Or they’ll have careers and will be cohabiting, engaged, married or pregnant.

Everyone grows up at different speeds. But to the high school geeks and confused twenty-somethings whose letterboxes are filled with wedding invitations, I would like to say, there’s no race to growup! There are your thirties, forties and beyond to live with a partner, spend weekends browsing for new curtains and ironing children’s cardigans.

It’s easier to plan your life rather than remain in total ignorance as to how things might turn out, but it’s also boring.

The alternative is a nice shrug of the shoulders in the face of scary, life-changing decisions. You can spend these years travelling, renting with friends, taking relationships slowly, doing all kinds of work to meet different people or working towards a dream job.

It may sound like I’m praising the avoidance of impressive achievements, but it’s far more fun to not know where you’ll end up.