Early adulthood is all about finding your feet and your space. It's about learning what you can do without many constraints. It's discovering that you can have cereal for dinner without there being a parent to tell you off. You can stay up way past your bedtime with no repercussions beyond your lack of sleep the following day. Leave your room in a mess and spend all your disposable income on books instead of putting something aside in your savings. Without those pesky parents the sky is the limit.
And as your grow (not much) older, as you settle into adulthood in your own terms you realize that you still need some degree of parenting, except now it's on you to parent yourself. You need to figure out what boundaries and rules to put in place, and you need to know why you've put them there.
It has been a very hard earned lesson that sometimes there is a huge difference between what I want and what I need. And furthermore that it's on me to ensure I cater to the former before I indulge in the latter. What I want is to binge watch a show on Netflix, but what I need is to first take the time to ensure I am okay. That I am centered and that there is nothing more pressing to do before opening that promising tab on my laptop. It's on me to stop myself in between episodes and ask myself if there is anything else more productive I should be doing with my time before I hit play again. It's on me to know I probably won't stop the binge by myself and therefore I need to set a timer on my phone so I don't waste an afternoon way. I need to know this. I am my own parent now.
This isn't some inspirational post, it's just a reminder to myself. I think we all need one from time to time.
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