What No One Told You About Being an Adult

Welcome back to another episode of how to twenty-something where today’s topic is uncovering all of the things no one tells you when it comes to adulthood

My first memory of holy shit I’m an adult and I have to deal with this was while I was having my first crisis just 6 days after moving into my very first apartment

And on day 4 of my first full-time job

When I got a call from one of my roommates telling me our apartment is flooding.. We lived on the third floor so I was very confused 

I had just bought brand new furniture, finished setting up my room, was still extremely nervous to be in an office and with a job and responsibilities, I only know one other person in Orlando and it was one of my sisters best friends

And I got this call in the middle of my work day

I can’t just go home.. It was my fourth day and my office was 30 miles from my apartment

So i literally had to wait the entire day to return, see the damage, and figure out where the hell I’m sleeping that night so I can make it to work again the next morning

Needless to say I was a disaster

Adulthood just smacked me every which way across the face

This was my apartment, my responsibility, my job to figure out what to do next

It turns out someone was walking in the attic, which was above the fourth floor, stepped off the platform and onto the fire sprinkler pipe, broke it and tons literal tons of water came rushing down the unit above us, trickled down through the walls and ceiling and flooded our place

That Saturday was the UF vs UM game in Orlando and my friends were going to stay with me and I was so excited to show off my new place and new city… it also meant that there were no hotels available for the apartment to put the three of us, who just met five days prior, in a hotel

They offered up a one bedroom apartment that wreaked of cigarette smoke and an air mattress for us to share

My roommates were from orlando so they both had family to stay with and I did not

Thank god for my sisters friend paige who said I could come stay with her as this mess got taken care of and thank god all of the water that came into our apartment only affected the main living quarters and none of the bedrooms but they had to shut off all the power

We hadn’t gotten a couch yet so nothing of ours got ruined.. It was just a fiasco of a situation to deal with when I was already filled with nerves with wanting to do well in my first job

Needless to say, your girl was stressed

Now I don’t want to say adulthood is stressful, but I did have to learn right out the gates that shit is going to happen and you’re going to have to learn what you can control to get a grip on your situation

Little did I know what the following 7 months had in store for me with the global pandemic

But this episode isn’t just about my crappy start to adulthood, this episode is to shed light to all of the things no one tells you or prepares you for as you move through your twenties

Which essentially is what this entire podcast is about, so why not make an episode giving an overview of what you don’t know you don’t know

Like how no one told you that your first job is probably going to suck

That that first full-time job is more about learning how to manage a full-time job than it is about finding your calling

Figuring out where to plug in a social life, working out, going grocery shopping, having a hobby

And the confusion that comes with being able to have a full day of school, practice or game days, being in 4 clubs, managing homework and studies, and seeing friends in high school is nowhere near the same as in the real world or what you experienced the previous four years in college

That now you have less energy and what seems to be far less time to do anything outside of your full-time job

But also how important it is to have a life outside of your job

A lesson I learned the very hard way was not tying my identity and purpose to my full-time job

Yes, if you’re an entrepreneur it’s literally who you are to your core

But if you’re working under someone else, it oh so most definitely isn’t

The way I see it is your 9 to 5 can serve as 3 potential things: 

• To support the life and activities you want to do outside of work

• To create the bridge for you to get to where you actually want to go

• To give you life, where it is very fulfilling

It can be more than 1 of those three but what you really want to make sure of, and that no one tells you about beforehand, is that your job is not who you are and should not takeaway from you living our life

Where it’s causing you so much stress and unhappiness you have no energy to do anything else

It also should not be who you are if you’re working under someone else because your job is not guaranteed 

You could lose it with zero notice and be left with nothing

Which is why I stress the life you need to keep living outside of it

The friendships, hobbies, routine, and other enjoyment or peaceful factors that will act as your support system for when you do lose your job either by getting fired, furloughed, laid off, or quitting

Which is also bound to happen in your twenties especially since 2020

Apparently 1 in 5 young millennials have experienced some form of job loss since the pandemic

I am definitely one of those people and it completely changed the trajectory of my life as a result

No one told me the likelihood of losing your job in your twenties, but also no one experienced a global pandemic in their twenties to know that it would fuck up the entire market and have multiple repercussions even five years later

No one also tells you how hard it would be to quit your job when the time comes

You’re going to feel this sense of guilt or duty that you owe your employer an easy transition out

So allow me to be the one to tell you, you don’t owe them shit

This is kind of morbid but if you were to die unexpectedly, your role would be replaced within the week

Yet you have this tie to your job

You don’t ever want to burn bridges, but also it’s important to understand that there is never going to be a right time to give your notice

Don’t worry about the company, they’ll be fine… worry about yourself and what you want out of your job

Because how you take care of yourself – sleeping, eating healthy, moving your body, finding interests, all of that is far more important than your career and even more important than your social life

One of my clients right now is about to start her first full time job, well by the time this episode airs she’ll be a month into it

And before her first day she told me she might have to cancel a family trip to halloween horror nights because she would have to fly back on a monday and miss some work only a few weeks into working there

To which i helped her understand that you’re allowed to live your life, in fact you need to live your life outside of your career.. Just communicate with them on your first day that you have this family trip and want to know what the protocol is since her pto won’t have kicked in yet

I told her to prepare to take a half day of no pay or you could ask to make up the four missing hours through the rest of the week

But life doesn’t stop because you’re working 40 hours a week

Onto the next topic of what no one tells you about is

Social media can make it really challenging for you to grasp the concept of how unimportant a social status is in the real world because you constantly see people online living it up in their twenties and doing all these cool things

So you feel like you also need to be doing something similar or have a weekend filled with social plans in order to also be living it up in your twenties

But your own health comes first, and that means finding people who are there for you and not just the social group

No one told you making and keeping friendships as an adult would be hard

At the time of me planning this episode out, I recently pitched my book club at my friends event called clt pitch partners

And while pitching why people should join my book club I mentioned one of the purposes behind creating it and that is because making friends as an adult is hard and seeing your friends regularly is also hard and book club reserves a spot on the calendar to come together and catch up for a common reason: the book of the month and then yap about other life updates as well

Because even when you finally find your adult friends in your city, keeping them, as in seeing them frequently enough is tougher than you could ever imagine

Everyone has complicated schedules and other commitments, interests, and friends, so sometimes you’ll go a month of two or three without hanging out and then you feel disconnected and don’t fully understand why

And that’s something no one tells you about

Because you go from grade school to college where you’re pretty much seeing the same people over and over again with similar schedules and places to gather

And in the real world there are so many other variables at play so what it takes to keep your friends in the loop of your life and vice versa is a hell of lot more effort than what you’re used to

Simply because proximity is a massive factor in friendships and you grew up with this proximity, but as adults nothing is consistent so your friend could start out down the hall and end up 30 minutes away or even a multiple states away

So it’s both making new friends as an adult and then keeping those friends at the top of your mind are two things no one tells you about

Under that topic of friendships, no one tells you that you’re going to cycle through friendships A LOT

And it doesn’t mean something is wrong with you or that you’re bad at making friends, but rather it’s because you’re surrounded by so many more different walks of life

People who grew up differently from you and as you carve away at a friendship, in other words as you get to know them, you’re going to realize that this person actually isn’t a friend for you

People are also going to grow and change a lot in their twenties, their priorities will shift, their vision will change, and you come to a point where you’re no longer on the same page

That the page is so different you can’t relate to this person anymore

You’re also going to grow and change and learn more about what you are looking for in a friend

What you require and who fits the bill

Not to mention how out of place you’ll constantly feel

No one tells you the insane amount of doubt or imposter syndrome as you go to try something new or change your ways and the people you might lose along the way of this self discovery

I know when I realized I don’t like alcohol and stopped consuming it for the most part, I would get really hard on myself and think why can’t I just be like everyone else

Enjoy the drink, let the night slip away, let loose

Similarly, being an entrepreneur at the ripe age of 24, any time I would question if this is the path for me, I would think why can’t I be quote unquote normal and be content with a 9-5

Why is my brain different

Feeling out of place is part of your twenties because you’re finally stepping into your individual self

You go your whole life listening to everyone else tell you the path to follow, how to behave, a cog in a machine, you’re limited to who you’re friends with and the people you’re surrounded by

And then you’re given this new level of freedom where you can make choices for yourself, take risks, see how things play out

Which means that you’re going to learn about yourself – your likes, dislikes, and who you are and it could very well look starkly different from who you used to be

This identity that’s being formed is going to make you feel very out of place

It’s going to lead to you losing people and finding new people because you do outgrow a lot of people from your teens and early twenties as you continue to grow and

Meaning, your first love, your relationship that you enter into when you’re 20, 21, or 22 is probably not your forever person

There are definitely exceptions to this, but I will say that for a majority of you listening, you’re going to go through a break up and you’re going to need that break up to teach you a lot about yourself, your relationships, and what you’re looking for in a person

So yeah, the relationship you enter into in your early twenties is not the person you’re going to marry, but I can almost guarantee that it will teach you a lot about what you do want

It’s like a canon event to break up with your college boo and find your own way  

Besides, it’s so important to be single for a chunk of your twenties because of what you learn about yourself, the life you create for yourself, and the standards you set so you know you’re not settling for some finance bro who replies with one word texts and emojis

You’re going to realize really soon that you are in charge of your own experiences

Meaning, if you don’t like something you have the power to change it and if you do like something you have the power to create more of it

It’s not on mom and dad to bail you out, you can’t place blame on anyone else besides yourself

No one told you that part of being an adult means the level of accountability required on you to show up for yourself

To pay your bills, buy your groceries, make your meals, choose you friends, choose how you spend your free time and free money, decide on a career path

Your life is fully in your hands for the first time ever

And it’s why I do what I do because holy shit it’s overwhelming and there is no road map and it does feel very lonely

But it doesn’t have to be

To which i’ll remind you that there are always openings to work with me if you need help navigating your twenties

The link to book a call is always in the show notes and it’s on my website at jessdiamondcoaching.com 

But there are so many pieces and parts of adulthood that is forced learning and that no one tells you about

It’s not a punishment, it’s an opportunity to grow and evolve into the life you want for yourself

While also knowing that that life will grow and evolve as you come across more and more learning experiences

You’re going to struggle, it’s going to have its challenges, but these hardships don’t define you they become a part of your success story

And yes it could be the wildest, most complicated, makes absolutely no sense, has you screaming why me, or this isn’t fair, kind of story, but trust me.. it’s part of becoming an adult

Which is exactly how I’m going to wrap up this episode

So if you liked what you heard, if you learned something new, if you know an adult who is frustrated with adulting things, then please share this episode, post it to social media, send it to a friend, just please help me help the other twenty-somethings who are trying to navigate the most confusing decade of their life

And as always, I can’t wait to be in your headphones again next week with another brand new episode