# 98 Who wants to be a grown up anyway?

Two articles from Cracked.com popped up in as many minutes on my Facebook this week. This and this.

I may not be as young as I was, but I can still remember how conceited, rebellious and just downright bloody annoying I was. I put myself off wanting kids because I can remember being one! I recollect a time when I was so passionate about certain music or films that I became obsessed by them. Now I just cringe when I come across them.

Our perspectives change. The way you feel now will not be the same way you feel in 5 or 10 years no matter what you might think. It's just the way it is, because LIFE shapes you. It is inevitable and you cannot stop it, unless you decide to live in a box all your life and that would be just stupid.

I have a saying - 'I wish I'd listened to my mother'. This, she is rightfully flattered by (oh yes, I did tell her). And I wish I had. I guess a lot of us did. Looking back the advice was quite right. But let's face it, who's kids actually listen to their parents and follow their advice voluntarily? I wasn't the most rebellious child in the village but I certainly wasn't good as gold, and damn did I pay for those rebellious mistakes.Of course, without them I wouldn't be where I am now. Make of that what you will.

That, as you get older, you will become more cyncial, wiser, tougher, and perhaps even like me, less caring about the things that riled you as a teen, is a truth. As you enter the real world, after education, after the University bubble has burst, after you discover that standing up on your own two feet sucks, you will be frustrated and bemused by the way public services work, discover that customer services give anything but, that lovers will cheat on you, that grown up friends will behave just the same as when they were at school, that the food you love will make you fat and that life will become a vicious cycle of work and bills strung together by over enthusiastic bouts of shopping - that temporary plaster that always leads to misery.

Ummm, yes it is

Being vegetarian will not change the way the food industry works and refusing to drive will not reduce our carbon footprint. But of course, that won't stop you giving it a go. If things are going to change, they will just change.

Some of your dreams will inevitably get lost along the way. If you're lucky you'll get a second chance on them. You will discover that you cannot change the world by ranting and raving on Facebook or protesting outside some faceless corporate monstrosity. And one day you'll wake up, hit 30 and think what the f*** happened there?

When I was in my 20s things were much easier. My relationships were a bit hit and miss, but I had work (even if I wasn't following my dream), I went on holiday abroad twice a year, I found it easy to run a car on my wages, I saw my parents regularly. This has changed and right now there's not a lot I can do about it. I made my choices, I took risks that may or may not pay off. It's all a game you see.

There are few philosophies I have followed throughout, except self reliance and that moral code I speak of sometimes. And of course this, because no matter what generation you come from, this always seems strangely relevant.