Being an Adult

It scheduled me for Thursday 11-2. That devil. How dare it think I could work those hours. I am a kid. I go to high school. Who cares if I've hit my eighteenth year and the little m for minor is no longer next to my name. I was not ready. Not ready to leave my protected covering and reveal my tender flesh to the world. I wanted to be a kid.

My worries did not come from a fear I'd lose my love of games like Animal Crossing or Pokemon, or that I'd stop making goofy food projects just for the fun of creation, it was my heart. I was eighteen. I could now have heart attacks. Now I know anyone can have health issues, but to me, it felt like my heart had become old once that deviant scheduling software put me in during school hours. My childhood protection was gone. Children are expected to make mistakes. Teen workers can ask for a day off of work and the world thinks their employer would be mean not to them the day. Being an adult takes away this societal shield.

So what did I do in response to this internal crisis? I went ahead and made an investment portfolio with Weatlhfront. Wealthfront has a five-hundred-dollar minimum so... I put my Papa Ginos Mullah into the market. Now as rash as this sounds, I did do my research about different funds and automated investment services (Robo-Funds), including dabbling with a different investing service earlier, Acorn. Investing at a young age had been on my mind recently, something I told myself it would be cool to try out, but also something I felt I would not actually get around to doing.

I opened my account and saw a graph. A graph showing the value of my expected investments as each year passed. It hit zero at 73. I interpreted the image and realized I was predicted to die at 73 years old. Welp. Then I reinterpreted the image and realized that was when my portfolio would have zero dollars left assuming I retired at 65 and took out living expenses from my fund. I felt old. Old man Ian. What was I doing?

There it was. The spear that penetrated me when I was scheduled Thursday 11-2. Competition. Competition with myself. The true fear. Having a shield is nice, but I'm okay giving that up. A warriors spear, a potters wheel, an artists pen, that is what lets you compete. I place so much value on goals. Each step through life is towards something. In high school, an awful lot of those steps were towards college. But in middle school, my steps were towards playing on the Magic Pro Tour. And now, old man Ian has to outdo himself through the stock market.

It is easy to see your next step as a kid. Your days are prescheduled, and the paths available to you are laid out with neat signs. Being an adult is harder. You do not know what your next goal is every second of every day. Choosing what you want to do next is like putting your hand into a gummy worm, earthworm, tarantula infested barrel. Some things lead to gold, others might be a little dirty, and then a few ideas leave nasty stings. So I am an adult now. Maybe I'll continue looking at life through goals, but who knows. I like enjoying life. Thankfully, there is a lot of nice people and cool things out there, and those things don't care if you've brought your shield or spear with you. So I guess I got to go exploring.