A Completely Unofficial Guide to Being a Millennial

It’s official. We are the adults in the room now.

I mean, the previous generations still act like we’re children, but we are in fact, fully grown ass adults. And if I’m being honest, it kind of sucks. Sure, being an adult has its upsides, but considering the shit we’ve been handed and are dealing with, and just our general society, we be strugglin’.

BUT… at least we’re all in this together, right?

For what it’s worth, at least we know that most of us are in the same place. It seems like no matter who I talk to, successful, still figuring it out, and everything in between, there are some basic universal rules that apply to our generation. Those rules are as follows:

Rule #1: You will always be tired. Not just sometimes. Always.

This isn’t just like, “Oh let me go take a nap and I’ll be Gucci” tired. This is feel it in your bones, soul crushing tired, and naps don’t seem to fix it… although naps are wonderful and I wish I had appreciated them more as a child. Existing is exhausting right now.

Most mornings I wake up feeling ok just about until I get to work. I don’t know if it’s the annoyingly interrupted sleep or just general fatigue associated with chronic illness or the fact that the world is on fire and no one seems keen to put it out — I am tired.

And I know it’s not just me, we see this all over the internet. We’re fucking tired.

Like getting one thing done and needing a break tired.

Like being so tired you can’t actually rest tired.

Like chugging coffee by the gallon and it does nothing tired.

Rest can only do so much for us at this point, but what else can we do? Most of us work too much to have time to make those big life changes to increase energy, and again the world is on fire. It’s kind of hard to just “get past that”.

But we figure it out, and we keep going. It’s not really an option not to.

Rule #2: Every plan sounds good until the day of

I am horrible about this.

There are two versions of me: the planner me and the day-of me.

Planner me is down for anything. She is optimistic, social, absolutely living her best planned life. And then…

There’s day of me. Who says “nope. Absolutely not.”

It’s a cycle every time, and it’s honestly not that I don’t want to do the things. In fact, I very much want to do them but I’m also really good at psyching myself out. I’ll spend the week hyping myself up, and then slowly starts shifting to thinking of ways to “get out of it,” even if it’s something that I really want to do. Don’t ask me why. Though I’m pretty sure this can be traced back to Rule #1 and major anxiety.

Why do so many of us have major anxiety?

Either way, there’s about a 50% chance we’re keeping those plans, and 100% chance of considering not going.

Don’t act like you don’t do this at least sometimes. We see you.

Rule #3: Your personality will slowly become ‘protecting your peace’ and it might be problematic

At some point, you learn about actual boundaries and need to set them.

I have a lot of mixed feelings about this actually. Protecting My Peace started with Black women, and has been adopted by essentially every millennial. And most of the time, I’m here for it. Like, fuck yes, set those boundaries.

But… a lot of people take it too far or use it as an excuse to avoid accountability or discomfort when it is really necessary to engage with those things. Without getting into all the reasons and excuses, I’ll just maybe take an extra second to consider if you’re actually protecting your peace, or if you’re trying to shirk responsibility or are just being an asshole.

Still, we have a lot to protect. Our generation has been through some shit, nonstop, basically raised in a state of chaos. Some of us have been lucky enough to not have to bear the brunt of these things, but most of us seem to have been left to our own devices to figure shit out.

So now, we’re putting our foot down. We’re not accepting less than we deserve, or putting up with peoples bullshit. And honestly? I love that for us.

Rule #4: You will Google your symptoms and you will immediately regret it

If webMD is to be believed, I am fully about to die, all the time.

For someone who is actually diagnosed with a chronic illness, you would think I’d have learned by now, but nope! Every time something is wrong, I’m googling and convincing myself that I have some wildly rare disorder.

At one point I actually convinced myself that my skull must have this specific malformation because I had one symptom that just couldn’t be explained any other way.

The internet is not to be trusted, my friends.

You’re probably not dying. And if you are, you should definitely go to your doctor. (Although our healthcare system is a joke which is why we google in the first place). But seriously, you’re probably not dying.

Rule #5: You will get weirdly into routines — but not necessarily actually follow them

Who else loves a new planner at basically any opportunity?

I’m a stationary girlie, so if I have a reason to buy a new planner, journal, pens, fucking sticky notes — I’m going to. And I love a new routine.

There’s just something so fulfilling about planning out a new routine that will surely change your whole life… it’s another thing entirely to actually stick to that routine. Will it change your life? Maybe. We have to do the things to find out though, and that’s a lot of work.

We’re not lazy by any means, but we are (again) fucking tired.

Still, we buy the planner, research the routines, and get all hyped for the “new you” that will appear with this new routine. Every. Damn. Time. And ya know what? I don’t think there’s anything wrong with trying.

It would be great if we could actually have the time, energy, or resources to execute though… just sayin.

But wait, there’s more…

These are just a handful of things that we all seem to be doing. There are all these weird adult things that just start happening and we’re all just stumbling around trying to figure out the best supplement for gut health and when is the right time to finally start therapy.

Being an adult is weird enough; being a millennial adult feels like a different ballgame entirely. Who’d have thought that raising a generation with the belief that you just have to work hard for the American Dream that doesn’t actually exist would result in an entire generation of maladjusted, slightly feral individuals who are sick and tired of the bullshit? Couldn’t have been predicted.

But again, we’re all in this together, whether we like it or not, so why not enjoy it a little bit?