Seeing parents getting old and inactive 🥲
Adulthood
Although most of us moved out as teens to pursue our degrees, during college, one is surrounded by friends all around, and it's hard for loneliness to hit except for those 1 AM Nights. But as an early career working professional, for the 1st time in life, most start feeling lonely, pick themselves up cook their meals, and maybe apply to new jobs because you hate your current job.
The first thought over the weekends is to do the laundry and clean up the mess you made over there is no one for you to come back to, no matter how bad your day was, you still have to work on weekdays.
What I hate the most about this stage is the relationships and friendships, being away from parents, surrounded by people in the office but can't open up to, maybe you are lucky and make friends in the office but still, not even getting the time to call them, and having multiple colleagues to hangout with but the day you switch jobs you will be leaving them behind, just like your high school friends were left behind when you moved to college, just like your college friends were left behind when you moved cities for a job.
You are aware and mature enough to know your mistakes and fuck-ups in the past but you are also chained in the shackles of habits you have made over the last 20 years. There is an opportunity cost to everything, do you sleep early on the weekend or party Friday night and end up being hungover on Saturday too, do you give your best to the job or start your master's prep?
It's like a world of illusions that lets you believe that something better is 10 steps away and does not let you sit still in the present.
Boy do I agree. I wonder if people who buy into the "growth" bs ever think about how all of the effort, at the cost of one's personal life, for the most part only ends up benefitting the employer.
As for moving out, for someone like me who prefers WFH due to social anxiety + avoiding forced interactions at the office + wanting to enjoy the relatively clean environment and slower pace of a lesser developed city, it's painful to be judged as a low-ambition simpleton (as if there's something wrong with being that) for simply having a preference to stay at home, and having to hear things like "to earn a living, one must move out sooner or later".
this 😫