Adulting 101

Every household has its own version of this timeless advice: “Study hard in school to get into a good college, then your life is set. Get good grades in college to land a good job, then your life is set.”

I followed it all. I did everything right. And now that I have a good job, I can’t help but wonder—is my life really set? If so… what now?

People often talk about a mid-life crisis, but what about a young-adult crisis? No one really prepares us for the abrupt shift from carefree student life to the rigid 9 to 5 grind. Back in college, there was freedom—bunking classes, spending hours in the canteen, making spontaneous plans with friends. But now? Work feels like being a caged bird. You work hard to earn money, yet ironically, you barely have time to spend it. The adult version of “playtime” is apparently just scrolling through Netflix and pretending we have choices.

It’s not even been a year since I started working, but responsibilities are already piling up. The transition is overwhelming. One day, you’re a student with flexible deadlines and endless possibilities, and the next, you’re an employee adjusting to an eight to ten-hour schedule, expected to have everything figured out. Spoiler alert: no one really does.

Lately, I’ve been coding so much that life itself feels… programmed. There are moments when I wonder if I’ve lost the ability to truly feel. Not in a sad way, just in "when did I become this autopilot version of myself" way. Like my brain runs on scheduled functions now—sleep(), work(), eat(), repeat().

But this isn’t a rant; it’s more of an acknowledgment that change is hard. And as humans, we resist change. Maybe that’s why this phase feels unsettling. There’s a constant, nagging question: What am I even doing with my life? Now that I’ve achieved financial independence—I mean, I did everything my parents told me to—what’s the purpose of my life now?

A classic young-adult crisis, served fresh with a side of existential dread.

On weekdays, if I finish my work early, I often don’t know what to do with my free time. Yeah right, I just need to relax and binge-watch something. But over time, I realized that if I work in a company, and in my free time, I go to the gym or for a run, and then in whatever time is left, maybe just read a book or watch a show and relax—this is exactly what started to make me anxious.

It made me feel like I don’t have a purpose beyond my job. Like I’m letting the work I do define me. When I go to a gathering, I don’t want to introduce myself as, “Hey, I’m Harshala, I work at X company as a Y.” Why should something so temporary define me? What happens when I change jobs—do I become a new person every time?

It took time for me to realize we are not the job we do or the company we work for, because all that is variable. We are what we work on ourselves in the time we get before or after work. And that’s how I found my new purpose: I need to define myself.

I need to build an identity that exists outside my company ID card. This is one of the reasons I even started blogging.

Since I’ve started doing this, life feels lighter. I no longer feel like a caged bird in my job. I have something to look forward to every time I finish work—be it the gym, running, or writing for the blog. It feels genuinely gratifying to know that I’m working on myself daily, and that I’m no longer trapped in the monotony of the 9 to 5.

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Growing up might be a trap—but at least now, I know how to sneak my way out of it.