Welcome to my rant in which I am disgruntled that life seems like it should get easier as you get older, but in reality, in a million little ways it never does. Sigh.

Living with your parents is hands down my number one tip to save money. It’s not an option for everyone, I totally get that, but especially if you recently graduated and mom and/or dad are willing to take you in – the longer you can tolerate living like that, the better chance you’ll have to make some massive debt payments/build up a really good emergency fund/etc.

I still totally advocate for that. And I also know a ton of Gen Z and Millennials are camping out with the ‘rents the last two years to deal with the pandemic fallout both financially and to like deal with the fact that global plagues are terrifying.

If you follow my net worth updates, you’re well aware that since my lease was up in July 2020, I have been back at my dad’s.

Overall – the benefits of moving back home are really pretty good if it works for your family. But there are downsides. Some are totally expected but others have been, to me, surprising…

Recently I have been going through a super weird panic cycle getting ready to move out of my dad’s house again.

I can’t remember this ever happening before and I sort of think it’s related to how long I’ve been here.

The longest I spent in this house over the last nineteen years was 4 months in the summer of 2015, during which I knew the whole time what date my next contract started.

Even the three summers I spent at home during college were only three months long.

When I leave, I will have been here for 19 months.

All I’ve wanted to do since I got here was leave and now I feel like I’ve forgotten how to adult.

I’ve run the numbers for my expenses over the next few years and have an optimal Plan A, a totally doable Plan B, a the world falls apart again Plan C, and even a Plan D.

I know moving is always full of unpleasant surprise expenses and have some extra money socked away for that. I even know it takes 2-3 months to really settle in and stop getting caught unaware that something needs to be bought.

Who don’t any other adults who have moved home and then went back into the world write about this? Am I the only one who had forgotten how to function??

We usually write all about lack of privacy and how we step on each other’s toes (kids and parents alike) – which is true.

But I feel like I’m 18 and relaunching into the world again and I have no idea what I’m doing.

And somehow I have even less confidence than I did at 18?!?!

That actually reminds me of a work story where we added a fairly dangerous act into a show I was working on and I was really anxious about calling it and after I got through the first show of it successfully, I was really excited. The next day my assistant sat down and called it like it was just no thing.

My best friend on that show was the same age I am and as I stood behind her at a safe distance, watching her call and talking to him, I was like, dang, she just seems so not tense and totally fine (and to my total delight, he did also inform me that no one had a clue I was so stressed about calling that act). He asked me what could’ve gone wrong with the act and I started rattling off easily a dozen bad things I’d seen over the years and he pointed out that when I call an act like that, I carry the weight of all the things I’d seen gone wrong (and I’m looking for indicators they may happen again). My assistant had been stage managing for two years – she just zips through a call blissfully unaware of the possible nightmares that could happen in front of her at any second.

Which is not to say either of us were unaware of the danger – she was just aware in a theoretical sense and I was aware in an “I’ve dialed 911 for a friend who has fallen off this contraption before” sense.

I feel like I’ve been thinking a lot about the things I didn’t love about living in the UK last time. It was a super lonely year. Everything always felt very expensive. There is a perpetual awareness that I don’t fit in. Grad school makes you feel dumb all the time. I gained a ton of weight.

But what exactly is the alternative? To never leave my childhood bedroom again?

That’s not even an actual option in life unless I buy this house when my dad sells it, which would be… next level insane.

Also living together doesn’t do anything good for my relationship with dad.

Sigh.

I guess I’m going to do the scary thing. Part of my brain is literally telling me to shut up and that I will be fine and but there is definitely an evil whisper going “nah-nah-nah-you’re-gonna-fail” that I can’t ever remember hearing and I have no idea why it’s there.

I suspect my mom used to yell at me that of course I was going to succeed so loudly I couldn’t hear that stupid voice. So I suppose I’ll have to learn how to yell that at it myself now.