I think it is just the repetitive nature of adulthood. There are constantly dishes that need to be washed, laundry to be done, vacuuming, it just becomes very mundane. I suppose there are peoplethat take comfort in the routine but for some it begins to feel rather pointless.
Money. It started out as a tool for simpler trade, but it has become a weapon, a status symbol, a life goal, a worry, an addiction and much more for different people.
Unfinished conversations, unresolved feelings, or people who drift away without explanation all pile up in the background like emotional clutter. This coupled with bills, deadlines, noise, notifications not catastrophic, just constant. Like background static that slowly grinds you down over time.
Just leaves this constant state too much to do and never getting anything done.
The daily grind.
Get home from work tired, have to do chores, prep meal for next day, take care of animals, find time to work out, find time to mentally reset.
Mental health is the obvious answer lol. No one talks about it face to face, and those who ARE more open about it get labeled as ‘dramatic’ and ‘attention seekers’
Routine. It doesn’t matter if it’s something fun, if you keep doing the same thing over and over even enjoyable activities can begin to feel like a chore. That’s why you’ve gotta try new things; even if you don’t like it it can rekindle the fun in your hobby/routine.
I swear. I don’t know how many more Monday-Fridays I have in me. Working all the daylight hours away, spending less than a handful of hours with my loved ones, then going to bed so I can do it again, and again, and again, and again…
Being “on” all day. Pretending to be upbeat at work, replying to messages, nodding through small talk… it’s like acting in a play you didn’t audition for, every single day. By the time I’m home, I feel like I’ve used up my entire personality.
Probably not a normal part of most people’s lives, but my vendors (work) have been really draining me lately. Long delays, no communication, no accountability……it’s so frustrating.
Noise, all the time. Cities are noisy. You can hear traffic noise inside, it’s worse outside, you put noise cancelling headphones in with music or whatever to get rid of the other noise. Exhausting!!
Youth sports. By the time you’ve ridden the bench at endless soccer, baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, and lacrosse practices and games, you look forward to the end of the season so you can have a little bit of your life back.
For all the talk about the energy you feel and how it’s good for your health, sometimes it feels like a drag that’s just going to make you feel even more exhausted at the end of it
Needing to contact literally any large company or government service now. Being able to just pick up a phone and speak to someone is gone, now you’re digging through a useless faq page of a website, trying to find the correct combination of key words to get a chat bot to give you a phone number.
Phoning a number and going through 10 minutes of robot voice options, waiting on hold for 20 minutes to hit some Indian call centre where the person is about as useful as a chocolate tea pot and will ask you all the questions the robot did again, before referring you to the support you need, only for it to take 48 hours for them to email you, or worse ‘arrange a call back’ for you to inevitably miss the exactly 10 seconds they’ll ring your phone for, forcing you to need to start the whole process again.
Waking up early and specifically waking up to an alarm. I dont know why, but no matter how early I go to bed, I feel like shit when I’m woken up by my alarm. Gives me some real existential dread knowing that I’ll feel this way again and again with the only reprieve being weekends
The daily routine. The get up, go to work, do the same thing as you did yesterday, head home, watch TV, make dinner, wash dishes, brush teeth, go to bed.
Humans crave novelty; you need to give yourself some or else even the most basic things wear on you.
Work.
The overwhelming majority of humans do meaningless work that has no bearing on the population of the planet, their country, or even their immediate milieu. There are maybe ten professions indispensable to the vitality of the species. All else, gratuitous.
People circling me, waiting for me to finish my lunch so they can disturb me 🦈 and quite frankly I want to tell them to fuck off but we are at work 🤷🏽♀️ and I will get in trouble.
Kids sports. It isn’t like it was when I was a kid. They take it very seriously, even at a young age. There are tons of practices and games, which takes over your life during that specific sports season. There are politics involved. Don’t even get me started on the money.
Regulatory compliance. The modern man is basically just a compliance machine. And an overly complicated one.
If you explained your legal realities to an anceint person, they wouldn’t even think you were a slave, they’d think you were a slave’s slave.
Our life is figuring out what laws impact us at every single turn, driving, home repairs, medical treatments, things we own, how we have things we have, hobbies, what places we can do and not do things, ever changing etc.
Insurance systems and warranties etc, even when not living intrinsically under the direct dealing of a “law” per se, you have no idea how the systems you are generally all but, if not actually, forced into, will be. What’s covered? When is it covered? Oh, that’s covered, but your form wasn’t done right, so it’s not covered.
I’d pay more taxes just to be left alone. Wtf is the tax code? The zillion registrations and mini taxes?
Just charge me $1,000 for my registration so I don’t have to randomly renew it or become a criminal by accident. Leave me alone, I’d rather get a second job and pay the 1K then deal with the dang papers and filings.
I’ll pay a 25% flat tax and lose money just to be left the fuck alone, I’ll work more, I’d rather cancel my media services and buy less steak than deal with this insanity.
Life is nothing but being forced at gunpoint to be filing TPS reports for no good reason. Permits, taxes, insurances, registrations, licenses. And they all need renewed, tweaked, the rules change constantly. Are you a criminal today? You don’t know.
Did you go camping this week? Have your hatchet in your car when you visit an office later? Good citizen.
Leave your fishing knife in your car at the same office? Criminal.
Why? Because F you, that’s why.
Did you tint your windows wrong? Criminal, maybe, which town are you in now?
That’s before you get to people in an HOA, you thought you were going to put up a fence? Not that one fool. Oh wait, did your quote come back? Don’t worry about that fence, it’s been changed and that one isn’t allowed anymore you need the other type of fence.
Being polite to the toxic people in your life because they are part of a crucial social circle in your life- not being able to avoid the toxicity is draining.
Every second of your life costing money. It doesn’t matter what you are doing a bill is growing and you’ll have to pay it eventually or it will snowball. You could be sitting quietly in your room thinking you aren’t spending money but rent is ether building up for next month or running down if you already paid it. Existence comes at a financial cost every second until you die.
The expectation to be perfect and the expectation to be positive all the time. Like being fallible or having a full range of emotions is somehow wrong.
Working a 9-5 job. It seems like the standard routine, but the energy it takes to maintain focus, meet deadlines, deal with office politics, and balance personal life can be way more draining than most people admit. It’s like running on empty, even when you’re not physically doing anything
Time you need to get to work and back. It can easily make an 8 hour workday into 10 hours or more if you have to travel long distances every day or have to deal with traffic/delays. Add this to cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and cooking and it’s no wonder we got almost no free time after we finished work.
Comments
Small talk, maybe just me
Me first:
Getting ready to leave the house on time.
Replying to messages.
Driving.
Traffic/ commute in general. And that’s coming from someone living in a walkable city. Can’t imagine how bad it must be for Americans
Sex.
Parenting
Being always contactable. Not so long ago if you left the house that was it.
Artificial light
Working
Human contact tbh.
Keeping up with sleep
Job
School.
Showers
Constant barrage of negative news.
Planning what to eat for dinner every day.
Work
So many things are just a grind. Cleaning, laundry, shopping, cooking. None of it is very hard, it’s just having to do it all the time gets draining.
I think it is just the repetitive nature of adulthood. There are constantly dishes that need to be washed, laundry to be done, vacuuming, it just becomes very mundane. I suppose there are peoplethat take comfort in the routine but for some it begins to feel rather pointless.
Talking. I feel like I only have so many words per day. Once I reach that word count, it’s exhausting trying to keep speaking.
Traffic
Using and owning smartphones. Becoming a necessity while facilitating new and unprecedented mental health problems in society.
40 h workweek
Money. It started out as a tool for simpler trade, but it has become a weapon, a status symbol, a life goal, a worry, an addiction and much more for different people.
Unfinished conversations, unresolved feelings, or people who drift away without explanation all pile up in the background like emotional clutter. This coupled with bills, deadlines, noise, notifications not catastrophic, just constant. Like background static that slowly grinds you down over time.
Just leaves this constant state too much to do and never getting anything done.
Travelling to work and back
The daily grind.
Get home from work tired, have to do chores, prep meal for next day, take care of animals, find time to work out, find time to mentally reset.
Paying bills
Mental health is the obvious answer lol. No one talks about it face to face, and those who ARE more open about it get labeled as ‘dramatic’ and ‘attention seekers’
Laundry. Never-ending laundry. Especially with kids
Laundry
Be nice to people who treat you like shit and not in the good way lol
Traffic. Phones. Shopping centres.
Talking on the phone, on earbuds/headphones, while busy doing something else. Wears ya out.
Commuting to work.
Routine. It doesn’t matter if it’s something fun, if you keep doing the same thing over and over even enjoyable activities can begin to feel like a chore. That’s why you’ve gotta try new things; even if you don’t like it it can rekindle the fun in your hobby/routine.
Doom scrolling on social media
The work week.
I swear. I don’t know how many more Monday-Fridays I have in me. Working all the daylight hours away, spending less than a handful of hours with my loved ones, then going to bed so I can do it again, and again, and again, and again…
Waking up on time/rolling out of bed. Eh, I’d rather stay in and nap.
24/7 ‘news’
ie: conjecture, editorial, opinion, prediction, gaslighting, defamation etc.
Being financially responsible for other people
Having to cook dinner every night
Commuting.
Paying bills. You feel good when you get a paycheck, but feel bad seeing how quickly it goes away.
Work
Being “on” all day. Pretending to be upbeat at work, replying to messages, nodding through small talk… it’s like acting in a play you didn’t audition for, every single day. By the time I’m home, I feel like I’ve used up my entire personality.
Cell phones.
Parenting
Inflation. Money constantly loosing value.
Probably not a normal part of most people’s lives, but my vendors (work) have been really draining me lately. Long delays, no communication, no accountability……it’s so frustrating.
Getting ready for work and hearing the alarm go off.
Relationships. Even the ones that seem really nice are draining.
Having a commute.
Constant negative news. So very depressing. I no longer watch, or listen.
Work
Figuring out what to eat for dinner. Every. Single. Day.
Timesheets
Social media
Noise, all the time. Cities are noisy. You can hear traffic noise inside, it’s worse outside, you put noise cancelling headphones in with music or whatever to get rid of the other noise. Exhausting!!
Commuting
Commuting
Taking atleast a shower every day, maybe two depending how dirty I am before I go to bed.
Menopause :-/
Having to put a front on in-front of certain friends/people/colleagues ect
Paperwork
The normal house chores that NEVER end…washing clothes, doing dishes, mowing the lawn. I need robots!!!
Youth sports. By the time you’ve ridden the bench at endless soccer, baseball, football, basketball, volleyball, and lacrosse practices and games, you look forward to the end of the season so you can have a little bit of your life back.
Toxic work environments
Living wirh your mother
Kids
Raising good children.
When phones were tethered, we were free. When phones were released, we became tethered !
Going to the gym.
For all the talk about the energy you feel and how it’s good for your health, sometimes it feels like a drag that’s just going to make you feel even more exhausted at the end of it
Kids.. amongst pther things
Figuring out what to have for dinner. Every night. Again and again.
Travel
Commuting to work.
Them credit cards and bills.
Needing to contact literally any large company or government service now. Being able to just pick up a phone and speak to someone is gone, now you’re digging through a useless faq page of a website, trying to find the correct combination of key words to get a chat bot to give you a phone number.
Phoning a number and going through 10 minutes of robot voice options, waiting on hold for 20 minutes to hit some Indian call centre where the person is about as useful as a chocolate tea pot and will ask you all the questions the robot did again, before referring you to the support you need, only for it to take 48 hours for them to email you, or worse ‘arrange a call back’ for you to inevitably miss the exactly 10 seconds they’ll ring your phone for, forcing you to need to start the whole process again.
Dealing with aging parents, especially ones who don’t make it easy.
Waking up early and specifically waking up to an alarm. I dont know why, but no matter how early I go to bed, I feel like shit when I’m woken up by my alarm. Gives me some real existential dread knowing that I’ll feel this way again and again with the only reprieve being weekends
They don’t call work play for a reason. It doesn’t get easier as one ages either. But at least education and health care is free. Ha
Commutes / sorry – see this was already posted and I went and agreed with them
The daily routine. The get up, go to work, do the same thing as you did yesterday, head home, watch TV, make dinner, wash dishes, brush teeth, go to bed.
Humans crave novelty; you need to give yourself some or else even the most basic things wear on you.
Work.
The overwhelming majority of humans do meaningless work that has no bearing on the population of the planet, their country, or even their immediate milieu. There are maybe ten professions indispensable to the vitality of the species. All else, gratuitous.
Decision fatigue. And it seems to be at the root of many of the other comments.
A decent vid about it: https://youtu.be/4EbItW7r3-s
People circling me, waiting for me to finish my lunch so they can disturb me 🦈 and quite frankly I want to tell them to fuck off but we are at work 🤷🏽♀️ and I will get in trouble.
Kids sports. It isn’t like it was when I was a kid. They take it very seriously, even at a young age. There are tons of practices and games, which takes over your life during that specific sports season. There are politics involved. Don’t even get me started on the money.
Having to think about what’s for dinner Every.Single.Day forever and ever
Driving
At 50.. the whole work day seems luck such a scam
Trying to get a good night’s sleep
Regulatory compliance. The modern man is basically just a compliance machine. And an overly complicated one.
If you explained your legal realities to an anceint person, they wouldn’t even think you were a slave, they’d think you were a slave’s slave.
Our life is figuring out what laws impact us at every single turn, driving, home repairs, medical treatments, things we own, how we have things we have, hobbies, what places we can do and not do things, ever changing etc.
Insurance systems and warranties etc, even when not living intrinsically under the direct dealing of a “law” per se, you have no idea how the systems you are generally all but, if not actually, forced into, will be. What’s covered? When is it covered? Oh, that’s covered, but your form wasn’t done right, so it’s not covered.
I’d pay more taxes just to be left alone. Wtf is the tax code? The zillion registrations and mini taxes?
Just charge me $1,000 for my registration so I don’t have to randomly renew it or become a criminal by accident. Leave me alone, I’d rather get a second job and pay the 1K then deal with the dang papers and filings.
I’ll pay a 25% flat tax and lose money just to be left the fuck alone, I’ll work more, I’d rather cancel my media services and buy less steak than deal with this insanity.
Life is nothing but being forced at gunpoint to be filing TPS reports for no good reason. Permits, taxes, insurances, registrations, licenses. And they all need renewed, tweaked, the rules change constantly. Are you a criminal today? You don’t know.
Did you go camping this week? Have your hatchet in your car when you visit an office later? Good citizen.
Leave your fishing knife in your car at the same office? Criminal.
Why? Because F you, that’s why.
Did you tint your windows wrong? Criminal, maybe, which town are you in now?
That’s before you get to people in an HOA, you thought you were going to put up a fence? Not that one fool. Oh wait, did your quote come back? Don’t worry about that fence, it’s been changed and that one isn’t allowed anymore you need the other type of fence.
Being alive. Nothing more exhausting than that.
Family holidays. The planning, gift buying, gift wrapping, food preparation. It is no longer something to look forward to for me.
Making endless decisions that result in decision fatigue
Making a dinner menu. Even doing it on a weekly basis is tiring.
What’s for fucking dinner.
Commuting. Getting to and from places can leave you drained before you’ve even started you day
Parenthood
Children
Being polite to the toxic people in your life because they are part of a crucial social circle in your life- not being able to avoid the toxicity is draining.
Raising children.
Not enough downtime. I’m not done with assorted things until 8 pm most nights.
5 day work week. 40 hours a week. It seriously drains your soul.
Making meals, planning what to eat, grocery shopping.
Being around others and having to be “on”. Smiling laughing, chatting, listening all with a face like you’re really enjoying it.
When you’re dying inside thinking please fuck off please off.
Energy vampires I call them.. I’m chronically ill so some days even existing is exhausting
24/7 news cycle, especially draining is world news
Office politics!
Every second of your life costing money. It doesn’t matter what you are doing a bill is growing and you’ll have to pay it eventually or it will snowball. You could be sitting quietly in your room thinking you aren’t spending money but rent is ether building up for next month or running down if you already paid it. Existence comes at a financial cost every second until you die.
The expectation to be perfect and the expectation to be positive all the time. Like being fallible or having a full range of emotions is somehow wrong.
Working
That extroversion is better than introversion. Exhausting if you are an introvert.
Working a 9-5 job. It seems like the standard routine, but the energy it takes to maintain focus, meet deadlines, deal with office politics, and balance personal life can be way more draining than most people admit. It’s like running on empty, even when you’re not physically doing anything
Commuting.
Adult children
Time you need to get to work and back. It can easily make an 8 hour workday into 10 hours or more if you have to travel long distances every day or have to deal with traffic/delays. Add this to cleaning, laundry, grocery shopping and cooking and it’s no wonder we got almost no free time after we finished work.
Commuting longer than 30mins door to door for a job
Deciding on food. Not shopping for it, cooking it, etc. Just the decision making process.
All the repetitive tasks, washing, cleaning, buying food, feeding yourself
Maintaining a household. Cleaning, cooking, laundry, yard work, home maintenance. Far more draining and unfulfilling than work.