5 Lessons I’ve Learned While Living Alone for the First Time.

5 Lessons I’ve Learned While Living Alone for the First Time. 

1. Staying on budget is hard. Really hard. 

Before living on my own this summer, I never understood why people couldn’t easily create budgets and stick to them. Budgeting seemed like a simple process: Plan. Create. Stick to it. Now that I’ve lived on my own this summer I’ve learned that budgeting is definitely not as clear cut as I initially thought. I’ve realized that a budget can and should be a flexible goal made with a weekly or monthly timeline, and I found that my restrictive budgeting tendencies (and subsequent failures at sticking to my budget) have revealed a lot about what I value in life (in particular: food). 

I’m nowhere near the amount of money spent that I initially planned before my summer began (#tbt to me dutifully planning out my projected summer spending habits in May), but I’ve had a lot of fun experiencing new things and figuring out when to tell myself no, which is a lot harder than I thought it would be. If anything, the entire process has been a major learning experience for me. I’m definitely excited to head back to college and have significantly less expenses to worry about while living in the dorms and eating dining hall food, but I’m glad I’ve at least tested out adulthood living now so that I’m more prepared when I move off of campus in the future.

Key takeaways from budgeting: 

- Experiences are always worth more in the long run. 

- Sometimes getting less than what I think I need is actually enough.

2. Doing stuff alone is fun, and it should be more popular than it is. 

Maybe it’s my introverted nature or maybe it’s because I’m an only child. I’m not sure how to explain it, but I do know for sure that this summer I’ve loved spending time by myself and exploring new things alone. Yes it’s a bit odd for a talkative person like me not to have anyone to share all of my awkward side comments with every second of the day, but there are definitely a lot of positive aspects to doing things alone:

- I never have to compromise on what activities I do when I go somewhere new. 

- I don’t have to worry about taking too much time doing something or looking at a piece of artwork or trying on an extra piece of clothing or in general wasting someone else’s time. 

- For better or for worse, I’m slowly becoming my own best friend and learning to appreciate my own company which has really helped my self-confidence

However, there are some down sides too. Doing things alone isn’t always a safe option. Also, there have definitely been times that I wish I had someone to go with me to activities, or I’ve changed my plans to do something because I didn’t want to go by myself. 

Overall though, I’ve learned that it’s good to balance quality time with myself with quality time I spend with others. 

3. Cooking for yourself is not fun, and I don’t understand why people enjoy it so much when food is expensive and it takes a lot of time and AH!

Let me clarify some things before I continue. I love food. I love eating. I could spend hours watching people make food on youtube or the food network channel on snapchat. I even own a cookbook. Personally though, I hate the hassle and time-consuming nature of the act of cooking. After work, the last thing I want to do is stand for hours in the kitchen trying to expertly combine spices and seasonings with different foods when, for a few extra dollars a day, I can just buy a delicious meal conveniently cooked for me. Yes, buying food all of the time took a huge chunk out of my aforementioned summer budget and made controlling my expenses a pretty challenging time for me. But , the alternative of struggling to cook food that I may or may not like just didn’t feel like it was worth the money that I would save.

I like eating out and trying new restaurants and food options (with or without friends). There’s just something exiting about visiting a new place and trying a new dish. It makes eating food more exciting (at least in my opinion). In hindsight, I wish I’d realized how much I value eating out regularly and having a lot of delicious food options so that I could have prepared myself for the amount of money I dedicated to food this summer. At least now I know. I’m hoping that in the future I’m able to balance eating out and staying in and cooking food, but I definitely don’t think that time is coming up any time soon. I’ll leave it at this: cooking for myself is an area of growth for me. 

4. Meditating every day can really improve your mindset.

I don’t want this to turn into an ad for the headspace app, but taking 3 minutes out of my day every morning to meditate while I’m on the bus to work (or on Saturday, walking while meditating, which I’m pretty sure is against the “rules” of meditation) has really helped me to prioritize being and staying calm during my day. I definitely have the tendency to over-analyze things and let small inconveniences or deviations from my expectations impact my mood. With the help of meditation, I’ve been able to seek out the few seconds between freaking out and finding peace to help me get through my day. I’ve only been meditating for the past eight days, but I’ve already noticed a huge improvement in my general mindset. 

5.  Learning more about yourself is important. 

This summer I’ve really tried to prioritize self-reflection and taking the time to understand myself. It’s why I buckled down and started handwriting my journal entries and it’s part of the reason why I’ve decided to start writing this blog. From the perspective of a growth mindset, I have the rest of my life to shape myself into the person that I want to be, but before I can start to improve myself I have to have a better understanding of where I am now and what areas of improvement that I have to work to fix. 

      

        I’ve really enjoyed getting to pinpoint my skills, develop new ones, and take the pressure off of myself to find out my major life passions. Instead, I’ve been focusing on things that I like and things that make me happy. Essentially, things that bring me joy. I used to always feel bad about myself for not having any definitive passions and for having such a random amalgamation of interests, but now I approach “defining myself’ in a more relaxed way. I’m just taking the time to be me. To go to events that I want. To read books that I want to read. To do things that I want to do. To spend my time how i want to spend it. And seeing where that takes me. 

     If at the end of this period of my life, I’m able to look back and say “Yes, I can now clearly pinpoint my life’s passions and i know exactly who I am and what I stand for” then cool. If not, honestly, that’s cool too. I’m not rushing to understand everything about me and my relationship with the world because I’m constantly changing and learning more about my psyche. 

So, here’s to long summers and to all of the life lessons that come with them.

Playlist: The Sing Street Soundtrack because wow, what a film.