The memes say it all, twenty-something’s are considerably triggered now that high school is over, the real world is setting in, and the holes in their education are more apparent than ever. Many have come to wonder how one so inexperienced is supposed to navigate the high-stakes world of self sufficient living, credit cards, budgets, deductibles, health insurance, voting, dating, etc., armed only with the knowledge of things such as how to mathematically find the exact center of a circle, or that the mitochondria is the powerhouse of the cell. This knowledge has wonderful applications for specific fields, but one has to wonder at the lack of representation basic life skills have in our curriculum's when faced with the reality that the subjects represented do squat to prepare you for becoming an independent, functioning member of American society. Maybe that’s why the millennials are all but vibrating apart with anxiety. I'm here to tell you that there may be an unorthodox solution to your problems, possibly something you’ve never thought about doing but it may take something you’re not quite ready to commit to. Have you ever considered summoning the adult everyone seems to be needing? Perhaps the solution to our problems lie outside of the proverbial box, perhaps we need to go a little darker with our tactics. So, without further adieu, here are 5 ways to use black magic to summon an adult to your aid, (sans State Farm jingle, that’s just a hoax.)
DISCLAIMER: I am not personally liable for any accidental demon summonings, loss of soul, bodily harm, or for the cast of Supernatural breaking down your door. Please note that these occurrences, while not common, may occur with reckless casting. Please cast spells and perform seances responsibly.
1. Summoning an adult to help you navigate the acquisition of health insurance now that you are no longer covered by your parent’s plan.
Spell ingredients:
Indigo Candle
Lavender Candle
White candle
Cauldron
KISS vinyl record spun backwards
Childhood bear stuffing
The names of your preferred collection agencies, written on tear stained, neatly folded pieces of paper.
Directions:
Light candles and arrange into the shape of your favorite demonic sigil. Next, combine remaining ingredients into a cauldron and simmer over low heat being careful to not bring it to a boil as you would likely scald your freshly summoned adult. Once ingredients have combined and are mostly unrecognizable, chant this spell in latin;
“Sky above me, stars so bright,
Hear my plea upon this night.
An adult I need, worthy is my plight,
To help restore my coverage and banish my fright.
Appear to me oh knowledgeable sage,
To help me understand literally anything on the ACA’s webpage.”
OR
You could always try to self-educate, as the world's greatest resource for knowledge (the internet) is just fingertips away. However, if you are having trouble finding the correct online resources, here are some links to help get you started:
Insure.com
Self.com, for questions concerning the ACA under the new administration
2. Summoning an adult to help you figure out how to fix your car.
Spell Ingredients:
Three large fire ants
“Piece of sh** car” By Adam Sandler blaring in your most likely substandard speakers.
An allen wrench coated in the blood/oil of your mostly dead vehicle. Just gonna assume you’re not put together enough to own an actual wrench, but enough to have at some point assembled something from Ikea, thus acquiring the allen wrench item.
Tears of a broke millennial
Directions:
Crush fire ants after you let them bite you, because you’re already having a bad day, but Satan would like to see you in as much discomfort as possible before allowing you to conjure dem-adults. I mean adults… Anyway after you’ve crushed your ants into goo, dig a hole in the ground, combine ingredients, set on fire. Chant this spell in Latin:
"Fix this car, fix my life, without a car I’ll never have a wife. Or a girlfriend because slow down I’m only 22. Forces of darkness assemble here now, bring me an adult, because when it comes to check engine lights, I’m like; 'But I don’t know how!'"
If that doesn’t work or you’re just not feeling up to the fire ants, I get it, so here are some less extreme alternatives:
- First, you should probably figure out what would be best for you financially, either keeping it or scrapping it. Robert Espe, a writer for “Debt Free Adventure” has some pretty good insight on the matter. You can find his article here.
- So you’ve decided fixing it is the best option for you, get ready, cause I’m about to blow your mind today with some straight knowledge son. YouTube... is FREE. I know, I know what you’re thinking; Hours of combing through tutorials just to find the exact make and model and part, sound extremely tedious, but i’m here to tell you, if you didn’t already know, YouTube's car guys are pretty specific. I know from my own experience of fixing my car the YouTube way, that it’s easier than you think to find the either the exact video you need or something close enough to be helpful, it just can take a lot of time.
- Divide up research and wrenching. Enlist a roommate, friend, or significant other into doing the bulk of the research while you do most of the physical labor, or vice versa. I used this method myself with my own s.o., and it worked out perfect all three times our car has taken a crap.
- Remember that there is a woman who literally built her house from the ground up using only YouTube tutorials and the help of her two young kids. If they can do that, you are more than capable of getting this done all on your own. Just breathe. You can do this!
- Of course, you can always utilize the resources you have around you. Know someone better at this than you? Are your parents willing to help you out either financially to get it done by a mechanic, or as the stand in mechanic themselves? Do you know someone willing to give you a ride to and from work until you have saved enough to fix or replace it? Just don’t freak out, I know when things like this happen, it feels like our worlds are spinning out of control and we might not make it in life, but don’t give up! Keep pushing through and persevering, that’s all that matters, the rest will fall into place if you’re patient.
- I know this won’t help you guys trying to fix your car scrolling through furiously, having found this link through a google search attempt, but what I would mostly recommend is prevention of this occurrence. Take the time to educate yourself at least a little bit about how to take care of your vehicle before or right at the start of your independent adult life. It is not just an investment in your car, it’s one in your future as well because a setback like this, while not the end of the world, will put you further away from reaching your goal. Self taught mechanic David Tracy has some insightful suggestions as to how you can go about acquiring this knowledge as easily and painlessly as possible, here is a link to his post on the subject.
3. Summon an adult to help you develop clean eating habits, and to break the cycle of fast food dependency.
Spell Ingredients:
Kale
Yoga mat, shredded
Fast food containers left in your car for a minimum of four days, the more ashamed of yourself you feel the better.
Shame sweat. A few drops of the excess perspiration you are most likely experiencing due to all the fast food you’ve been eating.
The eyeballs of one internet fat-shamer. Let’s be honest, karma would have probably done that for you at some point anyway, and no one needs that kind of negativity in their lives.
Directions:
Turn up an audio recording of Jillian Michaels being motivational as heck to siren call the most positive and health conscious adult possible. Next, wrap ingredients in tinfoil and toss into a microwave you have placed carefully outside being sure to take the necessary precautions to keep yourself, your possessions, and other surrounding people safe. Bonus: getting rid of your microwave also means less radiation in your food, and less temptation to eat burritos exclusively for a week straight. Microwave on high for two minutes, keeping in mind combustion will probably occur, while chanting this spell, as always, in Latin.
"My jeans are tight and now so is my budget, because when it comes to home cooking I often just say ‘fu** it’. The winds of change are nowhere in sight, but four burger joints are at least a block to my right. And my left. I hardly have time to change my ways, so send me an adult without any further delays.”
OR, here are some helpful alternatives for those of you particularly attached to your microwave, and to not having assault charges brought up against you for the eyeball thing.
- First, as highlighted in the blog post you can view here, you shouldn’t be going into this with the idea that you want to lose weight. This is something that you are going to have to work hard at everyday until it becomes a habit. If you are focusing on losing weight, and you are not seeing the results you would like to see as immediately as you think you should, then you are more likely to take this as not having made any progress, when actually there are a lot of different factors that influence the loss and gain of weight that have absolutely no bearing on how physically fit you are. Take it one day at a time, and allow yourself room to make some mistakes along the way, have a cheat day, do whatever you need to do to make this less of a chore.
- Try to be aware of other changes you may experience as a result of this lifestyle change, in order to keep you motivated to continue. For instance, you may feel more energized, food may start to taste better, you may get better rest or you may even acquire a more upbeat disposition and generally more positive outlook on life. Feeling better is a direct side effect of clean eating, so look for the difference when undergoing this endeavor.
- Remember that when taking on this challenge and fitting it into your specific schedule, you need to do your research taking into account your specific body type and how much time you can devote to meals and exercise should you choose to incorporate it. So take the time, if you haven't already, to get to know how your body metabolizes food, what sort of holes in your diet you should be filling, and what the best meal plan is for your level of activity. You can use tools like The automatic meal planner and WebMD's post on the subject to help you get started.
- Keep visualizing all the money you're going to save by not going out to eat all the time!
- As to how you can go about breaking a cycle of dependency on/addiction to fast food, here is an article that may help you better understand what that entails.
4. Summoning an adult to help you slow your spending and actually build your savings account.
Spell Ingredients:
Green candle
White candle
shattered piggy bank corpse
over drafted bank statements
strands of hair you've pulled out in the middle of Victoria's Secret when you realized you will never in this lifetime have enough to own such luxury and also not be homeless.
Directions:
Light candles and arrange on either side of you in two separate large bowls that have a flat surface at the bottom. Keep candles lit until fully melted. Shred your bank statement as much as possible, you may use a shredder if one is available. Then, taking a mortar and pestle, grind your porcelain piggy bank shards into as fine a dust as you can. Pour your bank statement into the green wax, and the piggy bank dust into the red. Place quarter in the center and chant this spell;
" Student loans and credit card debt, when it comes to my finances I'll never be set. Send me an adult to help me save what's mine, and to wipe the thought that 'Maybe stripping isn't so bad' from my mind."
As you may have guessed, I do have some alternative suggestions to this one as well and they are as follows:
- Stop impulse buying! It sounds like one of those no-brainers that are easier said than done right? So how can you go about disciplining yourself to be less inclined to rip everything off the shelves making an incredibly embarrassing scene in the middle of Sephora, credit card(s) be damned? Cornell psychology professor Thomas Gilovich has done some extensive research on the subject, focusing specifically on material purchases versus experiential ones, and the impact they have on our perceived quality of life. For the past decade numerous studies and psychological research have shown that experiential purchases far improve the perceived happiness of individuals over the purchase of material items. Since 2003, Gilovich has been trying to decipher why this may be the case. He has found that when you are purchasing an experience, such as concert tickets or a vacation, the more enduring happiness you experience as a result of said purchase is directly correlated to the anticipation you feel leading up to such an event, versus the anticipation of receiving a material object. His work, in addition to the supplemented work of his colleagues, has also shown that experiences are more likely to make people happier because they are less likely to measure the value of their experiences by comparing it to the experiences of others, whereas material possessions are mainly purchased with the underlying intent to convey status. So the next time you feel tempted to blow that money left over from the bills, remember that it won’t make you nearly as happy as saving for that trip to Cabo will.
- Try to stop unnecessary spending by cutting out or cutting back on how much you go out to eat. I don’t know about you guys but my fiancee and I often spend an upwards of $150 a week when we get lazy about cooking or even grocery shopping. If the reason for this extraneous expense is that you are an inexperienced cook, or you can’t seem to get the motivation to spend an hour after work dodging the Walmart crowd, only to end up in one of only two lanes that are open, line twisting through the store, when they have at least 30 unopened registers, then Blue Apron and other similar subscription boxes may be for you. It’s $60 a month and provides at least three meals per box for two people, but if you are single or your stomach isn’t as stretched as unfortunately my own is, you can definitely make it last for the week’s lunches.
- MoneyCrashers.com Co-Founder; Andrew Schrage recommends setting up automatic transfers to a separate bank account, possibly even using a separate bank.
- There are various apps you can use to control your spending as well. I would most recommend an app called Digit. Here is a link to their 'how it works' page.
5. Summon an adult to support you when you feel like everything is just too much today.
For this one, I’m not going to list a spell, because for one, these rhymes were lot harder for me than I thought they’d be, and for two, you’ve probably figured out by now that this isn’t actually an article about how to use black magic to summon an adult.
What I’m trying to get across here is that when we say those words; “I need an adult”, it implies that we ourselves are not capable of ‘adulting’ in life’s most difficult situations and we need someone there to always bail us out.
So you’ve had a bad year. You don’t have insurance anymore and you had to go to the emergency room. Your car broke down and you don’t have the money to get it fixed. You can’t seem to stop stress-eating fast food because it’s always ready when you’re too tired from work to cook. You can’t seem to save any money as a result of all this and you feel like life is trying to drown you in itself.
The point of this whole thing is to get you to see that, whether you feel like it or not, you are an adult and you can do incredible things if you put your mind to it.
Don’t wish for an adult to come rescue you from the shambles of your life, get out that cosmic crazy glue and put yourself back together again because it’s the struggles in life that push us to grow and change. Stop thinking of these mishaps as setbacks. I know it’s hard but try to think of them as an opportunity for you to become better equipped to succeed in life on your own.
When it’s all too much and your brain keeps firing neurons of panic at you, Lean on the people you know can help lift you up, and treat every negative event as a learning experience, an experience that will help you eventually live a much happier self sufficient existence. Recognize that when these things happen, they are not reflective of failure but of an unfortunately unavoidable process of trial and error.
Ask anyone you perceive as being a full adult and I promise you they will say they don’t feel like one. Because what we refer to as ‘adulting’ is really just a euphemism for automatically being awesome at grown up things because we are expecting ourselves to be inherently successful right out of the gate. That’s not how any of this works, and you are doing totally fine if you run into these bumps along the road. Don’t wish for the adult, work at being the kind of adult you want to be.
