Time Outs for Adults

Image: blogs.extension.iastate.edu 

Time outs are a great go to for parents who need to discipline their young children. Emily is a pretty good kid, but sometimes she just needs a time out to calm down when she gets upset or in trouble.

Honestly, I stop myself and take time outs myself when I'm getting really frustrated. Just take a minute, a breath and calm down.

Sadly, I'm beginning to wish that I could put my customers in time out. Make them sit in a time out chair and just chill for five minutes. I work in tech support you see, and most of the people I deal with know little to nothing about computers.

Common courtesy is sadly not so common these days. Since I'm just a faceless voice on the phone, some people think it's ok to verbally abuse me. Luckily, if it gets too bad I can hang up on them. Thankfully that doesn't happen too much.

What does happen all do often are the people who will troubleshoot but it will take twice as long as the person complains bitterly about how much the internet sucks, how much I suck, how they shouldn't have to troubleshoot. It goes on and on.

These people need time outs. You are wasting your time if you are so angry at the situation that you complain and rant the whole time you are on the phone with a tech. Take a time out, get a cookie and a juice box and just calm down.

Late Bloomer or Slacker?

Todd and I when we started dating

I had a bout of insomnia last night so I do what I always do - turn on my phone and read Facebook. One of my friends had posted an article from Time Magazine - Grow Up, Not So Fast. It describes the trend of people who bounce from job to job, aren't getting married and settling down and sometimes moving back in with their parents. It really described me and it kind of pissed me off because the article says that people make these decisions because they aren't ready to grow up.

It did take me a while to graduate from college in part because I was immature. When I started college, I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I went to college because that was the thing you did when you were done with high school. I floundered quite a bit trying to find myself. I went through several majors before I settled on Broadcasting.

The last few years of my college experience were stressful. I had a bad relationship with a man who I was engaged to at one point. We broke up right before my last year of college. And my mom had cancer. She fought hard, but she was very sick by the time I graduated.

Because my mom was so sick, I moved home right after graduation. My mom passed away less than a week after I got back home. My mom and I had been close and even though it had been coming for a while, I was just shocked and stunned. My sister was living at home at the time too, and we both stayed there for a while because we didn't want my dad to be alone.

My sister moved out about a year later once she got married. It was another year before I moved. In that year, my chronic migraines started. I was in and out of the hospital and only was able to hold onto my job because of FMLA. I got my pain under control and moved across the state to move in with Todd.

We struggled with jobs because the area of Michigan we moved to didn't have a lot of work. He found a job but it was just a temp. job, even with his vast amounts of experience as a machinist. I bounced from job to job, having three jobs in two years. Because we were struggling we made the decision to move to North Carolina.

Todd held the same job for eight years, until he changed jobs recently. But I still was bouncing. I got one job right after we moved here, but I ended up being fired after a year because of company politics. I got another job that I loved that I had for two years, but I lost that job in 2008 because of layoffs because of the economy. After that, I couldn't find a job and had a newborn, so we decided that I would go back to school. I re-entered the job market after getting my second degree last year. I had a temp. job for about five months. My assignment ended and I got my current job working in tech support. I've had this job for a year.

I was 29 when we got married and Todd was 31. We had a baby a few years later and we do have a house. But I don’t think my living with my dad or bouncing from job to job has anything to do with not wanting to be an adult. It’s hard out there, especially now with the crappy economy. We are doing well now that we are both working, but it’s been a struggle not that long ago.

People coming out of college are faced with a poor job market and low paying jobs. It’s no wonder that people are living with their parents and putting off marriage and kids. And it has nothing to do with the lack of wanting to be an adult.