“It was different from anything I’d written, or even heard presented, before,” she tells me. When Elizabeth Emens, a professor of law at Columbia University in New York and undeniable grownup, gave a lecture on the subject, she wondered if she might be making a huge mistake. This analysis does help to alleviate some of my shame – but it turns out that being bad at life admin isn’t just a flaky millennial thing – fully fledged adults suffer, too. In this scenario, I’m a victim of the always-on mentality that has come to define my generation. ![]() She argues that the 2008 financial crisis, the decline of the middle class and the rise of the 1%, together with the decay of stable, full-time jobs, means our mental energy is fully trained on keeping afloat: we don’t have the energy left for the smaller tasks. The US academic and journalist Anne Helen Petersen recently diagnosed people like me with “errand paralysis”, a symptom of “millennial burnout”. But my admin ineptitude still makes me feel I’m lacking a fundamental piece of the “adult” jigsaw. “I’m so silly,” became “I’m an idiot,” became “I just hate myself sometimes.” I work for myself, I pay my rent and I don’t rely on anyone else for money I even do work that I enjoy. The more debit cards I have lost (I’m on my seventh for this year alone), the more bills I have forgotten to pay, the more I have started to see myself as a defective person. I tell myself I am too self-involved and not practical enough, immature and lazy. Now I’m 31, and my inability to manage life admin has become a shameful character flaw. When I was 18, this was forgivable: I’d grow out of it. Filling in the forms to pay the bills that will keep the lights on and the phone working. The little jobs that fill the gaps in our days like sand between stones have always been a problem for me. Life admin might be at once the most boring and overwhelming anxiety of our age: look closely, and we are procrastinating and blind panicking our way into an organisational crisis. According to one 2018 survey of 2,000 Brits, the average adult carries out 109 life admin tasks a year, from sorting out car insurance to paying council tax about half the respondents admitted they struggled to keep up with household paperwork. These were my non-crucial-but-still‑quite-important to-dos (although that jacket still has a hole in it, two years later). The admin for this holiday had been on a list that included consolidating pension plans, going to the dentist, replying to at least eight emails from my accountant (I am freelance) and sewing up a hole in the arm of my favourite jacket. “Oh, I checked and I don’t need one,” I blithely replied. The next time it happened, I was 28 and en route to Heathrow, to fly to Miami with my then boyfriend. Luckily, the flight I missed had been oversubscribed, so the replacement was free: the funds I’d spent months scraping together were dented but not totally depleted, and I decided this was a learning experience. I flew back to London that same day, got a visa the next morning from the Indian consulate, and the day after boarded a new flight. ![]() Of course, it didn’t, because international travel rules are international travel rules. I’d booked my flights and the hotel, and although I was dimly aware that I should get a visa, the website had a tiny script and the forms seemed difficult to navigate I clicked away and decided it would all, somehow, just work out. “Travel agent? Have you heard of the internet, Mum?” My mum had suggested I visit a travel agent before booking this three-week trip to the north of India and I’d balked. I was 18, in Schiphol airport, Amsterdam, not boarding the second half of my flight to Delhi. “I’m sorry,” he said, looking at me, now flinty eyed.
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