Adulting in China

I came to China to escape the corporate nightmare and now I’m living it.

Part of living abroad is this idea to escape the real world. Sort of like, I’ll come to China and it doesn’t matter what I do here, because in the grand scheme of things and in the grand resume of ‘LIFE’ (that’s life in capital letters) it’ll totally be okay to put a giant two or three year gap that says “CHINA” (also in capital letters). And then you mark that check mark to live abroad off your bucket list and go back to living a boring corporate life in the States.

But what happens when you live in China long enough to be an ‘adult’? When you spend thirty minutes commuting to a mind-numbing job in an office every day (which didn’t use to be mind-numbing, but start ups in China have a way of going south) and you wonder whether it’s your job, your environment, or even you (what if I’m the asshole in this situation?) that trapped you into becoming a real person at a time that you wanted to live life fully and without consequence?

I keep being trapped between these two opposing thoughts. The school of ‘do something that matters’ which comes with the usual burdens of adulthood like earning money and eventually contributing to a 401(k) (if I could, I would! but pretty sure China won’t let me) and the school of ‘just do you’ that makes me want to pack a carry on and spend six months on the beach on a small island nation.

In layman’s terms, I believe this is called a quarter life crisis and for now I’m in limbo. I realize that I only tend to write on this blog when I am traveling and that’s great, because I love that part of my life,  but I never intended this to be a travel blog. This is a ‘living abroad in China’ blog until it becomes a ‘living abroad in somewhere else’ blog. This is still something I’m figuring out how to cope with and I’d love to hear other people’s thoughts on growing up and adulthood without being an adult. Is that possible or am I asking for too much?