im·ma·ture (m-tyr, -tr, -chr)adj.
- Not fully grown or developed.
- Marked by or suggesting a lack of normal maturity: silly, immature behavior.
It is generally believed that maturity is gained with age... I think that is bullshit.
It is believed that women typically mature faster then men... I think that is bullshit.
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I have wondered for quite sometime what is the root of most of my stress and frustrations in life. Before I get into all that, let me give you a background on myself...
I was born into a half Italian, half English family on March 29th, 1986 in a place called Westwood, NJ. My family and I living there just long enough for my younger brother to be born (around 2 years later). From there we moved to, what’s referred as, silicone valley or San Jose, CA since my Dad was in telecommunications. After several medium and large earthquakes we had enough of the west coast so we moved back east but this time south to Coral Springs, FL. Florida is where I started to grow my "childhood memories". See, unlike many children, my "growing up" or childhood was split between south Florida and north Dallas, TX when we moved there (here) in 1997.
I never considered the struggles and sure quantity of moving as not normal until I started to tell me story to others. I viewed moving as something that happens to most families every 4-5 years, as it did to mine.
Back to the story... After making many friends and developing solid roots in Texas, a beautiful sunny September morning changed a lot of splendor. After September 11th, 2001, telecommunications as well as many industries suffered several issues due to the terrorist attacks. It was a period of the unknown; I was waiting for my Dad to come home from work and announce his layoff. Once it happened it took a while for him to find something new; a lot of high-level executives were out of work as well.
He finally found something in upstate New York several months later.
A year after having dealt with the move from Texas it was announced my Father’s company was shutting down their facility in New York and moving to Connecticut.
It was at this point I realized I needed to get out of this sort of schedule and start focusing on college and my career. I presented a proposition to my parents to allow me to move back to Texas and move in with my Sister and her twin kids.
Let me stop for a minute and say while writing this I have left a lot of myself out, my experiences, challenges and problems due to time and lengthiness. Let me sum some of that up in the bullets points below:
- Living in Texas (the first time) I had well established friends and relationships
- Moving to upstate New York I quickly made new friends but it was different… It wasn’t people I grew up with… I made a lot of bad choices…
- While in New York I started becoming someone “fake”… I started to lie like it was a second language. I guess I felt out of place and somewhat frustrated with the whole move.
- People in New York started to catch on to this and so did I…
- I started to hate the person I was becoming and quickly realized it was impossible to live in a world of lies and deception.
So, due to some of the above reasons, my parents caved in on the idea of me moving back to Texas while they moved to Connecticut.
When I got back to Texas I quickly hooked back up with old friends and relationships. I got serious with a girlfriend, a new job and enrolled back into High school to finish out my Junior and Senior years.
My first job back was at Papa John’s where I moved up very quickly into new roles, more hours and higher pay. Having a job was good due to the bills I was responsible for from parents and living situation but I wanted something more. I wanted to do something I really enjoyed and, of course, make more money. After several interviews I landed a job at Best Buy’s “tech bench” or computer technician department. This was awesome! I was back with old friends, living with family, finishing out senior year of high school and making a pretty penny (for my age).
Although I accelerated at my job very quickly my focus was college and my future career in… well I didn’t know yet.
After graduation from high school I started getting more involved with freelance development on websites and applications. In July 2004 a small company called Zunch contracted me out for a single project which turned into a full time position.
For the next year or so I split my time going to college in McKinney (where I lived) and working full-time in Dallas. I started to excel very quickly through my role and pay and started phasing college out more and more.
After a year and half of full time work I started to pick up outside contracts again. From there my career started to skyrocket… pulling in new business under the title of freelancer while keeping my full-time job in Dallas. A life of a freelancer could be similar to one of a rock star…
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After I have given you a brief summery of my life so far, immaturity…
Some people would call me “very mature for my age” but the truth is maturity has NOTHING to do with age… Maturity has EVERYTHING to do with experience. When one needs to be educated what does one do? They inquire from someone more experienced then they are.
By this point you are probably asking what I have written this long story about myself then makings an obvious statement about maturity…
Well it’s simple: everyday I am forced to deal with peoples shit because they lack traits about themselves they wish they had. Hypocritical, right? Damn straight it is!
Some examples:
- Fake people
- Drama-loving people (they must inject themselves with drama on a daily basis)
- Lairs
- Jealousy
- Judgmental people
Now I am not saying I don’t get jealous or I don’t judge people – no one is perfect nor will they ever be.
But the thing I don’t understand is what ever happened to people living life to have a good time?
What ever happened to people not concerned about competing their life with their friend’s life?
What ever happened to being you? Why do people have the desire to cheat someone into liking them through being fake?
How do people get pleasure about of drama? Out of lies? Out of deceiving them?
Some people would ask, "Joe, you have done some of the things you complain about... what gives?" Yes. But I have learned my lessions and not currently practace them.
So to recap:
Is maturity depicted by age? NO
Do women mature faster then men? I would say: depends. Most of the women my age of consumed with drama but thats not to say there isnt a guy who follows that crowd (INSERT NAME HERE) :-)
