My entire life, my mother has told me that one day I would “launch.” I always thought launching meant that I would go off on my own and become my own man. I would find my career path and build a life for myself entirely separate from her and my dad. Now that I’m actually entering into adulthood on a more formal level, I’m realizing it’s not exactly the case. Launching into adulthood isn’t about just becoming independent and living entirely on my own. Even now, as I work to become the man I want to be, I am still working with and relying upon my parents. And it’s completely fine. There’s no shame in it, and my mother hasn’t demanded that I go off on my own to forge my own path or anything of the sort. It took me a couple years of her telling me it wasn’t what launching meant for me to finally get it. Now that I’m starting to understand what it means to launch, it feels less intimidating than the isolated life I had imagined.

Launching into adulthood, from my understanding, is about deciding who I want to be as a person, and what I’m willing to do to get the life I want. These are two separate steps, but they’re very closely tied together. In order to get certain things for my future, I need to change who I am and how I live now in order to start moving down that path. As a result, who I need to be is influenced by what I want. And if I need to change, then that becomes part of the man that I want to grow into. A lot of these changes are minor, but significant. My blog posts about sleep habits and cleaning my house are both part of these changes. Minor details like these add up to build my confidence and make it easier to enact larger change. All of this with the end goal in mind. For me, the end goal is to be happily married with one kid that I raise to be as happy as, if not happier than, me. And to have enough money to afford the lifestyle that can make it happen. For someone else, their dream future can be completely different. Either way, changing now to prepare for that future is an essential part toward launching into adulthood.  What does launching mean to you? How did / have you made progress toward your goals?