Greetings, dear readers of Weekend Experiences. After a very busy week, with several commitments that caused me stress, I had a late breakfast today and stayed home to take care of household chores. The recent earthquakes in my country (Venezuela) have had me thinking deeply, and the summer heat tires me out—or sometimes puts me in a bad mood. The last few weeks have been very hectic because, due to summer vacation, some of the group activities I participate in here in Spain are on hold until after the summer, so we’re holding various end-of-season events.

Since I'm at home, I'll have some time to think about those interesting topics that @galenkp brings up—topics we can write about, which are always interesting. This weekend, I'm going to write on the following topic:

For most of us, adolescence is like the Middle Ages—that dark age of constant change, when you feel sad and insecure, having left childhood behind but not yet an adult. It’s a nightmare. You’re not quite sure who you are, your body is changing, you feel misunderstood, and so you rebel—even though deep down you still don’t know what ideas to stand for or how the adult world works. Well, that’s how I felt, and I think most of my friends around me felt the same way. Not everyone was as shy as I was, though, nor were they bookworms like I was. I was almost always quiet and had a book in my hand.

I think it’s very difficult to define the boundary that marks the transition to adulthood. I believe the fundamental change may lie in starting to take on responsibilities. Teenagers and young people are generally irresponsible; they do as they please. They have no commitments and don’t think about the future. My first step toward adulthood came when I was still a teenager—I was still a student, 18 or 19 years old—and my father told me I had to find a job to cover my personal expenses. I was studying literature at the university starting at 6:00 p.m., so I began working as a receptionist at a construction company until 5:30, and then I’d take a bus to go to class.

In Venezuela, children—and especially daughters—leave home when they get married. They don’t become independent at a very young age, as is often the case in other countries and cultures, such as the U.S. I didn’t get married, either when I was young or later on, but I had a very controlling father, and when I was 22 or 23, I decided to move out on my own to live the life I wanted for myself, without a father controlling my schedule or my activities. After my father physically assaulted me because I came home late one day, I went to live with an aunt—my father’s sister—and later rented a room. My salary as a secretary at a cultural center didn’t allow me to rent a house or an apartment on my own, and I didn’t have any friends with whom to do so. That second step—becoming independent from my family—was perhaps the definitive step that marked my entry into adulthood.

A major challenge for me when I started working was overcoming my shyness and insecurity. As a teenager, I was a very shy person. My job as a receptionist required me to talk to strangers and provide them with information. Later, when I began my career as a teacher in the field of language and literature, I overcame my fear of communicating and of clearly expressing my ideas, and this gave me great satisfaction. Later still, as a consultant in the literary and publishing fields, I also learned to communicate effectively with my clients.

In the 21st century, I’ve had to face new challenges now that I’m no longer young and have entered a new stage of life. I’ve had to learn new languages and new forms of communication. Initially, this meant communication through digital media, which have proliferated in just over two decades. In recent years, a new interlocutor has emerged that I didn’t know in my youth or even when I reached maturity: artificial intelligence. My initial reaction was one of rejection and suspicion, but in the end I realized that it can be a good professional ally if I provide it with the right information. I’m still not sure I know how to communicate with this new interlocutor. But I’m trying.

As I reached adulthood, my greatest achievement was learning to trust myself. Although I know I don’t have great skills in this fully digitized world, I do my best. That’s just how it is. Even though I sometimes wish I could, I can’t go back to the world I grew up in during the 1960s and 1970s, where things took more effort, but it was a more human world. There are days when it puts me in a bad mood to have to be glued to my digital devices for most of the day, or when my partner communicates more with his cell phone than with me. There’s nothing I can do about it, except learn to accept things as they are. That has been the biggest challenge of my adulthood.