I’ll bet, if everybody thinks hard enough for long enough, most everybody will be able to pinpoint a moment where their childhood started to come to an end.

Becoming an adult is something we all have to do. Yes, the long and winding road to adulthood is often fraught and full of pitfalls and hazards — but it can also be a path of triumph and hard-fought lessons that shape the rest of your life.

The journey can be both liberating and terrifying in equal measure. For some, it may be a sudden and immediate end. This can be because of a particular life event, something that replaces the wonder and innocence of youth with an awareness of some of the harsher realities that can come with adult life. It can be a moment that leaves a permanent mark.

For others the process of settling into adult life will have been an altogether slower process.

I spent my formative years battling against the concept, worrying if I was truly ready for adult life — sat here now in my mid 20s I can confirm to you that I was not ready then and am still not now — you will always long for the innocence that comes with youth, for the ignorance that allows you to instead enjoy life’s simple pleasures.

Looking back on the day things started to change for me, I feel I can draw back to one pivotal moment sometime in 2015.

You will have found me sitting in one of my school’s dusty old computer rooms. This particular room had clearly, at some point, been an old languages room, but had been deemed nonessential at some point and been replaced with a subpar, half-arsed collection of outdated computers shoved in a corner room

I can’t say anything for how it looks now, but at this time, it existed as something between a classroom and a computer suite, neither here nor there. It lacked the full functionality of a proper computer room, and did not have the space of a convenient classroom for learning. Due to all of the above and more, it would often be quiet, this is why it became a refuge for people who needed a computer and to not be bugged for a bit.

There were always a few other students in the room, going about their business. Some would be catching up on school work, others beefing up with uni applications, while the rest would simply be engaging in the activity of the uninhibited — not a whole lot.

Meanwhile, myself and a couple of friends would be seated at a row of computers, engrossed in the most trivial of pursuits. While dipping in and out of conversations happening around us, we would be engrossed in some mindless game sourced from any website we could find that had evaded the school’s fun blocker.

These were the sorts of games that you would sneak onto during IT classes in the moments where the teacher had left the room, wasn’t paying attention, or perhaps they were nursing a hangover from the night before and just didn’t care what you did as long as you did it quietly.

These games were never anything to write home about. They would usually be mildly amusing or silly, but with little to no ultimate goal when everything was said and done.

I remember there being one game where you would compete in mini Olympic games as some random animal, another would have you essentially playing volleyball using big-headed avatars with squint-and-you-might-see-it likenesses to your favourite Premier League football players.

They were, at their core level, completely pointless. A mindless time-sink. But therein lay the beauty of them — they were half an hour of inoffensive fun that you could have with friends on a quiet Wednesday afternoon.

Becoming an adult means that you need to take responsibility for your own life. You need to be prepared to make the tough decisions, live with the consequences of your actions, and make important sacrifices should you ever need to.

You are required to navigate the endless corridors and staircases of an ever-changing, ever-evolving world — a world that is prepared, at a moment’s notice, to leave you behind — to find a place of your own in it.

My life lost something in 2015. That day where I, for the last time, have shut down my internet tab, logged out of my account, shut down the computer, and walked out that half-arsed computer room for the last time. My life lost silliness for the sake of silliness.

The years since have been full of both ups and downs. I’ve drifted from old friends and made close bonds with new ones. On one hand I’ve made memories that will last a lifetime, but on the other I’ve also lost people along the way – people that I’ll miss.

When you hit your 20s and have bills and responsibilities hanging over your head, there’s not as much time for bunking off. At least not in the same way.

The loss of your childhood is a rite of passage that we must all endure at some point. It’s a definitive moment that marks the end point of one phase of life, while ushering in the start of another.

It’s a moment that you can look back on with regret, with tinged sadness, and with nostalgia — but it’s also a time to remember that when you take away the pride, the ego, and the stress, we are all human.

Every one of us is flawed. We are all fallible. And each of us are capable of great things, but Jesus, we can’t forget to take moments to have fun.

Life is far too short to take everything so seriously. We need to try to embrace the unpredictability, find the frivolity in the journey to come, and make the most of every moment. Don’t be afraid to take some time for you. Don’t be scared to switch off and embrace some meaningless fun. Don’t balk at doing what you want to do instead of what should be done.

As long as I’m learning something, I figure I’m OK – it’s a decent day.

Hunter S. Thompson