It was my 27th birthday this week and after my last post on turning older was filled with self-doubt, question marks, and worries about the future, I thought it was time for a little comic relief. Because no, I’m still not a proper grown up yet. Here are 27 things I still have not learned in 27 years:

1. How to not spill food while eating. Just look at my vast scarf collecting and you’ll find a detailed summary of what I ate this week. A work friend even just gave me a baby bib for my birthday, because I always spill my food during lunch.

2. How to not spill coffee as well. Currently I have coffee stains on my jeans, my floor, my bed sheets.

Café au lait in Paris. Pretty sure I spilled it. 

3. How to not wear my only white shirt when cooking tomato sauce.

Pasta pomodro in Rome — good thing I wasn’t wearing a white shirt while eating this.

4. How to not forget something crucial when packing. Like that time in Ireland when I didn’t comb my hair for nine days, because I forgot my hairbrush.

Ponytail in Dublin, because my hair was a crazy uncombed mess
— especially next to Clare‘s perfect hair!

5. How to not be stingy when it comes to buying a very necessary hairbrush abroad. Or a second pair of sneakers. Or an umbrella.

Those same old sneakers on the Via Sacra in Rome.

6. How to not look for inspiration, entertainment, and wisdom in the fridge first.

7. And how to not compensate literally any possible emotion with eating (French fries). But fries are just the best food to celebrate or to mourn or to cure a headache or a hangover, I can’t help it.

Celebratory birthday fries in Bruges, Belgium.
Emotional state: Satis-fried. 

8. How to say something in the right moment. Awkward silence and wrong joke with the totally wrong timing, however? I can do both perfectly.

9. How to do laundry in time. But I’m pretty skilled in hand-washing and building funky high-speed-drying-constructions with my blow-dryer.

Maybe I’d do my laundry in time, if it looked as pretty as in Porto, Portugal… 

10. How to do anything in time, basically. Leaving the house to catch a train? Finish writing that essay? Applying for grad school? Handing in my Master’s thesis? Moving into a new apartment? Booking a weekend getaway? All done in the very last second possible.

11. How to not be a drama queen when I’m late.

12. How to not blame others for me being late. Because other people keep putting stuff in my way and keep sabotaging me, you know?!

13. How to not be a drama queen in general. But I sure do love to exaggerate.

Exhausted bitch-face selfie on a hot August day in Barcelona, this is how I roll.

14. How to do taxes. What are taxes anyway?

15. How to not photograph everything I eat. Food is just too pretty!

The gorgeous vegetarian burger I had in Hamburg last month
— how I could I not have taken a photo of it?!

16. How to use technology properly. Honestly, I’ve never even changed a light bulb. I rather live in a candle-lit apartment for days before I touch anything electric.

17. How to not pretend I’m an independent, self-sustaining woman of the 21st century when I really need a man to change a light bulb for me. If there’s a spider in my bedroom or my computer breaks down, I need my boyfriend / dad / male roommate to help me out. I apparently still live in the 1950ies, but love to talk like I’m a feminist.

So glad I was on a family vacation with my dad when I found a scorpion in the kitchen of our Croatia house. My dad also had to take the picture, because I was petrified. 

18. How to not be a walking paradox. I hate Valentine’s Day, roses, glittery jewelry, engagement photo shoots and cheesy wedding traditions, but I still love watching romcoms and attending weddings. And my life is basically a conglomeration of paradoxes like this.

That time I flew to Romania solely to attend a wedding there. (sorry about the face)

19. How to not be terrified of making phone calls. Phones are just scary little things. There’s a reason I barely ever go to the dentist or the hairdresser.

20. How to figure out what I what to be when I grow up. But I still dream of living in a proper castle one day.

My plan for the future: Move into this palace in Potsdam near Berlin.

21. How to stay in touch. I think of my friends all the time, but more often than not I postpone writing the emails and making the phone calls I think about daily, because I get carried away in my everyday-life.

22. How to finish things I started. I like half projects. So yeah, I can’t really come up with 27 things I haven’t learned in 27 years, sorry about that.

What are the things you still haven’t learned
although you’re legally considered a grown-up?