THE RACE TO ADULTHOOD
I used to dread the idea of getting older. There, I said it, I’m getting older. As much as it pains me to admit, the inevitable passage of time is slowly catching up on me. Hangovers are, not necessarily becoming physically worse, but the sadness that I feel the day after is really increasing – the dreaded ‘beer fear’ is getting more and more intense as I start to wizen with age. It’ll take more than a Lucozade and some screaming into the shower head to abolish that voice in my head asking, ‘What the hell are you doing with your life?’ In my early twenties the voice was a gentle whisper that I could ignore; when I hit 29 it bought a megaphone.
Older. Like, who would want that? More responsibility, more stress and more wrinkles. For us millennials the dawning of adulthood can be a real point of stress. We’ve grown up in a world where perfection is pitched as a realistic goal, a thing to be achieved as opposed to some sort of abstract concept to be aimed for but never quite reached. Because perfection is impossible, like not looking a total prick in a vest top or trying to sound interesting when talking about bitcoin.
Not only do we see adulthood as this part in our lives when we live in complete and utter bliss with all our shit together, but there seems to be a massive stress for my generation to get to that stage in life as quick as possible, with no slip-ups on the way. I mean, what would be the point in owning a beautiful new sports car when you’re too old and grey to absolutely smash the likes on Insta? I find it hilarious when an older person buys a fancy new sports car and is accused of having a mid-life crisis. Really? Are they having a crisis or just earning enough money now to be able to afford one?
The pressure is on. You’re getting old, and you need to sort everything out before you get there. If you are feeling like that right now I’m here to tell you it’s OK. If you’re reading this and panicking that you’re never going to win an award, make a million pounds or even run that company, then take a deep breath. Everyone is panicking, about everything, all the time. As you get older you learn one thing for sure. No one has a fucking clue what the hell they’re doing. Your mates don’t know what the hell they’re doing with their lives, your parents had no clue what they were doing when they brought you up – hell, even the President of the United States is just a big clueless mess guessing his way through life. Although that has become more and more horribly apparent in recent years.
In a recent chat with Spencer Owen, AKA Spencer FC, a brilliant content creator with over a million subscribers on YouTube, he spoke very eloquently about why he is glad success has come to him slightly later in life (by YouTube standards) and why too much, too soon can actually impact negatively on your life in the long-term. We started by discussing how hard it must be for pop stars who achieve success early on, which then fades.
Interview with Spencer Owen –
‘Someone asks you for a cup of tea. No thanks, I’ve been to the moon’
IAIN STIRLING
I look at some pop stars who are, like, private jets to LA, living the life, blah-di-blah. And maybe they didn’t save like they should have done. And they’re 24 …
SPENCER OWEN
Yeah, what do you from there? It’s like that Buzz Aldrin thing: you’ve gone to the moon and someone asks you for a cup of tea. No thanks, I’ve been to the moon.
IAIN STIRLING
I’ve been to the moon. What do you do?
SPENCER OWEN
I’ve had moments. I’ve been amazingly privileged to have played football in front of crowds of 20,000 and 30,000 people multiple times, which I never thought I’d say. And they’re amazing moments. The last Wembley Cup, I played in front of 34,000 people. I’ve put on that whole event – that was my baby. Huge success. Within an hour of the game finishing I’m sort of sitting there thinking, ‘What do I? What’s next?’ And you hear from World Cup winners – a much higher level. They win a World Cup, have half an hour of elation and ‘Oh my God, this is so good.’ And then suddenly you’re thinking I’ve just completed the one thing I had in my life driving me. So I think that it’s really important to stress that it’s not going to solve your problems. If you’ve got problems you need to deal with them wherever you are, whatever you do. I think that so many guys I talk to behind the scenes, hugely popular YouTubers with many more subscribers than I have, making crazy, crazy money, to the outside world have got everything they could possibly need. But they’ve just got no motivation. And you hit a point where you think, ‘So what am I doing it for?’
IAIN STIRLING
I mean, if you’re 20 and you’re jet-skiing in the Caribbean and have a massive big house, that’s cool, but what do you do when you’re … what do you when you’re 30 or 31?
SPENCER OWEN
I’m pretty confident that you weren’t, at the age of 5 or 6 or 10 or 15, saying, ‘I want to be a stand-up because I want to have a big house.’
IAIN STIRLING
I didn’t know it was a thing.
SPENCER OWEN
You wanted to do stand-up.
IAIN STIRLING
But also because of my background I never knew that stand-up was … I mean, I knew there were Billy Connolly and Lee Evans and they were superstars, but I didn’t know you could make a living doing what I do. I did a show in Birmingham, 400 people, sold out the room, and I couldn’t believe it. I’m delighted with that. But if I was selling out the Birmingham Glee on my own tour when I was 22, I’d want to be at Wembley now. You’d drive yourself insane. That’s why I’ve enjoyed it, but I’m glad I’ve done uni and even the kids’ TV thing. It was a bit of fame but it’s not mad.
SPENCER OWEN
Yeah. You also learned the trade in so many ways.
IAIN STIRLING
Yeah. A central London club isn’t letting the guy that talks to a puppet dog in for free to a table with a bottle of vodka, and I’m not getting paid enough money to pay for it myself so I’m not going to those places. But then it comes when I’m 28 and I’m like, ‘Oh, it’s too loud, I want a seat.’
SPENCER OWEN
It’s the same with me. I get a load of plaudits from people, from parents saying they like my channel for their kids or whatever. It’s not that it’s something that deserves praise, it’s just that if I was doing what I do now at 18, I wouldn’t be making those rubbish videos probably, because I made those videos and no one watched them. I didn’t make videos filming a guy committing suicide in a forest, so, as a moral barometer, I’m certainly not at that level of it. But when we’re younger we do make mistakes. And a lot of the other YouTubers have never done anything that bad, but they’ve still made silly videos. I would have done it too. It’s just I never really knew what I wanted to do. Now I have ideas and there’s other things I’d like to go and try to do, but it was only when I was like 23, 24, maybe even 25, and I left full-time employment and deliberately said, ‘Right, I’m going to try and do this.’ Most of the YouTubers aren’t even that age yet. So how can they expect to know these answers? I remember sitting down with my dad when I finished uni, and I actually said to him, ‘What advice can you give me?’
IAIN STIRLING
If I had said that to my daddy he would have crumbled.
SPENCER OWEN
I remember him saying something quite boring – take your time, find what you want to do, don’t rush into anything,