I'm home for the holidays, and everything feels the same as it always did.

Every time I come home, I fall back into the same old routine. No matter how fast-paced or productive my life is during the school year, it all slips away once I pull into my driveway. My life becomes a lazy series of neighborhood walks, bubble baths, books, movies, puzzles. I cook dinner with my mom. I drive to my high school friends' houses. I sleep in my childhood bed. This winter, I have an online internship – something different. I spend some of my time working on that, and the rest of it doing the same old stuff.

There is a part of me that grows anxious every time I come home and feel just like my high school self. It's the part of me that has internalised every message about personal growth I have ever heard, that is convinced life is about constant forward motion, about leaving behind the person you used to be and reinventing yourself at every opportunity. It is the part of me that feels guilty for 'wasting' this time, that is convinced the job I have is not enough, that I need a better one. That I should be using my time at home in a hundred more productive ways. That I need, desperately, to feel different – to feel better – than the person I used to be.

In many ways, I do feel different from my old self. I have grown and changed. I know I have. I am far more independent, far more assertive, far better at dealing with unsavoury situations. Moving to another country alone at eighteen was scary, but so worth it for everything I have learned about myself. I know now that I can live on my own. I can find community in other people. I can handle conflict when it arises. At school, I feel like a fully-grown adult, with all the responsibilities, blessings, and curses that come with that.

But when I'm home, it is hard to shake the feeling that I am regressing. It feels like all the growing I have been doing is coming undone every time I wake up at 11AM and sit around all day. Like I'm growing backwards, somehow.

But is that really such a bad thing? In a world so focused on moving, growing, changing, and improving – all of which, the older I get, I realise are just synonyms for 'working' – is there so much harm in taking a step back every once in a while? This is, most likely, the last big chunk of free time I will get before becoming a full-blown adult immersed completely in the working world. Amid the existential horror of getting older and the intense social pressure to get a job and become a functioning, well-adjusted member of society, it is nice to take a little break and feel like a kid again.

Personal growth is important. It is good and natural. But the thing is, we do not have to force it. It happens whether we want it to or not, as our life circumstances change and our brains mature. Just because we might feel lost for a while, or stagnant, or even like we're growing backwards, does not mean that we actually are. When I return to school, I know I will fall back into that routine just as easily as I fell back into this one. I will not have become any less of an independent adult just because I let my mom make me pancakes on a Sunday morning.

As important as it is to work hard and gain independence, it is important to take time away too. Arguably, it is the only way to stay sane amidst all the pressure to get ahead. I do not regret the mornings I have slept in or the bubble baths I have taken. I am lucky I have the privilege to do so, lucky to have a place I can come back to that feels like home. Someday, when breaks like this are rare and I have grown and changed and reinvented myself a thousand times, I will be glad I took my time.