How To Tell If You’re An Adult

So a friend and fellow blogger posted a poll in a Facebook group we both belong to. The poll was basically, about “adulting” and how “adult” you feel. Her point being, she is in that mid to late thirties age range when she thought she would have her shit together more.

When we ALL thought we would have our shit together more.

Let’s all take a moment to laugh at our younger selves.

Here’s the thing…I don’t even know what that means anymore. Having your shit together. I’m forty-eight years old and just now trying to embark on something barely resembling a writing career while I start my third day job in fourteen months.

That’s some really together shit, isn’t it???

I mean…I’m so adult that I made a commitment to get back to my regular blogging schedule, and here I am. Never mind that I’m typing this after my bedtime on a work night because I had to finish my Mad Men binge on Netflix.

It’s easy to get caught up in the social media trap because everyone always looks like they have it all on their Facebook page. You know you only get to see the very best of someone’s life on social media. You don’t see the fights or the drunken embarrassments or the fresh-out-of-bed drool on the face or the depression or the drug addiction or the overeating late at night when everyone else is in bed.

You just see what others want you to see. Trust me, NOBODY smiles all the time in real life.

And speaking of smiles…I have been known to use a filter or two occasionally, when posting a selfie, BUT…if you are in your forties and you post fifty selfies fifty times a day, using every filter created by Snapchat to make yourself look like a twenty-year-old version of yourself (and trust me again…you NEVER looked like that), complete with the fish-face kissy pucker, well…

Just fuck off already. All the filters in the world aren’t going to hide the fact that your eyebrows look like they were painted on with a Sharpie, Karen. Go tell your twenty-year-old-self that you shouldn’t have gotten so excited with the tweezers back in 1995. Now you look like Marilyn Manson without makeup.

On the opposite end of this spectrum, if you are one of those people that posts selfies of yourself at the worst possible moments in your life, complete with crying and a dramatic caption…

Then you are an attention whore and you need to fuck off already too.

But I digress…

Who knew adulting would be so complicated? My parents used to say all the time, “Just wait until you’re older and have kids of your own. Then you’ll understand.”

What they didn’t say was, “Wait until you’re older and have kids of your own and they have tough issues like learning disabilities and you feel guilty when you can’t spend enough time with them and you let them have more ‘screen time’ than is recommended by the American Pediatric Association. And just wait until you and your husband essentially get laid off ten years apart with a mountain of medical debt accumulated in between those years and you find another job but they put you on a team under a guy you actually trained for the job…just try keeping your sanity then!“

In other words, I don’t think I was adequately warned about the perils of being an adult. I just thought it meant I could go to bed whenever I wanted and I could eat cake for breakfast.

** SPOILER ALERT ** It DOES actually mean you can go to bed when you want to and you can eat cake for breakfast. However, the consequence of this is that you end up needing a nap the next day and your ass ends up needing its own zip code.

In the meantime, though, you’re constantly barraged with images of people who look like they are going to bed whenever they want to and are eating cake for breakfast. Their kids are perfect little specimens who learned to read while in utero and could do long division in their heads by the time they started school. They have now been accepted to twenty-five universities or got a full scholarship somewhere because they are a superstar on the playing field. They all go on family vacations together twice a year to exotic locales only to return to their perfect McMansion in the suburbs where their award-winning show-breed dog is awaiting them.

They’re not fat or depressed or alcoholic or confused or dumb or challenged in any way. Everything goes their way and they are CRUSHING adulthood.

No. Just no.

** PSA MOMENT ** Please stop comparing yourself to others. I know it’s a difficult habit to break. I do it all the time myself, but I guess in my old age, I’ve gained perspective and have learned to silence the insecure voices in my head by reminding myself that EVERYONE has insecurities, flaws, and otherwise terrible moments.

The person you may think has it all, may be teetering on the edge of losing everything. The person you think has all their shit together may be suffering in silence with depression and/or anxiety.

Well that paragraph was a downer.

I guess the truth is, I’m at that really bizarre midlife point in this wacky journey where I’m too young to join AARP and too old to have a Tik Tok account. Like, I learned cursive in elementary school and I learned how to type on an actual typewriter, but I’m pretty handy with a smartphone and Google is my best friend.

I’m at that stage where I’m not the oldest person at work, but at least half of my coworkers are young enough to be my child. I’ve got grandkids but I’m still raising a teenager. I don’t know if I’m a whiny brat or a cotchety old lady.

** SPOILER ALERT ** I’m both.

I’ve done and accomplished many things in my life. I’ve completed college. I’ve taught school. I’ve managed a book store. I’ve issued hundreds of thousands of dollars on behalf of insurance companies. I’ve testified in depositions. I’ve been married. I’ve given birth. I’ve parented and co-parented and I’ve dispensed some pretty good advice and wisdom at times.

I’ve even started a blog.

And I’ve fucked up. Like REALLY fucked up. I’ve said horrible things. I’ve made myself look stupid. I’ve been irresponsible. I’ve gotten sloppy drunk. I’ve let a good guy get away while I chased a dumbass loser. I’ve let people walk all over me. I’ve been selfish and petty and I’ve acted like a twat when I didn’t get my way.

I’ve taken out loans and I’ve had good credit. I’ve been in debt and I’ve dug myself out of debt. I’ve saved money and I’ve thrown it away. I’ve rented apartments, I’ve owned houses, and I’ve owned cars. I’ve even haggled the shit out them and gotten the best deal possible.

None of these things, good or bad, ever made me feel like an adult.

No, if I’m really being honest here, there’s only one time I actually felt like an adult.

I’m sure you’re dying to know what it is, right?

It was the day I bought a Keurig.

I never said I was a deep thinker.

Stay weird, my friends. Normal is boring.