Adulting WTF?

As usual, I’ve been shirking my responsibilities as a dreamer writer for the past many moons, but I am back-ish, and with a new project I’m very excited about—a series of essays that will hopefully transmute itself magically (without me having to lift a finger!) into a long form project on the topic. (I will have to lift a finger, but it will be slowly and with much howling, as my writing practice is wont to do).

Strangely, I’ve been working on the prelude first, as a way to orient myself, really, to the nature of the project. I understand the contents from a specific siloed point of view, but the overall intention feels nebulous. Months from now, when I look back at it, so much of it will likely be discarded, but today is day 1 of the breadcrumb trail and it will be fun to have the relic of starting out.

So away we go:

Intro to Adulting

What do I mean by adulting?

I think I mean someone who has their shit together.

Let’s approach it sideways, lest it gnash its teeth, this Adulting beast: I can conjure the image of the opposite of adulting: Someone floundering around in a sea of overdue bills, missed appointments. Or…perhaps…a blond 20-something in a short green dress whose Friday night behavior motivated the landlord to circulate a warning about getting “overly refreshed” on the rooftop.

My memory—ahem—imagination can be very surgical.

But honestly, as I sit down to answer this question, which feels prescient to writing a series of essays about the very act of adulting, I do wonder.

And lest we stay directly on track too long and begin to fancy ourselves disciplined: Didn’t Toys R Us all but convince us that being an adult is for the birds?:

I don’t want to grow up cause, baby, if I did, I wouldn’t be a Toys R Us kid.

If that’s true, why is the idea of adulting—being functional, having my shit together—so alluring?

I know how I want to feel: Confident, capable, competent, organized.

This is not how I feel when I look at the pile of mail dating back two months that has not been read, nor is it how I feel when I remember we are two years behind getting thank you notes out for our baby presents. No, no, the words that come to mind when I think of those realities are: Slithering, slimy, shame, oi, ugh, oof, argh, hot mess.

I have been joking about being a hot mess for a decade. But the joke is starting to look like a sneaker with a hole in the big toe.

Let’s lean into some wistfulness: I had the makings of someone who would have her shit together. Seemingly had the raw material in grade school and high school. But somehow it began to unravel in college, like Weezer’s destroyed sweater.

College was magical and I’d make the same mistakes over again if I could but it certainly wasn’t the incubation period where I transformed into a capable and competent human. If the ultimate transmutation is of water into wine, then that transformation was water into a hot pocket.

All I know is I feel haggard and shamed and desperate with all the missed to do’s, overdrawn accounts, heavy feelings.

Four years ago at a pivotal moment in my life where I sort of chucked all I had and started fresh, a quote from Carol Burnett was the causus belli: You only have to change one thing. Everything. (And if the trolls out there want to dispute she ever said this, go ahead! Who cares who said it really).

It was the sort of nuclear advice I needed at the time and four years later, drowning in stuff, behind on all my goals and floundering, it feels like the incantation stuff I need again. And so here I am. At the helm. Ready to find out what this adulting thing is all about and approach it like one might approach a dangerous snake, cautiously, with a gloved hand, but steady and committed.

A warning: When I talk to someone who has their shit together, they inevitably say “OMG, I don’t have my shit together, it’s all a façade.” You know who you are, and let me dish it straight: I just don’t believe you.

• Someone who reads their mail between same day of receipt and the optimal time to catch a kidnapper: Has their shit together.

• Someone who is aware of their means, spends within them and donates the extra to a charity that they are confident reflects their values: Has their shit together.

• Someone who is able to take advantage of the 364 days of notice leading up to their best friend’s birthday and drop a card in the mail sometime in those 52 weeks celebrating it: Has their shit together.

So stop pretending you’re a hot mess, shouting “I’m one of you too!” and start saying, “Ya, listen up, ding, dong, for $5 a day, I’ll tell you how I do it.” Until then, come with me on a journey of getting said shit together, or a valiant attempt at trying.

On adulting

Sunny is completing her first trip around the sun. Everyone said her first birthday would mainly be a celebration of keeping a child alive for a year and it very much is. That and an ode to the fact that Nick and I are still speaking to each other most days.

On the one hand, I’m so excited to celebrate her. She’s grown so big, she’s nearly walking, she’s getting engaged in books, she has friends. And then on the other, I’m so excited for me.

Gasp!

When these tiny kernels of human beings arrive, they are pulpy mewling beings that rely on you for everything. It feels like you’re inside a shell and there’s no thinking beyond the shell—you’re just in it, doing the needful to keep a small being alive. It’s been a bit since it felt that extreme but I’m still astonished that Sunny can drink water on her own, she can hold her own bottle and she eats her yogurt with great aplomb.

Finally, I’m seeming to find it within my grasp to think a little bit further out than the fifty foot  radius of our house, on what adventures I can dive into myself. What better person can I become that Sunny can see, and that I can see? Who can I be that I can be proud of? Podcaster, author and contemporary oracle, Rich Roll talks about the feeling of being dismantled as a great opportunity. And much of the last year of being a new mother, I felt dismantled.

Step one of this new year keeps coming back to this, the topic of my current writing project: adulting.

I’ve started out on a series of essays about it—this adulting, a word that my AP English teacher no doubt would have cringed over, and an act I often find impossible to do, or at least do gracefully.

So along with visions of a surf trip to Puerto Rico and a long-distance paddle and a family trip somewhere exotic, I have dreams of this year simply registering my car on time (an example Merriam Webster actually uses to exemplify adulting and one I wrote a whole essay draft on), of being able to knowingly switch out a bit and wield a drill, of writing thank you notes less than a year from the date of receipt.

A good friend and fellow writer Susie Seligson once quoted such a concept in an exchange from A Raisin in the Sun:

“I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!" "Finish your eggs first.”

And it’s true. Let’s make space for the grand … and let’s eat our eggs first.