On adulthood.
Or lack thereof.
I have been meaning to write The Big Update and hopefully will soon, but I thought I'd better post something in the meantime before you all forget that I exist.
So the big topic on my mind these days is adulthood. As in:
What defines adulthood? Company kept? Ability to earn money? Having a respectable (read: at least somewhat clean, etc.) home? Demeanor? Emotional IQ? Regular IQ?
I think I'm having a quarter-life crisis. For those of you who didn't catch the quick updates back in July, I turned 25 on the 16th of July. Since then, I have gone into a bit of a mental tailspin. I realize this sounds silly, but somehow all the way up until 25, I was managing to mentally group myself into the "early 20's" category of people, which, in my mind, meant that while I probably should have my shit together, it wasn't a case of complete failure if I didn't. Now, though, I appear to have reached a mental magic number I wasn't even aware of. How the hell did I get to 25 without managing to have steady work (let alone a masters degree)? I never understood the whole biological clock thing, but suddenly I am wondering how I am ever going to manage to get married if at 25 I've still never managed to have a stable relationship. I've been living in a house with two delightful but not overly tidy stoner boys - the place is so dirty that the bottoms of my feet get filthy any time I walk around barefoot, and messy enough that some of my friends don't want to hang out here and one won't bring his son. I am addicted to the internet, but don't even manage to use it for its best purpose, keeping in touch with delightful people. I just sit and read food blogs all day long while watching reruns of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Top Chef. Is this my adulthood? It sure doesn't feel like what I always imagined being an adult would feel like.
To be fair, my idea of what I would be like as an adult was pretty unattainable (please keep the poking fun to a minimum here): hosting upscale cocktail, dinner and costume parties, interesting social engagements at least three times a week, steady and well-paying music job, adoring boyfriend/fiancée/husband, amazingly cool modern flat with comfortable but sexy bedroom, ridiculously well-trained dog, debt payed off, moderately successful rock band as side job, taking online classes at Oxford or (better yet) living in London and commuting, looking like I did at age 22...
I think you get the picture here. So, I'm trying to see where I stack up, point by point.
1) Hosting of fancy-pants parties. Okay, I actually do this to the best of my ability. I just wish I had more funds to make them more snazzy.
2) Interesting social engagements three times a week. I actually joined a few meetup groups to this end, and I also follow a few local blogs and such to keep abreast of the cool happenings and whatnot. Unfortunately, without having much or any money for such things, I end up skipping most of them (even the $5 things add up). I also have trouble finding companions, as a lot of my friends are also broke. Eh. By the way, Seattle folk: if I were living in Seattle, I would be all over The Spellout when looking for stuff to do. I wish there were one for Vegas. Incidentally, I managed to be incredibly active when I was living in London using only Timeout, Meetup.com, and my minimum wage earnings from the pub job I was happily doing. Not sure how I managed it in retrospect.
3) Music job. Well, I am working in music. For next month, I have lined up about a thousand dollars worth of work in a combination of wedding gigs, subbing with Phantom of the Opera, and working at a church. This is not so bad, but it's not exactly the thrilling work I dreamed of when I played my first studio class in Kulas Recital Hall. I am doing a fair amount of unpaid chamber music work, which is pretty darn neat, but would be neater if it came with a paycheck. I did get $20 the other day for playing a Turina piano quartet, which payed for the gas to the edge of town and back and for a happy hour burger to celebrate.
4) Well-paying music job. $1,000 a month is not that much to live on for someone with tastes like mine. I'm also working for my mother for $500 a month, which makes things a lot easier but also makes me feel like a loser. Worse yet, on months when music jobs have been scarce, I've had to just take extra money from her, which I am so ashamed of that I almost didn't put it in here. I could get an extra (non-musical) job, but I'd just end up wanting to quit it when music work is good, as at $10 an hour I'd have to work at least 10 extra hours to make up from the lost income for just one gig. I've been looking for work as a tutor/editor/whateveror, which is slow-going but starting up a bit. Not sure how to sum this up, but it's not really positive.
5) Adoring boyfriend/fiancée/husband. I do have a boyfriend. I don't think I actually posted about this, but I got back together with Beau, whom you will recognize from my Every Post From 2007. Sadly, he does not really adore me. Our road to being back together has been beyond rough, and I am not over some stuff that happened and can't seem to fathom getting over it, and he is convinced that our relationship will not progress beyond where it is now. This may sound awful, but it isn't; despite all that, we are quite fond of eachother and manage to have a really nice time the majority of the time. We have been friends for several years now and have quite a bond. I intend to try out for graduate school a year and a half from now, and if all goes well I'll be moving to England shortly after. The dating pool here is meager, and I don't see any point in spending all the time to find a partner when I don't intend to live here anyway. In the meantime, why shouldn't I have someone to snuggle and kiss and talk to every day, right?
6) Amazingly cool modern flat with comfortable but sexy bedroom. I am moving out of my house and into a one-bedroom apartment, which will be my first non-roommate dwelling. I have been obsessively reading Apartment Therapy, i suwanee, and loving.living.small. My plan is to loosely base my apartment's look on this Mondrian painting:
, meaning lots of bold shapes and mostly black and white with accents of just those shades of yellow and blue, although I intend to throw in a bit of red here and there for fun. OOH! Quick poll time! Which couch slipcover?
This one comes with pillows.
Poll Couch for me?
Let's be real, though, I will have to do any decorating that doesn't involve things I already own extremely on the cheap, and I don't know what I'm doing, so... I guess we'll revisit this topic in a few months.
7) Ridiculously well-trained dog. Milo is not well-trained. I am a better owner for him than I was for Frodo (whom I still miss terribly), but I am just no good at this. He knows "sit" and "up," and will always sit to get his food or water dish filled, will sit once he calms down a bit to get me to open a door or pet him, and will sometimes sit when I ask him to for no reason, although not reliably. In any case, he is sweet and is currently curled up with his head on my arm.
8) Debt payed off. BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Oh, that's rich.
9) Rock band, online Oxford, general awesome personal improvement activities. This is where it all falls down. Almost all of the above is at least feeling like a work in progress, but this is the Big Subject o'Failure. I have an excessive amount of free time, and I have been doing so little with it. I have been doing very little practicing, no reading, almost no training with Milo, and if it were possible to actually reach a negative level of exercise, I'd be there. I am disappointed with myself every day, but somehow it's never enough to get me up and about. I'm really hoping that after I move I will feel motivated by having space dedicated to all these things, rather than just a very cramped bedroom. But there's no guarantee. I think that's the scariest thing about the upcoming move: soon, anything wrong is going to be entirely my fault. Any mess in the apartment will be mine, any bill unpaid will be mine. I won't be trapped by my surroundings, and how I spend my time won't be influenced by things in my immediate space that are out of my control. I should be taking responsibility for everything already, but these are my current excuses. Soon they will be gone. I hope i don't just continue to fail.
10) Living in London. I miss it every day. Here's hoping I get into Guildhall.
11) Looking like I did at 22. I hesitate to get started. I have rarely felt as ugly as I do these days. I am almost at my heaviest weight again, I have six grey hairs, I am developing wrinkles, and my skin's been breaking out. My fatness is compounded by my complete lack of muscle tone, so all the flab is emphasized. I am less flexible than I have ever been. It is truly disgusting. Once I move I am rejoining my pole studio in hopes of getting back into shape. Wish me luck.
Random thoughts:
Am I even capable of being elegant or graceful? Am I cut out for the world? Won't I always just be missing some point of etiquette or tripping over something or otherwise embarrassing myself? Will I ever have friends who are capable of RSVPing, at all or even (God forbid) on time? Oy.
So I just heard a story that's apparently ubiquitous: "a college friend who was invited to dine with a very wealthy upper-class lady. The lady's arrangement included fingerbowls - old-fashioned bowls for women to dip their fingers in before dining. Not having met with this practice before, my mother's friend drank from hers. Instead of pointing out her mistake, the lady drank from hers as well, to set the friend at ease."
I'm looking forward to one day being "the lady." Right now, I'm pretty clearly "the friend."
I have been meaning to write The Big Update and hopefully will soon, but I thought I'd better post something in the meantime before you all forget that I exist.
So the big topic on my mind these days is adulthood. As in:
What defines adulthood? Company kept? Ability to earn money? Having a respectable (read: at least somewhat clean, etc.) home? Demeanor? Emotional IQ? Regular IQ?
I think I'm having a quarter-life crisis. For those of you who didn't catch the quick updates back in July, I turned 25 on the 16th of July. Since then, I have gone into a bit of a mental tailspin. I realize this sounds silly, but somehow all the way up until 25, I was managing to mentally group myself into the "early 20's" category of people, which, in my mind, meant that while I probably should have my shit together, it wasn't a case of complete failure if I didn't. Now, though, I appear to have reached a mental magic number I wasn't even aware of. How the hell did I get to 25 without managing to have steady work (let alone a masters degree)? I never understood the whole biological clock thing, but suddenly I am wondering how I am ever going to manage to get married if at 25 I've still never managed to have a stable relationship. I've been living in a house with two delightful but not overly tidy stoner boys - the place is so dirty that the bottoms of my feet get filthy any time I walk around barefoot, and messy enough that some of my friends don't want to hang out here and one won't bring his son. I am addicted to the internet, but don't even manage to use it for its best purpose, keeping in touch with delightful people. I just sit and read food blogs all day long while watching reruns of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit and Top Chef. Is this my adulthood? It sure doesn't feel like what I always imagined being an adult would feel like.
To be fair, my idea of what I would be like as an adult was pretty unattainable (please keep the poking fun to a minimum here): hosting upscale cocktail, dinner and costume parties, interesting social engagements at least three times a week, steady and well-paying music job, adoring boyfriend/fiancée/husband, amazingly cool modern flat with comfortable but sexy bedroom, ridiculously well-trained dog, debt payed off, moderately successful rock band as side job, taking online classes at Oxford or (better yet) living in London and commuting, looking like I did at age 22...
I think you get the picture here. So, I'm trying to see where I stack up, point by point.
1) Hosting of fancy-pants parties. Okay, I actually do this to the best of my ability. I just wish I had more funds to make them more snazzy.
2) Interesting social engagements three times a week. I actually joined a few meetup groups to this end, and I also follow a few local blogs and such to keep abreast of the cool happenings and whatnot. Unfortunately, without having much or any money for such things, I end up skipping most of them (even the $5 things add up). I also have trouble finding companions, as a lot of my friends are also broke. Eh. By the way, Seattle folk: if I were living in Seattle, I would be all over The Spellout when looking for stuff to do. I wish there were one for Vegas. Incidentally, I managed to be incredibly active when I was living in London using only Timeout, Meetup.com, and my minimum wage earnings from the pub job I was happily doing. Not sure how I managed it in retrospect.
3) Music job. Well, I am working in music. For next month, I have lined up about a thousand dollars worth of work in a combination of wedding gigs, subbing with Phantom of the Opera, and working at a church. This is not so bad, but it's not exactly the thrilling work I dreamed of when I played my first studio class in Kulas Recital Hall. I am doing a fair amount of unpaid chamber music work, which is pretty darn neat, but would be neater if it came with a paycheck. I did get $20 the other day for playing a Turina piano quartet, which payed for the gas to the edge of town and back and for a happy hour burger to celebrate.
4) Well-paying music job. $1,000 a month is not that much to live on for someone with tastes like mine. I'm also working for my mother for $500 a month, which makes things a lot easier but also makes me feel like a loser. Worse yet, on months when music jobs have been scarce, I've had to just take extra money from her, which I am so ashamed of that I almost didn't put it in here. I could get an extra (non-musical) job, but I'd just end up wanting to quit it when music work is good, as at $10 an hour I'd have to work at least 10 extra hours to make up from the lost income for just one gig. I've been looking for work as a tutor/editor/whateveror, which is slow-going but starting up a bit. Not sure how to sum this up, but it's not really positive.
5) Adoring boyfriend/fiancée/husband. I do have a boyfriend. I don't think I actually posted about this, but I got back together with Beau, whom you will recognize from my Every Post From 2007. Sadly, he does not really adore me. Our road to being back together has been beyond rough, and I am not over some stuff that happened and can't seem to fathom getting over it, and he is convinced that our relationship will not progress beyond where it is now. This may sound awful, but it isn't; despite all that, we are quite fond of eachother and manage to have a really nice time the majority of the time. We have been friends for several years now and have quite a bond. I intend to try out for graduate school a year and a half from now, and if all goes well I'll be moving to England shortly after. The dating pool here is meager, and I don't see any point in spending all the time to find a partner when I don't intend to live here anyway. In the meantime, why shouldn't I have someone to snuggle and kiss and talk to every day, right?
6) Amazingly cool modern flat with comfortable but sexy bedroom. I am moving out of my house and into a one-bedroom apartment, which will be my first non-roommate dwelling. I have been obsessively reading Apartment Therapy, i suwanee, and loving.living.small. My plan is to loosely base my apartment's look on this Mondrian painting:
, meaning lots of bold shapes and mostly black and white with accents of just those shades of yellow and blue, although I intend to throw in a bit of red here and there for fun. OOH! Quick poll time! Which couch slipcover?
This one comes with pillows.
Poll Couch for me?
Let's be real, though, I will have to do any decorating that doesn't involve things I already own extremely on the cheap, and I don't know what I'm doing, so... I guess we'll revisit this topic in a few months.
7) Ridiculously well-trained dog. Milo is not well-trained. I am a better owner for him than I was for Frodo (whom I still miss terribly), but I am just no good at this. He knows "sit" and "up," and will always sit to get his food or water dish filled, will sit once he calms down a bit to get me to open a door or pet him, and will sometimes sit when I ask him to for no reason, although not reliably. In any case, he is sweet and is currently curled up with his head on my arm.
8) Debt payed off. BWA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!! Oh, that's rich.
9) Rock band, online Oxford, general awesome personal improvement activities. This is where it all falls down. Almost all of the above is at least feeling like a work in progress, but this is the Big Subject o'Failure. I have an excessive amount of free time, and I have been doing so little with it. I have been doing very little practicing, no reading, almost no training with Milo, and if it were possible to actually reach a negative level of exercise, I'd be there. I am disappointed with myself every day, but somehow it's never enough to get me up and about. I'm really hoping that after I move I will feel motivated by having space dedicated to all these things, rather than just a very cramped bedroom. But there's no guarantee. I think that's the scariest thing about the upcoming move: soon, anything wrong is going to be entirely my fault. Any mess in the apartment will be mine, any bill unpaid will be mine. I won't be trapped by my surroundings, and how I spend my time won't be influenced by things in my immediate space that are out of my control. I should be taking responsibility for everything already, but these are my current excuses. Soon they will be gone. I hope i don't just continue to fail.
10) Living in London. I miss it every day. Here's hoping I get into Guildhall.
11) Looking like I did at 22. I hesitate to get started. I have rarely felt as ugly as I do these days. I am almost at my heaviest weight again, I have six grey hairs, I am developing wrinkles, and my skin's been breaking out. My fatness is compounded by my complete lack of muscle tone, so all the flab is emphasized. I am less flexible than I have ever been. It is truly disgusting. Once I move I am rejoining my pole studio in hopes of getting back into shape. Wish me luck.
Random thoughts:
Am I even capable of being elegant or graceful? Am I cut out for the world? Won't I always just be missing some point of etiquette or tripping over something or otherwise embarrassing myself? Will I ever have friends who are capable of RSVPing, at all or even (God forbid) on time? Oy.
So I just heard a story that's apparently ubiquitous: "a college friend who was invited to dine with a very wealthy upper-class lady. The lady's arrangement included fingerbowls - old-fashioned bowls for women to dip their fingers in before dining. Not having met with this practice before, my mother's friend drank from hers. Instead of pointing out her mistake, the lady drank from hers as well, to set the friend at ease."
I'm looking forward to one day being "the lady." Right now, I'm pretty clearly "the friend."