Full-Fledged Adulthood
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When it’s time to trade Happy Hour for Home Depot.
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You don’t realize it’s happened until it’s too late. First, you develop small, seemingly innocuous habits, like going to bed earlier, using SPF religiously, and starting to avoid dairy because you know it will upset your stomach.
Then before you know it, you prefer siestas over fiestas (but let it be said that sombreros are welcomed for both occasions), you diligently study the grocery store’s weekly circulars, and the bartender doesn’t even bother checking your I.D. anymore. Yes, that’s right. I’m talking about the pandemic that is taking hold of myself and my fellow millennials ’round the world: adulthood.
No one intends to be an adult. I certainly didn’t. As a child, I had major plans for when I grew up that included becoming a Crime Scene Investigator after watching one too many CSI episodes. When I wasn’t busy dusting for fingerprints or having long, scientific monologues that I didn’t understand, I would be tending to my pair of Dachshunds, lovingly named “Ketchup” and “Mustard.” And on my wall would be the winning check from my Wheel of Fortune appearance as a victorious contestant. But nowhere in the Erin Maher Life Grand Schemes was the idea of being an adult part of the program.
But, I’ve recently turned 30, and with that comes the realization that I’ve somehow managed to stumble my way into the weeds of adulthood. My driver’s license says I’m 30, but my heart says I’m 30 – 9 years. Youth, it’s Erin. Are you there?
Adulthood is deciding that looking crazy is acceptable as long as I look a youthful crazy.
There were quite a few signs that led me to this self-discovery that I was “adulting” full-time.
First, it’s all about sleep. You wake up thinking about how you didn’t get enough of it, you daydream about getting more of it, and can’t wait to pop back in under the covers. Sleep is at a premium. Long gone are the nights spent staying out ’til 4 a.m., wired from the restlessness of youth and the false information that anything good happens after midnight. Not even the happiest of happy hours can keep me out, nor the most tropical of drinks nor the vague notion that I can be an agent of chaos for the evening. No, no. Now, I am promptly in bed by 11 p.m., weekday or weeknight. If I’m not, I know the next day I am a cranky little hobgoblin. And sleeping in? We don’t know her. Because now that I’m on a strict bedtime schedule, my body goes on autopilot and is up and moving by 7 a.m. every day, whether I like it or not. (For one’s edification, I do not.)
Secondly, when in youth, I wanted to…
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