How to Adult

I really miss being the age I was when I thought I’d have my shit together by the time I was the age I am now. Seriously, I’m 48 years old and it seems like I’d have something figured out by now, but I still feel like I’m just making it up as I go along. As opposed to all the folks around me who clearly know what they’re doing, what with their neckties, sensible heels, and business-y buzzwords. They don’t seem to have these problems. No, they just table it and circle back to put a pin in it, while I've just discovered that analogy isn’t the study of buttholes. Kinda late to the game on that one. It seems like by now I should be able to drill down to move the needle, and ideate on how to incentivize the influencers to disrupt the low-hanging fruit they unpacked outside the box. But, you know, with Synergy?

Synergy is still a thing right? I remember the day that I totally lost all my street-cred just by saying “street-cred,” and I don’t need another incident like that with Synergy. Good Lord, how depressing is it to not even be able to keep up with banal office jargon? Are we still unpacking things or have we moved on to drilling down into things? Diving in? Seriously, I gotta know how granular I need to be with this, because sooner or later the grown-ups are going to figure out that I should still be at the kid’s table. I mean I just figured out how to get Outlook to tell me to do something every five minutes until I actually do it. Serious game-changer there. Needless to say, my productivity is on the bleeding edge now, but I still don’t feel any different. Not like I thought I would after an accomplishment like that.

So when does that “I know what I’m doing, life makes sense” grown-up feeling kick in? Because I’ve been waiting for that elusive feeling to finally hit me for a long time. I guess the first time I remember thinking that I’d have my shit together when I crossed over some mythical threshold was in 4th grade. At Birney Elementary in Long Beach, circa 1980, the school was divided up between first through fourth grade on the south side of the school, and fifth and sixth graders on the north side. The demarcation between us was distinct. We had different teachers and played different games on different playgrounds at different recess times. We played kickball, they played tetherball. We had a jungle-gym, they had gymnast rings. We had a swings, they had basketball courts. We had ditto copied worksheets and tests (that reeked from the ink used in the in-house printing), they had actual textbooks and lockers to put them in.

As we were coming and going from classes and recess, I’d look across the breezeway that separated our two worlds, watching them stroll to and fro through their somehow more hallowed north-side hall, their backpacks nonchalantly slung over one shoulder, or books under their arm all casual like. Working the mysterious tumblers on their locker combos while my own stuff was in a little cubby with my name on it in Ms. Grant’s room, just a windbreaker and a Fonzie lunchbox with no need for a backpack or protective storage. Meanwhile, the heavy hitters in fifth and sixth grade had to know which class to go to before lunch, and which one to go to after lunch, and it alternated from day to day! How in the world were they keeping that locker combo and which class to go to, and when, straight in their heads? It was unfathomable to me, and clear evidence that they were across the divide on a side of the world where everyone knew what was going on.

I grew up a military brat and moved every two or three years, and got a new life every thousand days. So everywhere I went was waystation on the road to the next place I’d be from, and I was always the New Guy, always on my own. A new town, a new school, a new group of strangers to fit into. In Military Brat World, your impermanence, the fluid nature of your existence, is the only permanent thing about you. So you’re always looking for your in, so that you don’t have to stand out as the one who doesn’t belong. In fact, Birney was my third elementary school in four years, so I was constantly watching and paying attention, looking for some clue as to what I should be doing so I didn't look like an idiot. Because I always felt kind of lost, I just figured that everybody but me knew what was going on.

Then the day came when I graduated to the north side, the other half, and no mystical change came over me. There was no revelation of ancient wisdom, dawning connection to the deep magic, or enlightenment of any kind, like I’d somehow expected. Combos were learned, quickly becoming muscle-memory, A/B class schedules were really just 50/50 choices, and if you just follow your classmates, you wind up in the right place almost always. Tether ball wasn’t as good as kickball. It just wasn’t. Fight me! Having books to put in your locker meant having something to keep track of and protect so that my parents didn’t have to pay the damage fee at the end of the year. In short, nothing like I thought it would feel. I looked back across the breezeway at all those stupid kids on the south side, who clearly had no idea what was going on, and realized that I still didn’t know what was going on either. Only now I had a backpack, a locker, and twice as many teachers (and homework) as I used to have. OK, it wasn’t what I thought it would be. But surely next year…

But of course the next year came, the next school came, and nothing really changed. Top of elementary school, bottom of middle school, top of middle school, bottom of high school, top of high school, bottom of college. New jobs, new relationships, new experiences. But all I could do was reflect back on how little I used to know, how dumb I used to be, without ever feeling like I finally knew something. Like I’d arrived at last. I was still hopelessly uncool, I still didn’t know anything. But, you know, still more than I used to. At some point, I started to wonder if I’d ever feel like I did. But it never occurred to me to wonder if anyone else did. Because of course someone did, right? We can’t all just be out there making it up as we go, can we? We can’t all be pretending. Surely someone knows what’s going on. The experts? The people in charge? Someone.

I think that the distance between expectation and reality is where all dissatisfaction lives. If you’re expecting to have it all figured out because you got your first locker and thought everyone with a locker knew what time it is, and then you got a locker and still had no idea, then being a fourth grader is going to be pretty disappointing. If you’re expecting each new milestone in life—say… graduation… marriage… promotion—to change who you are and how you feel about yourself, then you’re setting yourself up for disappointment. Being an adult certainly doesn’t feel like I thought it would feel. I thought I would feel…I don’t know. Complete? Secure? Successful? I don’t even know what to call what it. And maybe that’s the problem. Wherever you go, there you are. But I’m sure that will all change when I sell that novel…

The only thing that every really made me feel like an adult was when I started wishing I was a kid again. I mean, so far that’s all I’ve got to go on. Because otherwise it seems like adulthood is just, like…having a favorite burner on the stove, specific spoons in the drawer that you hate, getting mad when they re-arrange the grocery store, wishing you hadn’t made plans, and wondering why your back hurts. But, you know, with Synergy?