I'm going to be fifty in three years.
Fifty.
In three years, I'll have lived half a century on this planet.
You'd think that I'd have this "adulting" thing down by now. You would think that.
...
To me, being an adult means you're self-realized, you know what you want in life, and you conduct yourself with a certain kind of grace, assertiveness, self-acceptance, and social and emotional maturity that children and teenagers under 18—shit, let's make it the legal drinking age of 21—do not possess.
Being an adult takes a form of wisdom that the Serenity Prayer of Alcoholics Anonymous fame outlines succinctly: "the serenity to accept the things [one] cannot change, the courage to change the things [one] can change, and the wisdom to know the difference [between the two]." In other words, separating the B.S., pointless drama, and banal tomfuckery from the shit that truly matters in life—letting the former go so that one can have the energy and mental clarity to focus on the latter.
Being an adult also means having an understanding that things won't always go one's way, that people won't always make nice with one another and be friends, and that hopes and dreams are sometimes and will always remain just that: unrequited aspirations.
At age 47, I'm discovering rather belatedly that I don't quite have this "adulting" thing down yet.
It upsets me that we can't "all just get along." Perhaps I am naive to believe that any manner of discord, whether between friends, lovers, or lifelong family members, can't dissolve, even with time and earnest effort on trying to fix things. Trying to mend fences or lay repair to bridges where the wood is rotted out or the foundation has indelible cracks. Sometimes, I guess it's best to build new structures and hang a CONDEMNED sign and a barricade over the relationships that can't be repaired, so that further harm can be minimized, mitigated, eliminated.
It pisses me off that I need to work a day job to make a living. I've been unhappy in the workforce since I graduated college. Now that I don't have a job (I was laid off on Thursday), I know I need one for family income and health insurance and my 401(k) and...well, so we can all eat...but for so long, I never envisioned I'd be stuck at a workaday J.O.B. where I'd be writing what someone else wants me to write, editing what other people don't bother cleaning up in their own writing, QAing what other people throw over the fence and expect me to patch up holes and stitch things together like I'm their maid or janitor. I always envisioned I'd make my living writing what I want to write, working where I want to work, traveling where I want to travel and not have a boss or a team counting on me to make their bottom line.
Does it sound like I'm whining? Well, maybe I am.
Like I said, that's why I have so much trouble being an adult.
I always wanted to be a writer. But after a quarter-century (that's 25 years, in case you need me to do the math), I haven't sold a screenplay, finished an epic novel, or made more than a few relative pennies selling short stories for readers to read. So perhaps it's high time for me to face facts.
Maybe I'm not as good of a writer as I thought I was.
Maybe it's time to hang up those hopes and dreams and be an adult.
For once.
Everyone with whom I've worked says I'm a great editor and QA person—one of the very best with whom they've worked. My old boss once told me to tell a new employee during an onboarding session more about myself and my role in the company—"and how you just love your job!"
My smile faltered and my heart sank.
Really?
So I'm good at what I do. So what?
What good is it if I don't love to do it? What good is it if I constantly feel as if it's something I have to do, something I'm forced to do because that's how capitalism and supply v. demand work, something I need to do because, well, shit, I'm just so great at doing it?
I guess I'm benefiting someone when I edit and QA. I'm cleaning up other people's messes for a living. I fix what other people don't bother to fix because they're too lazy, too busy, too stressed, too crunched under the weight of endless deadlines, too overburdened by The Machine just like we all are.
So I suppose I should suck it up, buttercup, because that's what being an adult is.
It's doing what you don't want to do, because it keeps the world moving. It keeps society at an even keel so it doesn't fall apart at the seams. So we can walk across bridges and protect ourselves with fences that aren't rotten, that don't have rotting foundations.
Because someone needs to build them. And if the adults don't, who will?
Therefore, I put it upon myself to finally, finally, wake up and be an adult.
We all have to grow up sometime.
No comments:
Post a Comment