Blog Rebirth

All my cousins are doing it, so here I am.

Like Dillon, I used to have a blog. I religiously updated it for about 5 or 6 years. I, too, go back and shake my head at so many of those posts, although some certainly make me smile. I feel, however, that it is time to make a fresh start in the blogging world and perhaps have a more adult-like blog.

Speaking of being an adult, I must say that it is only recently that I have started to feel like an adult. Little flashes of adult-like thoughts have started crossing my mind more often than they used to. It's starting to sink in that the reality of adulthood... well, it is not all that it is cracked up to be. I have noticed that most kids just want to be adults, and most adults just want to be kids again. The funny thing is that kids want to have control of their lives... So do adults. We (so-called adults) walk around acting as though everything is stable and under control when in reality it's all totally chaotic. As a child, I remember thinking, "I'll get married, I'll have a house, I'll have a job. Everything will be stable, and it will be awesome." It turns out that it's not that easy. Let's start with the "I'll get married" part of that equation. 1) What if you don't meet the love of your life in high school or college or grad school? OR What if you met that person and it didn't work out? That question leads to number 2) What if you marry someone and you aren't happy? No one wants to get divorced. It sucks for everyone involved, but it also sucks to feel stuck in a relationship where you feel lonely. I've noticed that a lot of my married friends are miserable and stressed. Little girls dream of being swept off their feet and living happily ever after, but the day to day reality of moodiness and pet peeves and laundry and cleaning and cooking are not exactly what most of us think of when we think about marriage. I have like 15 more points on this topic, but I'll save that for another blog. Let's get to the "I'll have a house" part: 1) I don't really see a point in buying a house if I am not married. 2) Houses are flipping expensive unless you live in the BFE so you take out a mortgage and then, oh look, something else for the couple to fight about. Awesome. Now let's talk about jobs. 1) How does one KNOW what s/he wants to do? I mean, I'll probably be a psychologist because I have studied it and I am good at it. It's just so ambiguous and nuanced and often depressing. Only very rarely do I have a day where I feel like, 'YESSSS!' But what else would I do? Music is what I dream about, but like marraige, the dream and the reality are very different.

I need to sleep, so I am going to try and tie this all together. Kids imagine adulthood as having both stability and control. These years of life (the quarterlife crisis years) and the resulting turmoil (cognitive dissonance) are a function of the paradigm shifts from what adulthood looks like from a child's perspective to the reality that actually exists.