Tea Stained Moments

I’m an adult. Cool.

I just had a realization, just now, lying in bed unable to sleep in after a night going out.  I swear working obscenely early at a brunch place for almost a year destroyed any capability I have of sleeping in, despite how late I’m out the night before.

I’m coming up on the first anniversary of my college graduation.  Already.  This isn’t a huge deal, mind you.  The fact that this has crossed my mind for the first time just now is a clear indication of how minimally important it is.  But it’s not unimportant.

I found a new blog that I really enjoy reading.  It’s nothing special—nothing about a year-long life-changing journey or about major political topics or the next cutest cupcakes—and that’s why I like it.  She’s a writer, by trade, and she’s still wandering her way into adult life and her writing career two years after graduating college.  She made the interesting statement that adult life really begins once you graduate college, whenever that ends up happening.

It’s very true.  I feel that I made the transition as smoothly as I could—I lived alone for the last two years of my college career, I had/have a cat and am therefore responsible for another life, and I was spending a lot of time working in shows and hanging out with new friends that had already made that transition.  And yet I still hit a few major speed bumps in the past year as I’ve worked to develop a new way of life for myself.  I realized becoming in charge of my circumstances really boiled down to the amount of energy I put into the world around me and my way of thinking.

So, to kick this blog off, I give you lists of awesome things and not-so-awesome things I have discovered about my still very green adult life.  Let’s start with the not-so-awesome things, shall we?

Not-So-Awesome Things

Paying bills.  
Probably number one on every adult’s not-so-awesome list.  And the next apartment I have will have heat included sohelpmeGod.

Finding money to pay said bills.  
As an artist at the beginning of my career, this will be a challenge for a long time.  My career usually doesn’t pay nearly enough to support even the most minimal of lifestyles until you are a seasoned, established actor.  Forget about consistency.  The jobs that do pay well often don’t allow the flexibility to support the life I lead as an actor.  I’ve been through five jobs in the past year, from retail to food service to childcare to an office job and back, and I’m finding that the dullest of all of them—the office job—is beyond tolerable because it allows me to eat and do what I love simultaneously.  Yet I don’t anticipate being able to tolerate it forever.  The search for that perfect “day job” really never ends.

Roommates.
Choose them wisely.  And not from Craigslist.  When you share an apartment with someone you despise, a year is a very, very long time.  Trust me.  Learned this lesson the hard way.

Taxes.
God damn Turbotax.  God damn multiple 1099 forms.  God damn it all.

What’s happening next.
This will be on both lists, because this concept is both an awesome thing and a not-so-awesome thing.  The not-so-awesome aspect of this is that, for the first time, what’s happening next is not predetermined for you.  After middle school comes high school, after high school comes college, after college comes “the rest of your life” which of course includes awesome success and lots of money and marriage and that really trendy apartment that you’ve always wanted.  Well, I’m living the “rest of my life” part, that part that was always in the distant future as a twelve-year-old geek who was obsessed with the idea of being a professional actress.  It didn’t seem like it would ever be anything but a dream.  And now I’m here.  And there is so much more to “the rest of my life” than just getting here.  Life has really just begun.  And the concept that I am presented with the choices of where I go and what I do next is daunting at times.  If I wanted, I could choose become a Buddhist monk and move to India.  I could choose to go back home and live a very “safe” life in rural Iowa.  Or I could choose to pursue whatever it is I chose to pursue when I was twelve years old…to be an actor.  It gets scary sometimes, not knowing my next move or being able to confidently say “I will be doing xyz in five years.”  No matter if you’re an artist or an accountant, every freshly-minted adult faces the realization that the unknown is very present and very real and never goes away.  It can be daunting at times, so much so that nothing sounds better than pulling the covers over my head and never coming out ever ever ever again.

Now for the list of Awesome Things.

Freedom.
Let’s face it, going to school gets wearisome after a while.  Or after a very short while, depending on who you are.  I commend the strength of heart who enter grad school right after undergrad.  I’m a total school nerd.  I fully admit and embrace that I was an over-achieving little snot who loved writing papers and reading every word of assigned reading from kindergarten to college.  Shopping for school/office supplies has always made me more giddy than buying a new dress.  But lets be real, I am so happy to choose my job and my other job and my friends and how I spend my time when I’m not working that I don’t think I can ever go back.  I read what I want to read.  I read stimulating things sometimes, but it’s what I want to read.  I over-achieve for myself now, not for a professor.  I can go to a yoga class whenever I please, I can choose who I spend the majority of my time with, I can stay up till 2am doing what I want to do rather than memorizing a scene for the next day…  I love my freedom.

I make my own decisions.
Period.  I decide when I come home at night.  I decide on what apartment I want to rent.  I decide if I want to have a beer and popcorn and maybe half a pint of ice cream for dinner (don’t worry I’ve never actually done this not really I did it on Wednesday and the Wednesday before that as well).  I decide.

Relationships.
For me, this is especially important.  I’ve always found kindred souls in people who are older than I am, whether they be a few years or fifteen years older.   Yet when I was in school, I still felt a small divide between me and those I was forming new relationships with.  I still couldn’t quite empathize with their adult challenges and joys.  Shoot, I couldn’t legally drink for the first four months of my relationship with my boyfriend, who is seven years my senior.  He’s a trooper.  In the adult world, you’ve hit most of the defining coming-of-age milestones.  The only thing I can’t do yet is rent a car.  And who cares about that??  I love being an adult so so so much because I feel just a little more at home in my adult relationships, which were previously such a joy but also just a little bit of a challenge.

Saying the words “I am an adult”.
Come on.  Say it.  I don’t care if you’ve been an adult for sixty years.  It feels awesome.  The girl who writes the blog I just started following screams “I AM AN ADULT” every time she writes a check to pay a bill.  She says it makes paying bills better.  I have to try this.  

What’s coming next.
The awesome side of this outweighs the not-so-awesome side 98% of the time.  (Of course the days where that 2% weighs in feels like it’s 39482% of the time, but we already talked about those days.)  What’s coming next is absolutely amazingly awesomely thrilling.  Most days, I can’t wait to see where this journey takes me.  In the past year, it’s already taken me through so many amazing, fulfilling, illuminating experiences.  I feel like a newer, wiser person every few months.  What’s coming next…who knows.  And I love it.  I know sometime in the future I will travel Europe if it kills me and my bank account in one fell swoop.  I know I will meet some incredible individuals, as I already have.  I know I will work on some truly momentous works of art.  Even the dire challenges and tragedies I will face will be vital in who I am as a growing individual.  Learned that from my mom’s stroke this year.  I know that I will encounter turns in this road that I could never anticipate, for better or worse and from which to always to learn, and that’s the beauty of it.

You want to know the absolute best part about what’s coming next?  I am at a time in my life where that door is wide open.  It’s a book with blank pages just waiting to be filled.  Part I has concluded.  On to Part II.  Who knows what it will hold, and that’s what makes it thrilling.  As a freshly-minted adult, I have the capacity to accept that I have the power to make awesome things happen as well as the ability to live in the moment as things happen that are beyond my control.  I hit that ground running right out of college and really never looked back.  And now I’ve spent the past year learning the valuable skill of how to plant my feet firmly on the ground.  What’s coming next is more bill paying and beer and popcorn nights and shouting “I AM AN ADULT”.  And more relationships and fears and glorious artistic experiences.  And lots of learning.  And it’s gonna be awesome.

Tonight

• a run
• “For Rent” signs
• popcorn
• Name Tag (beer)
• Micmacs soundtrack
• The Giver script
• an open window
• my cat