I Guess “Adulting” is a Thing We’re Saying Now

I bought a couch a week ago. I stayed up until 2 a.m. putting it together.

Lessons learned:

1. Never put together IKEA furniture when you’re tired or hungry.

2. Alcohol and couch assembly do not mix (well they do, but you’re going to have to look at the directions a lot).

3. Never go to bed angry (this doesn’t really apply to what we’re talking about, it just seems like good advice).

The next day at work, I couldn’t help but laugh at the cut on my hand from the box cutter. Mainly because, I now own a box cutter. I ordered it last week on Amazon. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately.

After four years in Seattle, I moved back to my home state of Minnesota, started a new job, and closed on my very first home. I got rid of most of my stuff before the move, so every day for the past few weeks, I have come home to find many comically over-sized boxes waiting for me.

Hand towels, regular towels, batteries, silverware, scissors, pillowcases, sheets and yes, box cutters. They came in a two pair set, and I was legitimately excited about this. Before I bought the couch, I researched every configuration imaginable, measured them, and laid out candles to represent their likeness on my living room floor.

Also, I recently had a more than 30-minute conversation with my best friend about throw pillows.

What have I become?

I think about the couch my friends and I got for our house in college. As I recall, we found it on the side of the road. There’s no way around it, I’m older than I used to be. But sometimes I wonder if anyone ever actually feels like an adult?

Closing on the condo, the entire time I felt like an impostor. I scheduled the closing date for April 1, believing that I couldn’t be held legally responsible if it fell through, and they would just have to write it off as a very elaborate prank.

In reality, a large part of me didn’t feel prepared for it to actually happen. When it did, it felt like many of the other major milestones I have come across in my life. It was difficult to grasp the magnitude of it as it was happening.

They say that “you live and you learn,” but I’ve mainly only ever been good at the living portion. I’ve never been quite sure of what it was that I was doing, and the only thing that’s changed is when I was younger, I actually believed there would come a day when this wouldn’t be the case.

I turned 28 this year, but still, a lot of the time I feel like a kid. A kid with a dog and a home, but a kid nonetheless. Of course, I know that these are likely not unique feelings to have. I’m guessing that most of us are faking our way through things a lot of the time. It certainly would explain Congress.

Maybe I set unrealistic expectations, but the whole goal of moving home was to lay a foundation for the future. It was the most pragmatic decision I have ever made. So, going along with this type of thinking, buying a vacuum, while unexciting, is likely just a necessary component of becoming an adult.

While I know the accumulation of these milestones and possessions is a natural part of life, I also find some of the hoops we have to jump through during this process, inherently dissatisfying. I think I am doing things for the right reasons, but occasionally I wonder if the condo and the rest of it, isn’t just a more complex version of the traps I used to build in my backyard with a box, birdseed, a stick and some string. The only difference is then I was trying to trick a squirrel, and now I am trying to trick other people into thinking I am actually responsible.

It can get really easy to lose perspective sometimes, and with social media serving as a constant reminder of all of the things you aren’t doing, your (perceived) problems have a way of becoming magnified.

At some point, when does it stop?