You’re an Adult — 7 Ways to Fucking Act Like One

Lately I have been seeing a lot of blog posts making their way around the interwebs pertaining to subjects such as, “What You Learn in Your 40s.”

Here are a few of my favorite excerpts:

‘Eight hours of continuous, unmedicated sleep is one of life’s great pleasures. Actually, scratch “unmedicated.”” NO SHIT SHERLOCK. I don’t need to read a blog post to tell me I am an unproductive, snarky, she-devil when I am sleep deprived.

“By your 40s, you don’t want to be with the cool people; you want to be with your people.” This is an oxymoron, your people are the cool people -it’s all relative at this point in your life. Please save your middle school advice for middle schoolers. And if you, as an adult, needed to read a blog post to tell you this — well then — you are a fucking idiot and probably don’t have any friends anyway.

“If you are invited to lunch with someone who works in the fashion industry, do not wear your most “fashionable” outfit. Wear black.” This advice only begs the question, who is your target audience? Although the superficial side of me agrees, why not just wear what you want to wear? If other’s don’t like you for what you wore to lunch, they weren’t your friends in the first place and should probably fuck right off.

Many of these blog posts start with, “If I had only known then, what I know now…” If you had known EVERYTHING then (whenever “then” was) your younger years would have been mind blowingly boring. And guess what? If you hadn’t experienced it yourself you wouldn’t truly understand it or accept it anyway. You think your parents or teacher or neighborhood weirdo sitting you down and reciting their “life’s lessons” to you would have made one fucking ounce of difference to your adolescence self’s decision making process? No fucking way. Because, “then” you already thought you knew everything.

So to set the record straight, here is my list of recommendations for adults. They are simple, to the point, and potentially obvious.

1. Don’t be an asshole.
2. If you made the decision to become a parent (or became one by accident) you are now responsible for another human being. Put them first. Love them unconditionally. Don’t be an asshole.
3. Take responsibility for your actions; the finger pointing game is bullshit. Own your mistakes and learn from them. Blaming others only makes you look like an asshole. (See #1)
4. You are not entitled to anything. Acting that way makes you look like a selfish little bitch (and an asshole). Everyone knows what happened to Veruca Salt; the only way to get a golden goose is to work for it.
5. Be honest. Be loyal. Be trustworthy. If you are not all of those things then you are an asshole.
6. Hire movers. You are choosing to move. Your adult friends should be able to afford pizza and beer all on their own and don’t need to break their back moving your “Oh that was my grandmothers, be super duper careful, chest of drawers.” Hint: If they are real friends they will volunteer to help and will pay for their own food (because they are not assholes.)
7. Get a real job. A job that allows you to be financially responsible for yourself and your family. Working for your uncle, under-the-table, every other Tuesday and the first Thursday of each month doesn’t cut it, asshole.