I've been doing a lot of thinking about being grown-up lately and what, exactly, that means. This introspection was originally sparked by this very amusing, and accurate, blog post. If you haven't read it yet, go do so, and then you can relate when I say that this woman nailed me to a freaking T. That is my cycle exactly, and the graph at the top is a testament to the level of successfulness that I experience in my daily life.
So, what does it mean to be an adult? Certainly there are upsides, like being able to eat ice cream at any point in the day just because I want a damned ice cream! Or being able to stay up until 3 o'clock in the morning - even if I know I'm going to be paying for it the next day. Being an adult also means having responsibilities that you know you can't really put off or give to someone else, like getting in the rent check on time or going to the grocery store.
But what I think really separates being an adult from being... well, a child isn't really the right word because I know plenty of people who should damn well know better and are too old to act this way, but do it anyway. So let's say the difference between being mature and immature. That difference comes down to accepting responsibility for your choices. It sounds so simple, but think about it for a second and you'll probably see what I mean. Immature people are always coming up with some way that it's not their fault. The guy at the office who always has some excuse for why he didn't get his work done and the 16-year-old girl who didn't do her homework and is claiming it's because the teacher gave her too much, or hates her (when you know damned well it was because she stayed up on the phone until 10 the night before instead of getting it done) don't really have all that much to differentiate between them. They are both refusing to take responsibility for their actions by trying to foist blame off on other people or things.
Now, this isn't to say that you should always take the blame for everything. I mean, sometimes things really are not your damned fault. But it's the way we approach these times that is a mark of our maturity. If you're late to work because of a traffic jam, do you violently protest that it is Not Your Fault, or do you say that you're sorry and resolve to leave an extra 10 minutes earlier the next day to make sure it doesn't happen again? I am also not saying that there's anything wrong with occasional immaturity, because goodness knows that no one is perfect. This is just a general outline of what, in my opinion, makes someone mature.
Now, that being out of the way, we get back to the humorous and oh-too-accurate blog post over at Hyperbole and a Half. Society would have us believe that in order to be a proper adult one has to do all of the things all of the time and wear a smile while doing it. I just don't think that that is realistic. I mean, look at that post and how many people identify with it? Look at how many people twittered (tweeted? something) about the post, linked to it (like I'm doing here) and showed it to their friends. With that many people finding the truth in this cycle of unending responsibility leading to failure, why do we as a society persist in making each other feel like failures for being unable to conform to this ridiculous ideal?
I am an adult. I take care of the things that need to be taken care of in my life. I do not constantly whine that it is not my job, or my fault (hey, I said constantly didn't I?) and just in general I keep my life moving in a positive direction. So why do I constantly feel like I am failing at life?
Here is how a typical day for me goes. I wake up around 7 or 8 in the morning and make sure the girls have something for breakfast. If I have a radio show, I might do some prep for it (read: make myself some damned coffee) or answer emails or do other things puttering about on the computer (read: drink my damned coffee). I do a show from 10am - 2pm M, W, Th, and F (http://www.radio-kol.net for those who don't know). During this time (and all times before and after it, really) I'm also handling the girls and whatever they need, making lunch, making phone calls if needed, doing online banking, etc. Once I'm done I get up and stretch a bit, because sitting for 4 hours is hard on the back. I usually need to pop something in the microwave to defrost for dinner later. I do one chore which is different depending on the day (yes, I'm OCD and have a calendar that details which chore gets done on which day). I straighten up the house. I make dinner. We eat dinner. I get the kids ready for bed. I get them in bed. I try to make them go to sleep. This lasts for 2 hours or so, during which I also try to spend quality time with my boyfriend (or, if it's Friday, play a game online). I may also use this time to do some work on some crossstitching. Then I go to bed.
Wow... when it's all detailed out like that seems like a lot, right? It would make sense that if, say, for a day I was laid out with a horrid migraine (like yesterday) that I could give myself a break for not getting things done. So why do I always feel like I'm on the downward slope of that little graph? Why does it seem like no matter how hard I try I'm not going to be able to catch up? Even the slightest thing can send my entire day off kilter, which it then takes weeks (if not a whole month) to recover from! And the whole time I'm feeling like I'm in that failure slump and it gets harder and harder to get motivated to begin the cycle all over again.
I think the reason that this cycle persists is that we, as a society, do not acknowledge the sheer amount of work it is to keep a life running. We are not really allowed sick days, and if we take one we must work twice as hard for the next couple days to catch up. We take this as a good thing, a right thing, and therefore we impose it not only on ourselves but also on anyone around us who would dare to not feel bad when they slack off. We see needing help as a weakness and asking for it as something to be ashamed of. We casually look down our noses at anyone who doesn't have a perfect life, while at the same time feeling guilty and ashamed that we let the kids stay up an extra half hour last night because it had been one of those days and we didn't feel like fighting about whether or not they could watch the new Spongebob.
Here's the thing: no one is perfect. We all let things slide, probably more than we would like, and everyone is constantly trying to pick up the slack. Some days it seems like there's nothing but slack to be picked up and we wonder how the cycle started in the first place. This isn't something shameful, it's something human. We all need to stop being so down on ourselves for not being this picture perfect person that we somehow think we should be. And we need to stop being down on those around us for the same thing. We need to offer help and ask for it more often without feeling guilty or tallying it up on some kind of ridiculously unbalanced scale. We need to feel good on those days when we go above and beyond and not feel bad about the fact that the "above and beyond" has barely broken us even because we were sick last week.
Today, I washed laundry. I did the dishes. I cleaned up the living room. I took care of my kids and even managed to entertain them a bit in between bouts of cleaning. And now I'm taking them out to get fast food and I refuse to feel guilty that during my marathon of cleaning I didn't get dinner started in time. I did damn well today! I am a motherfucking adult!
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