Surreal

Taking big steps lately to becoming, like, a real adult. More than just working and paying bills. Sure, there’s work involved–and paying bills–but it’s both exciting and a little unreal. I mean, I don’t think I ever imagined being at this point in my life. Suddenly, things are happening. Okay, starting to happen. Like, they won’t happen for a while, but plans are being made and things are going from theory to discussion to hopefully reality.

Cosplay, on the other hand, has suffered due to my increasing obsession with Pokémon Go and the exercise I’ve been getting. I haven’t been spending as much time in the craft room, and now that I’m only a month out from when we leave for Dragon Con I’m feeling the Crunch. I have to step things up on the sewing, but tomorrow is reserved for prop-building with some new friends. They’re much more experienced than we are, so we’re hoping they can give us more pointers than the panels we attended at Phoenix Comicon. We’re still a little in over our heads, but we’re willing to learn and we’ve gotten most of the supplies and (we think) all of the materials we’ll need. Basically the only thing left to buy is the corset boning, and I have to get off my Poké-ass and get to sewing so I know what lengths of boning I’ll need.

Writing is pretty much at a standstill…again. I keep getting new ideas on how my society will play out, trying to imagine what life will be like a couple hundred years from now. Will space travel be a common thing, or will it have been a passing fad? What kind of tech will be available? What about society itself? Will things improve from today’s media-fed nightmare, or will it all go to shit? Well, it’s a dystopian setting I’m aiming for so I’m guessing things will go to shit, but to what extreme?

But this new thing–this adulting thing–this is a vision of the future that is tangible, that I can actually see and envision with clarity. Change, in this case, is something that I think is a good thing.

Adulting: A Bear of a Necessity

Why is it so hard to grow up?

You have to work (even if you don’t have a job, you have to work at keeping house or watching the kids or finding a job). You have to wake up when you want to keep sleeping, you have to pay bills, you have to do all those grown-up things you didn’t consider when you were a kid.

Remember when you wanted to grow up? You thought it was all about driving and drinking (not at the same time, I hope), about being a teacher or pro football player or astronaut. You didn’t think about things like car payments, gas prices, hangovers, class assignments, grading papers, practice, injuries, rigorous physical testing, months in zero G with limited personal interactions … you just thought about the fun parts of being an adult.

Now you’re an adult, and it sucks. Even if you ended up with that dream job, you have to admit it: there are plenty of days when it sucks.

So what do you do? Is there any way to decrease the suckage of being an adult?

I could tell you to keep a positive outlook. I could tell you to look at all the good things and try not to focus on the bad things. I could … but I’m not going to.

At some point–usually at most points–adulting is going to suck. My advice? Deal with it. Sure, you’re going to moan and groan and bitch from time to time, but the bottom line is you need to suck it up and move on. Go to work even if you don’t feel like it. Get up when that alarm goes off. Clean the kitchen. Take that car in for its routine maintenance. Pay your taxes. You wanted to be an adult? Well, be an adult. It’s that simple…

…and it’s that hard.