Tag Archives: adult

Adulting…

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As I sit at my desk at the office it strikes me that I’m not so much being an adult as I am pretending to adult. Sure, I’m meeting my quotas, building beautiful slides in many, many briefing decks,​ putting a roof over my head, paying the bills, and keeping a number of small creatures alive. It doesn’t feel like that’s all that high of a bar to pass over. Particularly when I’m so often doing some or all of those things on autopilot.

That leaves me wondering how to define the core mission of being a adult. What characteristics define success? If the baseline is pay taxes and stay out of prison it’s straight forward enough. Alternately if the minimum level of entry is being able to provide for and sustain another human life into adulthood, I’m not even racing on the same track. In fact I’ve spent two decades driving at great and reckless speed away from that track. What then are the defining characteristics of adulthood? Is it merely a function of age? Is it behavior? Is it something intangible?

Since my real goal is to mostly maximize the amount of time I get to be home with my nose stuck in a book, or playing with the internet, or otherwise hiding from human interaction the point is largely an academic one. Even so, there are lots of people out there raising reasonably well adjusted children or doing important medical research or keeping a nuclear reactor running smoothly. Maybe any or all of them feel adultier than I do. Just now I’m not feeling any of it.

That’s not saying that I won’t do a fine job keeping up appearances. I’ll go through the motions and get most of them right, but just now I’m having a tough time shaking the feeling that the only major difference between the 1998 model Jeff and the 2016 variant is now I get less sleep, take a few more pills, and don’t need to show ID when I go to the liquor store. Maybe I should just change the definition of successful adulting and declare unilateral victory.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Other duties as assigned. I can do my job – the heavy analytical lifting – or I can do the other duties as assigned – issuing keys, setting up new employees with laptops, filing, hole punching, and flipping slides. However, I lack the gift of being in two places at once so you’re going to have to pick between those so I know what you actually want me to spend time tending. I’m good either way, but choose one and you’ll get a seriously good analyst, close the other and you have a spectacularly overpriced secretary. The choice is utterly yours.

2. Being other than on time. Although I’ve been doing it nearly every working day since January 2003, people always seem surprised when I shutdown and head for the doors on time. You may work for love. You may work for pride. You may even work to give your short time on this rock a sense of purpose. I’m a simpler animal. I work for money because I know my time isn’t free or limitless. Think of it what you will, but you can always be assured that when I’m “on,” you’ll get the best product I can manage, but I will be equally dedicated to preserving my personal time at almost any cost.

3. Free stuff. My news feeds and the media channels have been filled with talk of everyone who wants “free” stuff these last few days. They want a $15/hour paycheck guarantee for entry-level unskilled labor – essentially a request for “free” money since their economic activity doesn’t command such price in the marketplace already. They want “free” higher education. They want “free” healthcare. They want “free” housing and “free” food and maybe even a “free” phone. I may be a poor simple hillbilly from Western Maryland, but it strikes me that what the most recent round of protestors really mean is they want the stuff and they want other people to pay the bill. Precious little in life comes for “free.” Someone, somewhere, has to pick up the check. It’s not presently the popular thing to say, but in my mind being a grown ass adult mostly means being able to make your own way in the world, paying your bills, and being a responsible and productive member of society… or maybe I missed a memo somewhere. In that case, where’s my free shit?

Winter pastime…

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I’m about to have the first time this year to engage in my favorite winter pastime – watching the Team Aberdeen Proving Ground Facebook page explode with commentary about the weather, when decisions should be made, whether it was a good call, whether it happened early enough, whether it should have been a 2 hour delay, a 4 hour early closure, and 2014_zzsite_graphics_winter_storm_warning-500x330possibly questioning the paternity of those making the decisions in the pre-dawn hours of every day that snow is “likely.” Whatever decisions are made over the next few days, you can rest well assured that social media will decry it as exactly the wrong thing to do.

Despite its off the beaten path location in the wilds of north eastern Maryland, APG and its environs are densely populated with advanced degree holders, senior staff, and the occasional person who has stood toe to toe with Taliban fighters. At the first sight of a flake, all that education and experience goes out the window and everyone devolves into a hopeless mass of name calling indecisiveness. The only thing they can seem to agree on is the goodness of posting poorly thought out comments that everyone on the planet can read and hold them accountable for making.

I don’t want to discourage anyone from voicing their opinion tomorrow because God knows I enjoy reading them. On these snowy days, it really is the most entertaining thing on Facebook. With that being said, I’m not sure when we all got the impression that it was up to someone else to make decisions about our personal health and safety. If for one moment I think my safety is imperiled by being on the road, I’ll make the decision to stay home and sit on the couch with my fuzzy slippers while the world goes on about its business. My life. My decision. That’s one of the perks of being a grown adult in this society. I do wish more people might consider showing the least sliver of personal accountability, but as usual that’s likely too big an ask.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Surprise meetings. Some things happen without any warning – earthquakes, tornados, someone punching you in the throat for being stupid – all things that could theoretically happen out of nowhere. What shouldn’t happen out of nowhere is calling someone out of the blue after sitting on the material they gave you a month ago to tell them they have four hours to make a shit ton of changes and present that information to the Grand High Host of the Everlasting Knowitall. If you’ve had something for a month and just getting around to telling someone you’re going to need it completely changed later that day, it’s not a “no notice event,” you’re just a douchebag.

2. Fast food strikes. I flipped burgers for $4.15 an hour. When I see on the news that the “me” of today think they deserve $15 an hour for doing that job, I mostly just roll my eyes. When I hear they’re going to take the day to picket their employer demanding $15 and hour and a union, well, I nearly fall down laughing. In the 5 years I was associated with the burger flipping segment of the economy, I never once contemplated the value of my efforts being worth anything close to $15 an hour. The idea of signing up for Burger Flippers and Fry Cooks Local #209 never even crossed my mind. Unless you’re looking at a management track or life in corporate, I’d not recommend considering McDonald’s or its ilk as a long term career opportunity. We should be incentivizing people to move up and out of minimum wage jobs as quickly as possible, not raising the wage so it’s considered just another “lifestyle choice.”

3. Peanut Butter Jelly Time. I’m almost 36 years old and just had a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a glass of sugar free kool-aid for dinner. There are rare occasions when I really think I suck at being an adult. This would be one of those occasions.

The virtue of 6AM…

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One of the parts of being an adult that no one thought enough of to warn me about is that after a decade and a half of getting up for work in the dark hours of the morning, your body might accidentally attune itself to that time. Then you end up waking up at what some might consider “early” regardless of how late you went to sleep. Since I find it aggravating beyond measure to just lay in bed awake, the only thing to do is get up and get on with the day at hand.

I’m not saying there isn’t some virtue in 6AM… especially in 6AM on New Years Day. That virtue? For 90-120 minutes the world is absolutely quiet. Inside. Outside. For a few minutes, it’s like all the best parts of I am Legend. Inevitably, though, the rest of the world wakes up – hungover, but alive, to begin their day.

It’s just after 8AM as I’m finishing up this post. Already I can hear the traffic picking up outside and know that my revels are ended. Even so, it was a good couple of hours. I can only hope that it’s a harbinger of the year to come. And now that the world’s waking up, let’s go take 2014 for all she’s worth.

Planning for the end of the world…

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OK, well I might not have been planning for the actual end of the world, but I certainly spent a slice of the morning signing a lot of paperwork that will kick at my own personal world’s end. After all, nothing says happy holidays like planning out your own demise. Putting a will in order was something I’ve needed to do for a long time, but that doesn’t make the process any more enjoyable. Suffice to say, this Friday’s theme has largely been, “Wow, being an adult sort of sucks.”

I’ve never believed in being able to plan for every potential contingency, but I really do feel a little better having some basic guidelines in place in the event I wander off the sidewalk and get hit by a bus tomorrow. Frankly, before my time comes I’m planning on technology reaching a level where I can just download myself to the network and live on indefinitely as electrons… because really, what does the world need more than my brain in a computer with nothing but time to spew out new blog posts on into the infinite future?

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. The Bank. From time to time I have to physically walk into a bank branch. Every time I do, I’m reminded why I do as much banking as humanly possible online. That would be because online, I don’t have to stand in a line five deep while one teller window is open for business and two other tellers stand behind the counter looking at the fire extinguisher. I know I couldn’t do a job that required direct interaction with the public, but if you’re going to have one, maybe you should try, you know, interacting with the public.

2. Adulthood. Aside from waking up with the occasional ache or pain, the bills, and other assorted responsibilities, I feel pretty much like I’m waking up at approximately age 17. Society might be able to make me put on pants and give the appearance of being a responsible adult, but I’m mostly just faking it and hoping nobody notices. You might be able to make me be serious and responsible, but you can’t make me want to… and you certainly can’t make me like it.

3. Lists. I start every day with a list. Most weekdays the list I started the day with looks disturbingly like the one I end the day with. I would be easy to assume that means I wasn’t doing much during the day, but more often than not it means that whatever I planned on doing got overwhelmed by whatever crisis-of-the-day cropped up and needed complete and undivided attention. The problem with having the list is that no matter what crisis you manhandled into submission, some jackass is going to come along and ask why the stuff on the list didn’t get done too. I’m pretty sure the lesson here is to either not make lists, or stop having expectations. Possibly both.

What Annoys Jeff this Week?

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1. Responsibility. As a grown ass adult, you have certain responsibilities. One of those is to be where you’re supposed to be, when you’re supposed to be there. That goes double if you’re going to try passing yourself off as a professional. Yep, sometimes that means you’re going to have to play hurt, or when you have other things on your mind. It’s the way of the world, so suck it up, Rolling Stone Bomberbuttercup. When you’re the only one impacted by your piss poor decision making skills, I say do what you want and God bless… but when your decision make someone else deal with the consequences, you’re pretty much just as asshat.

2. Rolling Stone. From the perspective of having any tact or class as an organization, Rolling Stone has basically let the world know for sure that they have none. Look, if they want to run a magazine with the Boston bomber on the cover, they’re perfectly within their rights. All I’d ask is that don’t hide behind the cover of being responsible journalists tackling a hard story head on. If they came out and admitted they put that douchenozzle on the cover because they thought they were going to sell a gagillion copies of it, I’d say thanks for the truth and God bless. They’d be right and it would collectively be our fault because we Americans will buy up those magazines by the bushel basket. The only reason that smug bastard is looking out at us from the newsstand is because we’ll eat it up and pay for the privilege. Rolling Stone knows that… and we live through another example of the citizens of this fine country not having the common sense God gave a goose.

3. Standing by to stand by. I think by now we all know how I feel about meetings in general. In a decade’s worth of work, I’ve attended less than a handful that left me feeling like they were time well spent. That’s situation normal in the bureaucracy. What really grinds my gears, though is the mentality that the average drone has nothing better to do than sit around and wait for the next meeting to start. Don’t schedule something at 11:00, then slip it to 11:30, then pass the word to wait and see, and to be prepared to stand by to stand by until further notice. In a world of 32 hour work weeks and 80% pay, the least we can expect is that the limited time we do have on the clock is respected and used productively. Or maybe that’s a bridge too far.

Reunion…

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This weekend the Westmar High School Class of 1996 will celebrate its 15-year reunion. A decade and a half. Three lustra. Fifteen years. Nothing in terms of geologic time, of course, but long enough in the hear-and-now world. These five year anniversaries are as good a time for reflection as any and you know from reading that I’m not one to let a good anniversary pass without saying something sappy about it. So here it is …

I have a confession to make. I don’t feel all that different from the much younger version of myself. The thinking part of my brain keeps insisting that I should. That I should maybe feel like more of an adult somehow. I’ve added some paunch around the middle and lost more hair around the top, but I really feel pretty much like the same guy I was then. I mostly like the same food. I mostly like the same music (don’t judge me). A lot of the things that were important to me then are still the ones that are important to me now. Maybe I’m a little more moderate in my politics than I was when I was 18 and knew everything, but that doesn’t seem to make much difference because ultimately, I’m still me at the core.

I know there are plenty of Wildcats from that long-ago class who have their own high school age kids. There’s a thought that sticks with you. Surely they feel different, right? Metaphysically changed somehow by the passage of years and accretion of responsibility? I’ve been out there and seen whole big swaths of the world. I feel like I’ve seen it all… and I’ve mostly done it all. Sometimes to my own detriment, but always good for a “life experience” credit. I’ve done great things and I’ve had my self confidence shattered. Hell, sometimes it’s happened on the same day. But through it all, I don’t feel any different. Same guy, just with a few added layers of experience.

I get up in the morning, put on a sharp shirt and a tie and spend eight hours pretending that I’m a knowledgeable professional… but at heart I’m still the same guy who mostly wants to hang out with his friends and stay up too late shooting pool or sneak up to Frostburg to see a girl. Under the thin veneer of adulthood, I still like driving too fast and going to Denny’s at odd hours. If having a house, holding a steady job, and paying your bills is the defining characteristic of being “grown,” I’ve got it covered. If it’s some deeper change in your psyche, well, that’s a little more problematic.

It’s one of those deep thoughts I have lying in bed before sleep comes: Am I the only one who feels this way? Is everyone else really an adult inside their own head and I’m the only one who feels like he’s playing a part just well enough not to get caught? Maybe I am… in which case this entire post as served as nothing other than a 500-word admission of guilt. Surely I’m not the only one out there faking it, right? Even if we’re all not kids any more, I’m looking forward to seeing the old gang again.

Clip… clip… clip…

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Dear Colleague,

Are you really sitting in your cubicle trimming your fingernails at 7:10 AM? Really? There are only three of us in the office at this hour and that means there’s no way you’re even trying to hide the clip… clip… clip noise that you’re making over there. You are, quite simply, a disgusting person. That isn’t something you might have wanted to do in the privacy of your own home or even in your car if you want to stretch it. But sitting there with fingernails flying all over your cube? Yeah. You’re classy like that.

I liked you better when you use to sleep all the time. But in fairness even then I didn’t like you very much.

Regards,

Jeff

Editorial Note: This part of a continuing series of previously de-published blogs appearing on http://www.jeffreytharp.com for the first time. This post has been time stamped to correspond to its original publication date.