adulting – Page 4

And for My Next Trick: 10,000 Followers Will Fly Out My Ass

Maybe it’s time I join the circus.

At this point, I’m damn good at juggling. Even as I type, I have about seven things floating above my head that I’m going to need to catch and toss again in a few seconds. I’ll use my feet if I must. It’s fine. I’ve done it before. I’ll be a clown in the circus, juggling my day job, my writing career, my family, my friends, my finances, my marketing, my diet, a facemask, and whatever else the universe decides to throw into the mix. Maybe it will just tell me to dance as I juggle. Move to the beat, swallow a sword, and tie your hands behind your back.

It’s fine.

Everything is fine.

I’ve written before about how adulting can be a lot. But I think the burden gets a little heavier when the thing you want most is about two inches beyond the reach of your fingertips. And within the space of two inches is about 10,000 sets of eyes.

“So how long have you been writing?” The agent asked me as I relaxed a little in my seat. I had just pitched my speculative fiction novel, Aftershock, over a Zoom meeting, and he asked me to email him the entire manuscript.

Talk about thunderstruck.

We still had 4 minutes left, and my tongue couldn’t pluck a single coherent sentence from my brain. Perhaps he could tell I was internally sputtering like an engine starved for gas, so he took the lead, and we both accepted our fate would be four minutes of small talk.

“I’ve been writing my whole life,” I told him. “I have a blog, #adulting. Light-hearted humor and relatable stories.”

The agent lit up. “What’s the URL?” He asked.

I gave it to him and explained the premise.

“How many followers do you have?”

I stumbled. I spent hours last night reciting a pitch for Aftershock. I wasn’t anywhere close to pitching a #adulting project.

“Only a handful,” I admitted. Twenty-five, to be exact. Whoopie. (Also, love you guys.)

“I just spoke to an editor yesterday about wanting to do a project similar to this,” the agent enlightened.

I think my left lung sprang a leak. It blew around my ribcage like a flying balloon, and for once in my life, I did not have words.

“I love the idea. But for something like that to work, you’d need about 10,000 followers. Then we could talk.”

Oh, is that all? Dude, I don’t even have enough friends for each finger on my hand!

I can’t remember what I said next, but I must have said something, and I hope to sweet baby Jesus it wasn’t dumb.

“I’ve seen it done in a month,” he continued. “If you really go for it and you do it right, you can get 10,000 followers in a month.”

Who, me?

I am a fumbling fool trying to figure out what I am supposed to be doing with my life, and here I am, literally 9,975 people away from getting something I’ve wanted since the 4^th grade.

Let me just place this red nose on my face and hop on a unicycle as I juggle.

And for my next trick? 10,000 followers will fly out my ass!

I’m about to start cranking some serious content, ya’ll. Because I want this more than anything in the world. Drop me a like and a follow. Share with your friends. Let’s turn this circus act into a dream and pull a book deal out of my hat.

Follow me on Facebook

Follow me on Instagram

Follow me on WordPress

Let’s do this.

Fragments of me

I’m fumbling

Stumbling and crumbling, gathering discarded pieces of myself as they flake off along the way. I press onward, my arms overflowing with fragments of me.

Fumbling and stumbling…crumbling…

…and humbling.

No one ever said it would be easy, so I should stop pretending it is.

Adulting is fucking difficult. Balancing life shouldn’t be this hard.

Dealing with emotions I know are normal but also recognize as irrational or selfish or dramatic is tough. Have I not outgrown jealousy? Am I not too old to be threatened? Should I not be immune to heartbreak or rage?

No.

We’re adults. Not robots.

Can you imagine us as adult robots? There’s my next speculative fiction novel. Adults engineered into robots at 18 so they can handle responsibility and success without pesky feelings. Execution, no emotion. Objectives, no adventure.

Here’s the thing… there can’t be happy without the sad sometimes. There can’t be success without some failure.

Adulting doesn’t mean you can’t feel the same emotions you’ve always felt. I suppose it means I can’t slap Janet across the face when she insults me…I should probably use big girl words instead. But I can still freely feel that fury stemming from her ignorance. Human emotion and reaction will never go away, no matter how old or advanced we become.

How we handle inevitable floods of sudden emotion is what makes us an adult. I’ve evolved. How I handle emotion now is much different from how I handled it as a child.

Publicly, anyway.

I mean… I might throw myself to the floor and scream for chocolate in private… but that’s my business.

The point here, I think, is that sometimes I handle emotion well… like an adult should. Other times I don’t. But I do learn from that. I pick up those pieces and continue down this unpredictable journey called life

The Universe I Create

Between the hemispheres of my brain, within the confines of my skull, a million words are flying. They’re soaring across an intricate web of thought. They build a world, letter by letter, a place only I can see when I close my eyes.

I am sane.

I am an adult.

I know it is all in my head.

But it’s real to me.

In my head, there’s a place only I can hide. In my brain, there’s a world I constructed from dust. In my mind lives a man with a villain to fight. It is all fantasy that only I can experience, places only I can know, people only I can love.

It’s just me and the universe I create with letters and words and precise punctuation that alters meaning and shatters perception.

Just me.

Until the day I pick up a pen, scrape it across paper. Until that moment I tenderly tap keys. Until the world I’ve built writhes and churns and the words overflow. They cascade from my ears and trickle to my palms. I hold them, just for a second, just until they start to drip from the spaces between my fingers. Then I release them, uncup my hands and splash them into the world.

I write them. I write them all, so that this place might become real…so that these people might be loved. They aren’t just characters, concrete and simple. They carry a message and tell a story and mean something more than just what they are. They’re a product of my passion and the fruit of my talent and the result of emotion firing and misfiring in my cortex.

“Stop playing pretend and be an adult.”

These characters are apart of me, imprints behind my eyes. I will be 108 before I put down a pen and give up my passion.

“Characters aren’t real. Don’t waste your time developing them.”

They’re real to me, and they carry a message of love and resilience and acceptance and hope that so many of us in this world need. Character development is vital to the success of a story. They don’t deserve to be blurry.

“You’ll never get published, save yourself the time and disappointment.”

57 rejections. 4 manuscript requests. Two writer’s conferences. Three agent cards, two almost-had-its, a new writer’s laptop, a custom logo, a website, and another four cold queries. Not a single instant have I felt like I’ve wasted even a nanosecond of my time. I look wonderful failure in the face and analyze how I can use that to get better. If that isn’t #adulting, I am not sure what is. Failure is not disappointment. Failure is glorious opportunity.

Someday, the world will read these words and feel these emotions and meet these characters. They will live forever, permanently stamped on paper to outlive my body and change the world long after I’m gone.

And I will smile every step of the way, because I’m killing it.

We’re killing it.

Mail in a Pile on the Counter

Time is bizarre.

It’s something we can spend and save, make and waste, choose and lose. We can have too much, but mostly have too little. Time can fly, and time can also crawl. It moves systematically forward but never backward, and it never, ever stops.

The concept of time makes my brain hurt sometimes. How can an hour seem to sluggishly drag by, while the last 28 years whirled by me, knocked me over, yanked me onward in its wake? It is stumbling to consider time lost and wasted is something we can never get back. And in those quiet, most precious moments that snuggle beside our hearts and leave a lingering imprint, we want so badly for time to stop. We long for it to halt in its tracks, pump the brakes, freeze around us in those minutes we wish to last forever.

But it won’t.

Time will always continue on, and it will shove you along with it, because it never leaves anything behind.

As children, time is something that just can’t seem to run fast enough. We can’t wait to grow up. We can’t wait for that vacation next month. We can’t wait for dinner. We. Can’t. Wait. Then suddenly we stop running and wish we could back up. We want to turn around, go back, do it all over, take it slower. But we can’t. Time’s magnetic field keeps pulling us onward.

As an adult, I never have enough time. 24 hours is not sufficient. I cannot work full-time, cook, clean, work out, home improve, walk the dog, grocery shop, get gas, water my plants, weed, mow, catch up on Stranger Things, call my mother, see my friends, scroll Facebook, make all those Pinterest projects, fold laundry, practice piano, write my novel, and get at least 7 hours of sleep in 24 hours! IT’S NOT POSSIBLE.

I’ve come to the conclusion that adulting means making time. Adults learn to prioritize and learn to function with little sleep and learn how to balance all the little things in life that pile up (like that massive pile of mail on my counter that I have no intention of going through any time soon). We have to make time and prioritize. We have to. Because time stops for no one. Prioritizing, like adulting in general, takes practice. Sometimes we’ll let things slip. Like the mail. Or the weeds. Sometimes even friends.

It seems more difficult to maintain friendships now, especially when we have different priorities, incomes, lifestyles, careers, schedules, and locations. It used to be so effortless. Texting and Facebooking daily came so naturally and we had all the time in the world to meet up for spur-of-the-moment Hobby Lobby extravaganzas. Now, suddenly, my evenings are packed with the above list while I dump extra energy into a new job and I save whatever I have left for the struggle to launch a writing career. We’ve all got lists like this. We all have our shit and sometimes it’s not fun. But it’s part of adulting and we make it work.

Watching those around me grow and blossom into adults over time (even if they feel like they’re faking it sometimes) has been fascinating. I’m an observer. That is, I watch people. While the greatest obstacle for me is to put in a syllable in casual conversation, watching it all happen comes naturally. I watch the way their lips move as they talk, or the habitual gestures they use as they tell a story. The way they smile can be worth more than the words they utter. Perhaps most interesting of all is the speaker’s eyes. It’s the level of intensity swirling within them that really tells the story. An observer soaks in every word and detail, storing it away. I don’t only learn about the speaker; I learn about the entire human race.

I’ve watched many different people from different backgrounds and with different aspirations develop into adults and become parents. In fact, my husband and I are one of the only couples within my friend group without children. I think there’s an irony here, because everyone always thought I’d be first. I’ve always wanted a whole pack of babies, my own baseball team to fill the rooms of this house. As I observe everyone around me, I think maybe I should be feeling like I’m running out of time, like there’s this biological clock slowly ticking away as the world continues to spin.

But I don’t.

For the first time in my adult life, I feel like I have all the time in the world. Or, maybe I feel like I simply don’t have the time to take that leap yet. I have time, I don’t have time, who knows? Like I said, the concept of time makes my brain hurt.

Adulting doesn’t mean becoming a parent. I will, one day, when I can figure out how to adjust all those priorities and fit my large to-do list into 24 hours. But in the meantime, I will fluidly move with time, spin with the earth, observe the beautiful transitions around me, and leave the mail in a pile on the counter.

Preschool Style

The concept of friendship is almost bizarre if you really think about it. What’s the moment your relationship with another human being suddenly moves beyond an acquaintance or coworker or stranger and into this friendship zone that comes along with a certain understanding of each other?

What drop of rain overflows the bucket?

As a child, forming friendships is effortless.

“Do you want to play with us at lunch?” The third-grade strawberry blonde called Rachel walked up to me. She had bangs, and her hair was straight around her shoulders. She wore a pink zip jacket with purple legging pants and nearly white tennis shoes that lit up as she waddled. She smiled, a front tooth missing.

“Okay,” I said quietly, shuffling my feet and brushing my tangled hair behind one of my ears.

“Nikki and I are going to play animals. We are shivering in the cold by the tree, waiting for someone to come rescue us.”

“Okay,” I said again. “Can I be a kitty?” Which is funny, because as an adult I am certainly not a cat person. Something living in my house that poops in a box and hops on my counter? No thanks.

“Nikki is the kitty,” Rachel said matter-of-factly. “I’m a puppy. Maybe you can be the bunny?”

I didn’t argue; I was just happy to be included. I twitched my nose like a bunny and stuck my teeth out in front of my lower lip. “Bunny,” I repeated.

“Great!” she exclaimed. “We will meet you by the tree after lunch time!”

Animal games at recess turned into lunchtime conversations, and lunchtime conversations soon gave way to Barbie games on our bedroom floors. Barbie games morphed to soccer games, and phone calls turned into Instant Message conversations on AOL. (If you’re under twenty, you haven’t the slightest idea what I’m talking about.) Through these transitions, Rachel became my best friend. I met Rachel in the year 2000. We’ve been best friends for nineteen years. And for fourteen of those years and counting, 300 miles sat between us.

We must be doing something right, here.

Somehow, we’ve gone from shivering animals to women with careers and houses and husbands.

WHAT just HAPPENED?

I want to talk about love for a moment. Because the concept of love and understanding it is #adulting. I don’t want to talk about the romantic love you think you feel at 16, or you know you feel at 30. Not a sexual love or feeling of lust. Right now, I’m talking about feeling love for another person, regardless of sex or age. Much like the love you feel for your sister or your father. But this person isn’t blood.

I’m talking about looking at someone and feeling like your world is so different with them in it. It’s the difference between “I love you” and “I’m in love with you”.

Someone once asked me if I loved my best friend, if I loved Rachel. I wasn’t sure how to respond. They then prompted me, “if she died, would you cry?”

“Well, yes,” I agreed.
“Then you love her.”
Fair enough. But I cried when a friend’s mother passed on. Does that mean I loved my friend’s mother? Or did I cry out of remorse for my friend? I cried when I learned of Alan Rickman’s death. Does that mean I loved him? (Well. I did. But I didn’t know him. Just his characters. And that intoxicating way of speech.)

This “love” word gets tossed around a lot. We say it to our friends and coworkers like it’s just another word. I do think it is overused, but I also think it’s not just meant for the romantic feelings you feel for someone.

I love my husband. I love my sister and my parents and my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins. I also love Rachel.

I was in 9^th grade when I realized that. I was moving away from the small town of Columbia Station in Ohio and heading all the way to Rockford, Michigan with my family. Looking back, this truly was the best move for my family, and everything worked out well. But when you’re in the middle of your freshman year of high school and you’re facing goodbye with your best friend since the third grade, there is no stopping the hot tears rolling down your cheeks.

I said goodbye to a lot of people that night, but I only cried when it came to Rachel.

I didn’t even cry saying goodbye to my boyfriend (who later turned out to be super-hero gay, so it’s all good.)

Despite the miles, we remained close. My connection with her was elastic enough to stretch 300 miles, and I am eternally grateful for that morning she asked a lonely third grader to play.

Why isn’t making friends that easy as an adult? Why can’t I sit beside you on our lunch break and claim you as mine? If I did that, you’d probably look at me funny and take your lunch elsewhere. But you should be so lucky for me to claim you. I’m a ride-or-die kind of friend. You need a shoulder to cry on? You got it. Need some comic relief? I’m your girl. Need a body buried? I own 7 acres.

The fact is, we don’t talk to one another like we used to. Perhaps children hold this elusive innocence and an uncomplicated understanding of the world. This innocence leads them to asking the new girl to play animals by the tree, and it changes her life forever.

Adults don’t do that, but maybe we should.

Let’s kick it preschool style.

The Fart Box

Professional. /prəˈfeSH(ə)n(ə)l/. Adjective. Relating to or connected with a profession. “Young professional people.” Synonyms: White Collar, executive. Nonmanual. “People in professional occupations.”

Pencil skirts.
Ties.
Briefcases.
Cubicles.
Desk phones with cords.
Laptops.
Branded coffee mugs.

And amongst these items, people are perfect, mature, professional adults collaborating and creating and succeeding.
“Why does it smell like a FART in here?”

Perfect, mature, professional adults.

Klarissa drops her bag in the doorway and sniffs the air. “It smells like fart in here!” She repeats, wrinkling her nose.
I chuckle and shake my head. “One dude snuck one out 3 weeks ago and it LINGERED.”
Klarissa sighs heavily and trudges toward her desk, bag dragging lazily on the ground. She flips her raven hair over her shoulder and collapses into her chair, glaring across the table. We don’t have cubes up here in this mezzanine afterthought of an office. We are spread out along a giant table and share shoulder space. We have to suck it in when people squeeze by behind us, and we might as well just start walking on the tables to get to the exit.

If there’s ever a fire, we’re all dead.

“I can’t believe this,” Klarissa continues. “They took away our downtown office. They’re changing our logo. They’re shrinking this department.” She groans and drops her face into her hands. “I’m glad I am moving to Vietnam. I mean, I am just fresh out.” She checks her bag, rummages around. “Yep,” she confirms, “Fresh out of fucks.”
“There’s the name of our new podcast,” I announce, leaning back and spinning in my chair. “Farts and Fucks.”
We share a laugh that is quickly silenced when the door swings open.
“Oh, Tim,” I greet. “It’s just you. Hey buddy.”
“Hi!” Tim waves as he makes his way toward his desk beside mine. “How is everyone?” He asks, his signature wide smile stretching across his cheeks.
Before Klarissa and I can answer, more employees pile in to this claustrophobic prison where we long for a glimpse outside and slowly asphyxiate on methane. The three of us share a look, then simultaneously shift our eyes to our computers.

Tim 8:23 AM:
does anyone else think it smells like a giant fart again today?

Klarissa 8:23 AM:
ALWAYS. like wtf???

Kaitlin 8:23 AM:
I can’t keep it together if we keep talking about farts & fucks.

Klarissa 8:23 AM:
hahaha the name of our podcast. I’d listen to that.

Tim 8:23 AM:
should i stand up and say “who is shitting their pants?!”

Klarissa 8:23 AM:
HAHAHAH

Klarissa 8:24 AM:
I think we broke Kaitlin. She’s crying.

Klarissa 8:24 AM:
LOLOL i fucking can’t

Kaitlin 8:24 AM:
god i’m so mature. laughing at farts. #adult.

Tim 8:25 AM:
hahaha

Klarissa 8:25 AM:
dude no matter how old i am, farts are ALWAYS going to be funny

Kaitlin 8:25 AM:
so true. always.

Klarissa 8:25 AM:
i can be 92 and still laughing my ass off at my own farts

Tim 80:26 AM:
at 92 we probably won’t even know we are farting

Kaitlin 8:26 AM:
Fact.

Klarissa 8:28 AM:
I’m really sick of it smelling like farts up in here. This is not professional.

Too many of us spend our lives working because we must, rather than because we want to. I work here because I like to buy nice things and decided adulting means having a big house. Maybe one day the writing will pay the bills and passion will finally become profession. But in the meantime, coworkers like Klarissa and Tim make the office days tolerable. They bring joy to the monotony of desk work and the world of machinery. This was never the plan, working in this industry, but things tend to snowball, and I consider it all a part of the journey.

How many times along this journey should I have been fired for laughing to myself at my desk, tears streaming down the sides of my face?

Debatable.

Things could certainly be worse here. Indeed, we have it rather good, if you think of this fart box as more a penthouse in the sky with a world-class view of packaging machinery across a shop floor. I suppose in the grand scheme of things, an office reeking of flatulence isn’t that bad.

I once thought working in an office would completely capture the essence of adulting, but I am not certain that’s true. In the 2 office settings I’ve worked in, it was far from what I pictured. From shooting nerf darts across lines of cubicles to bitching about farts on skype, I learned that being an adult professional does not omit fun nor frustration. What makes the professional is how she manages these things.

Publicly.

I will bitch all day long to my friends on Skype, but when I address concerns with the boss, I am professionalism.

The difficulties of professionalism and adulting aside, there exists an unwritten rulebook of office etiquette, and far too many remain ignorant of its existence.

Chew with your damn mouth closed. You’re disgusting.
Do NOT fart in an enclosed and/or crowded area.
Do NOT play sound from your laptop without earbuds when those around you are working.
NEVER talk politics and religion at the office. You might think you and your homeboy Trump are right all day long, but you are offending the hell out of the liberal millennial across from you and annoying the shit out of the moderate temperamental writer sitting beside you. And I like Jesus as much as the next guy, but please do everyone a favor and keep the preaching at church, not in the office.
Don’t even THINK about talking to me if my headphones are in. This is office language for DO NOT DISTURB.

Speaking of office language, as a professional, I have come to speak this dialect quite fluently and learned the translation of certain phrases. For example:

Per my last email = CAN YOU FUCKING READ?
I will prioritize my schedule = I don’t have time for this bullshit.
It may benefit the group if…= Here’s what we’re going to do to make this easier on me.
Copying the boss on an email = I’m telling on you, Carl. Do your job.
Let’s table that thought = your idea sucks, Susan.
As soon as I get through these emails = I’m scrolling Facebook, ask me later.
Want to do lunch? = Wait till you hear the hunk of juicy gossip I’ve got for you.
Can you offer some support? = I’m drowning, here, Janet, get off your ass and help me!
I’m experiencing some technical difficulties = This computer is a PILE, and if you tell me to turn it off and back on again, SO HELP ME GOD.,,

Thankfully, we have instant message systems like Skype for employees to speak English to one another throughout the work day and let go of that office language filter. But, let’s be honest. If this company ever decides to pull my Skype conversations, I am so fired.

Tim 11:38 AM:
what time do ya’ll want to go to lunch?

Kaitlin 11:38 AM:
now

Klarissa 11:40 AM:
right after i finish this script and go to the pee room

Tim 11:40 AM:
just pee in your chair. No one will know

Kaitlin 11:40 AM:
Me. I will know.

Tim 11:41 AM:
That’s why these chairs are mesh fabric

Klarissa 11:41 AM:
makes sense now

Tim 11:41 AM:
right

Klarissa 11:43 AM:
we are cogs in a machine. we aren’t allowed to eat and pee

Klarissa 11:43 AM:
solution? mesh chairs

Kaitlin 11:44 AM:
what about #2

Klarissa 11:44 AM:
hold it in until you die of shit

Tim 11:44 AM:
or let it out and then the fart box becomes a poop box

Kaitlin Staniulis 11:45 AM:
let it gooo, let it GOOO,,, can’t hold it in any moreeeeee

Tim 11:45 AM:
OMG

Klarissa 11:45 AM:
OMG I’m gonna put a picture of Elsa in the restroom stalls

Kaitlin 11:45 AM:
YES

Kaitlin 11:45 AM:
TAPE IT OVER THE ACTIVITIES COMMITTEE FLIERS

Klarissa 11:46 AM:
that’ll be my magnum opus and last contribution to this company

Klarissa 11:46 AM:
my wildfire moment

Tim 11:46 AM:
HAHA #Gameofthrones

Klarissa 11:47 AM:
Elsa with wildfire explosion behind her

Klarissa 11:47 AM:
i’d buy that

Kaitlin 11:47 AM:
COMIC CON GOLD

Klarissa 11:48 AM:
ya’ll better quit your jobs now, momma bout to get rich off nerds.

One day, dear friend.

Drawing and writing and living our passion like the adults we were meant to be.

I’ve Been “Adulting” Since I was Two.

They say, “you’re only as old as you feel.” Well, sometimes I feel six, so…

At what moment do we enter adulthood? Is it the day we turn 18, that moment we blow out the candles and can legally vote and get into night clubs? Or is it when we suddenly realize we are, in fact, too old to go to said night clubs? An 18-year-old may be a “legal” adult, but isn’t 18 technically still a teenager? I felt like more of an adult when I turned 20 than when I turned 18… but age is just a number. They say, “you’re only as old as you feel.”

Well, sometimes I feel six, so…

“You’ve been adulting since you were two,” my mother informs me as she washes the dishes, her eyes fixated on the plate in her soapy hands.

“What do you mean?” I ask. I reach for a towel to dry.

“You were holding the ladder for your dad before you could even walk straight,” she chuckles.

Indeed, I was. In reflection of this revelation, adulting = responsibility? If this is the case, I have been adulting since I was two. From holding the ladder steady for my dad as he changed light bulbs, to guiding my aunt through Home Depot at age 3, to hording food behind the couch, just in case.

Because an adult is always prepared for the apocalypse.

One of my first words was “decoration.”

If this does not put my family into perspective for you, I’m not sure how else I can put this. There I was, barely two, yelling at my Granny as she touched a statue on the mantle.

“Granny! No touch. Decoration.”

At two-and-a-half, my sister arrived. This is my earliest memory…and I think that’s because it had such a profound impact upon my life. Everything shifted, and even at age two, I knew I was just given the most important job in the universe.

I remember my father coming through the front door one afternoon. I remember him asking if I wanted to go see her.

I said yeah.

I do not recall the car ride to the hospital. I can’t picture arriving nor walking through the antiseptic halls. But I do recollect stepping into that room. It was dim and quiet, and I could feel the air change as I waddled in. I don’t remember saying hi.

“Can I hold her?” I asked. I was set into the rocking chair and my tiny sister was placed into my toddler arms.

Sarah.

She had a mess of dark brown hair, and her ears were abnormally large. I think I remember this moment, toddler me, staring into my sister’s brown eyes for the first time, because that was the moment I was forever changed. Something altered inside me…clicked, maybe…

It wasn’t just “me” anymore.

It would forever be Sarah and me, and that made me an adult.

Until I got bored of her and decided I was adult enough for a pet.

The sun peeked out from behind the over-protective clouds, shining its smiling face upon Ohio. The wind blew gently, ruffling my curls as I stood impatiently in my driveway, waiting anxiously for a green car to turn my way. I sighed.

Where are they?

Soon my legs grew tired and I plopped upon the concrete, my arms stubbornly crossed over my chest. The wind whipped across the earth again, pushing my brown locks into my eyes. I agitatedly flicked them back; my view could not be obstructed.

The sound of singing grasshoppers echoed in my ears and the sweet smell of flowers and grass filled my nostrils. I began to fidget, and checked my imaginary watch, making noises of disgust at the time of day. My thoughts lingered from the driveway into my room, and I stood abruptly, hurrying through the garage door and into the house. I tore spastically up the stairs and burst into my pink room, bustling over to my dresser. A small wooden jewelry box sat dead center. I caught my breath, my cheeks rosy, and peaked inside. I smiled, content, and carefully resealed the box, double checking that nothing could escape.

The sound of my purple light-up sneakers hitting the driveway echoed off the garage door as I returned to my post outside in the warm summer air. I sat again and groaned. I flopped back, lying flat, and stared at the sky. It fascinated me; it seemed to go on forever. I smiled at the thought and wondered what would happen if God just peaked his head out of the white fluffy cloud that lazily floated by, careful not to cross the path of the sun. I imagined it happening, and absently waved above me.

I heard the rumble of a car’s engine and my large brown eyes widened in excitement and realization. I heard tires against pavement as the vehicle grew closer. I smelled gasoline and knew there was no mistaking.

They were finally here!

“There’s my princess!”

“Grandpa!” I cascaded into his arms and he gave me a big kiss on my cheek; it was prickly, and I giggled. His graying mustache had sat above his lips as long as I could remember.

“Hi Honey-Girl!”

“Hi Granny!” I leapt from Grandpa’s arms and ran to embrace Granny. I hugged her tightly and thought how wonderful and lucky it was to have both a Grandma and a Granny. I stared up at Granny’s face; pale but beautiful, and her make-up perfectly placed. Granny characteristically had a light brown, bouffant hair-do.

“How are you, Little Girl?” my grandparents asked as the rest of the family came to greet our visitors. Mom kissed them both, holding baby sister tightly in her arms, while Dad shook hands.

Conversation took off in the driveway, and I found impatience creeping into my skin once more. I tapped my foot and caught myself glancing at that imaginary watch again. I bit her lower lip. I tried to be patient and let the grown-ups talk, but anxiety filled me to the brim. I tugged on Granny’s rose-pink shirt.

“Granny!”

“What-y?” She looked down at me and smiled warmly.

My voice dropped to a whisper. “Come quick! There’s something I got to show you!” I stole a glance at my parents, hoping my secret was still safe. Once I was certain I was unheard, I hastily took Granny’s hand and pulled her inside. Then I broke into a gallop up the carpeted stairs.

“Hurry up, Granny! It’s important!” I made it into the room first and placed a hand protectively upon the wooden jewelry box. Granny soon joined me and stood next to me.

“It’s a secret, Granny. You can’t tell Mom and Dad. Promise?”

“I promise,” Granny replied, bending down to see my excited face. I slowly opened the jewelry box, glancing at the door to make sure we had not been followed. Then I stepped back so Granny could see my secret clearly. Inside, amongst the tangles of beads and stick-on earrings, sat a scarlet Ladybug. It was sweetly dotted with several black spots and did not move. Granny smiled to herself, and I now know that is because she realized the bug was dead. She gasped over-excitedly.

“Oooo,” she whispered, knowing this was a big deal for me.

“It’s my pet. But you can’t tell Mommy or Daddy, because they’ll make me get rid of it, okay?”

“I won’t tell,” Granny said, kissing my forehead. “This is an awfully big secret.”

Granny left the room, leaving me to carefully mind my pet. She rejoined the adults in the kitchen, where I heard her say in a hushed tone,

“I think it’s time for a pet.”

First pets are a huge responsibility for a child, and it brings out a level of adult within them. Can a three-year-old with a ladybug or a six-year-old with a puppy adult? If you consider the super-complex equation adult = responsibility, then yes, I believe so.

When I turned six, my parents took me to the mall to get my ears pierced, and I’ve been the coolest thing since sliced bread from that moment on. I used to think the gold bulbs in my earlobes made me look so grown up, and I’d act the part. I was a six-year-old adult with pierced ears and a pet, strutting her stuff.

Fast forward twelve years and I’d be in a sketchy tattoo parlor in Grand Rapids getting my naval and tragus pierced simultaneously (the tragus hurt way more than my bellybutton). For some reason, so many of us feel as though tattoos and piercings are a rite of passage. Turning eighteen is the official entrance into legal adulthood, and if it’s not a voting year, the only other thing we can do as new adults is run and get something pierced! The truth is, they didn’t make me feel like any more of an adult like I had hoped.

Just more of a badass.

Through the birth of a sibling, pets, and piercings, I think I turned out okay. My parents gave me a considerably solid idea of what an adult is, and now that I am officially in adulthood, I can take it and run (probably into a wall… and that wouldn’t be the first wall I’ve run into).

This is Why I’m Not Allowed Outside

I’m listening to the way my heels click confidently against the tile as I walk, and I wave casually at the receptionist before pushing through the double doors leading to the café at work.

Oh, God, someone I don’t really know is walking my way.

I keep walking, a little slower now, shifting my eyes from the floor to the space in front of me to the face of the man approaching me and back again.

Do I smile?

He’s getting closer.

Do I say hi?

Shit, he’s right here.

Maybe I don’t even look at him.

“Hi,” he says as our paths cross.
I sputter. “Good, you?”

Dammit.

That’s going to haunt me at 3 AM for the next 5 years.

We all go through an awkward stage growing up. Maybe it’s a bad hairdo. and you have family photos showcasing that time you tried to cut your own bangs. It could be a poor fashion choice, and you’re looking back at those red pleather pants you just had to have in the 90’s. Perhaps it’s a combination of the two, and your high school yearbook forever has you in a powder-blue suit with a big-ass afro. (cough…Dad…cough…)

Thankfully, we all seem to grow out of that obligatory awkward stage and eventually burn all photographic evidence. But there are some forms of awkwardness we never really expel, even as we pretend to be semi-functioning adults. It stays with us, like an annoying extension of ourselves that just won’t take a hint and leave. We might move on from the chubby stage and our bangs might grow back, but we can never change the fact that when the movie ticket girl at the cinema told us to enjoy the show, we said, “You, too!”

We have to interact with way too many adults on a day-to-day basis. Sometimes I wish I could call in sick simply because it’s too peopley out there. Names and faces can be so difficult to keep straight, especially when you work for a company that has many traveling employees. I am constantly seeing new faces that aren’t actually new, and it’s the source of so many awkward moments.
I enter the meeting with a laptop tucked under my arm and I close the door behind me. A man with a purple tie already sits at the table with a notepad and pencil.
“Hi, I’m Kaitlin,” I introduce, reaching to shake his hand.
“Yes, we’ve met, a few times,” he says, chuckling.

Dammit.

Lock me up. I shouldn’t be allowed outside.

Speaking of shaking hands, this is a pretty common social phenomenon. But I can’t be the only person who panics about this when meeting someone new. How am I supposed to know if you’re a handshaker, a fist bumper, or, God forbid, a hugger? Too many times have I gone in for the normal white girl handclasp only to be met with a closed fist, or to suddenly be engaged in some awkward grip-changing secret handshake that I feel like I’m supposed to know, but don’t. Should I shake again when I say goodbye? And damned if we don’t awkwardly walk in the same direction after saying bye, and I must stop and tie my shoe to put some reasonable distance between us.

Only to realize I’m not wearing laces today.

Work is not the only place we frequently experience awkward moments. A few years back, they changed the words to Catholic mass. Suddenly it wasn’t “And also with you,” but rather “And with your spirit.”
Last week:
Priest: The Lord be with you.
Everyone else: And with your spirit.
Me: AND ALSO WITH YOU!
And now people think I haven’t stepped foot in mass for ten years.

Awkward.

Let’s just skip over the fact that I thought the phrase “peace be with you” was “pleased to be with you” until I was eight.

In today’s world, it’s damn near impossible to get lost. In the age of Google Maps and even GPS, there really isn’t an excuse. In fact, it’s impressive if you manage to get lost. But what are the flippin’ odds the driveway I decide to use as a turn-around belongs to the car right behind me?! Here I am, awkwardly waving at you as I back out of your driveway. Wonderful. And people don’t really talk to each other anymore, so we don’t ask for directions…but if for some reason I have to, and you start using crazy words like “north” and “east…”

I’m fucked.

In psychology, they call the phenomenon in which people think they’re noticed way more than they actually are the “spotlight effect.” OF COURSE we find ourselves infinitely more awkward than anyone else ever notices. That guy I awkwardly greeted at work is not up late thinking about how awkward I am.

He’s up late thinking about how awkward he is!

Adults cry, too, you know.

You feel furthest from a functioning adult when you find yourself hiding away in the bathroom of DeVos Place in downtown Grand Rapids bawling your eyes out.

Let’s back up to how I ended up in that bathroom stall, pathetically watching the mascara run down my face in the mirror.

It’s funny how things sort of

tumble

into place

when it was never a part of the plan.

Somehow, I survived my first year of teaching. And the thought of returning in the Fall was almost nauseating.

I remember standing in the back lawn of the high school as kids hurriedly and excitedly boarded the busses for the final time that year. I forced a smile and waved at those I knew (but didn’t really like).
“One year down…. 30 to go…” and I clenched my fists to avoid groaning out loud. “It’s going to get better, right?”

“right?”

“RIGHT?!”

I held up send-off and well-wishes signs with the other teachers and cheered as the buses made a grand exit. My sign said “Read! :)”. But really, I wanted it to say “GTFO!”

I wasn’t a social butterfly with the other teachers, so I walked back to my room alone once silence flooded the school grounds and there was only the distant diesel hum of the buses from the next street over.
I counted the dusty steps as I ascended to the second floor, running my hand over the railing, my mind desperately searching my soul for an ounce of excitement about the career I chose.

There wasn’t any.

“Shit.”

I stood in the center of my room, taking in all the debris scattered across the floor and the awful scent of pubescent adolescents. At least I had all my Spanish 1 lesson plans… next year would be significantly less time consuming.

I plopped into my chair and fired up my Gmail.

An email from the head of the foreign language department. Subject: 2015-Next Year’s Assignments.

Huh?

I opened it.

Amy – Spanish 1

Ginger- Spanish 3 & 4

Kaitlin- Spanish 2.

Dammit.

Spanish 2? You’ve got to be kidding me.

More lesson planning. And worse? The same assholes in class.

I could have pulled my hair out.

I can’t do this….

Negative self-talk never got anyone anywhere, but I was feeling so utterly defeated and burnt out… after year one. How do people do this their whole lives?
To mask my frustrations and busy my mind, I hopped onto Glassdoor to search for paying summer internships to earn some experience toward my master’s degree. That was my only way out. Two years of studying while working full-time. Hard work. #adulting.

Fate, luck, whatever, I found myself working the summer for a company called NHA. I would work in their IT department making course revisions for their internal E-learning modules.

It was temporary.

Until I met Cindy.

Here’s where the fate comes in.

Cindy’s associate resigned the same day Cindy and I met.

That’s just too spooky to be coincidence.

Half-way through my internship with NHA, I was assigned a project for the Director of Special Education for the entire organization (84 charter schools across 9 states at the time). She needed 13 engaging e-learning modules created from a horrible lawyer presentation about Section 504, and that was up to me.

I walked into an empty conference room five minutes before our meeting. I didn’t know it yet, but Cindy was almost always late. I took a seat on the far side of the table and worked to hook my laptop up to the TV display at the end of the table.

She came in like wind, almost silently and quickly, seamlessly and confidently. She looked to be in her mid-fifties, blonde hair cut short with brilliant blue eyes. She wore an expensive orange blazer over a floral blouse. She sat in the chair adjacent to me with perfect poster, and I couldn’t help but notice her long pale pink nails and a massive marquise-shaped wedding diamond on her left finger. She smiled at me before confidently extending a hand across the table for me to take.

She introduced herself with pride. I took her hand and consciously shook it firmly. I gave her my name, forcing a smile to hide my nerves.

“So nice to meet you.” Cindy opened her laptop and set her iPhone aside. It was far enough from her to not be rude, yet close enough to remain in her peripheral vision, in case she was to get an imperative call or message.

This lady is important.

“How long have you been with us?” She asked, making small talk as I prepared to begin.

“Just over a month,” I responded, looking up at her. She was gazing right into my eyes fearlessly. Suddenly a wave of intimidation swept over me. What was I doing?

“And how long will you be with us?”

“Until the end of the summer. I’m a teacher,” I explained.

“Wonderful! In one of our NHA schools?”

“No,” I admitted, breaking eye contact to glance at my screen. “Public school.” I told her I taught Spanish.

“You’re bilingual! That’s amazing. Spanish sure comes in handy. My husband and I run an orphanage in Mexico. Do you like it? Teaching?”

There was something about her staring at me in that moment that told me it was okay to tell her the truth. “No.”

She nodded. “Shall we begin?”

I kicked off the meeting, pitching my ideas to her, showing her all the “fancy” things I had learned PowerPoint can do that summer.

I’ve always been a decent public speaker, ushering my “teacher” voice from somewhere deep within. But something about Cindy made me a little nervous that day. Maybe it was her stature, maybe her demeanor, maybe her title and reputation. Regardless, I was nervous as hell running a meeting with her. I tried my hardest to seem professional, but still felt like a child playing dress-up.

As I concluded, Cindy didn’t say much, but she seemed satisfied.

“I’m excited,” she finally said after processing a moment. “This has been a long time in the making, and I am so pleased to see these 13 learning modules are going to come to life.”

I blushed and began packing my things. “I can get started right away, and perhaps we can have weekly touch-bases for you to review the content and—”

“Are you looking for a job?” Cindy cut me off.

“I’m sorry?” I was caught off-guard… I would soon learn Cindy had a special way of doing that to me.

“Are you looking for a job?” She repeated, a slight smile playing across her thin pink lips.

“Um,” I hadn’t given it too much thought—I didn’t want to let myself believe this position at NHA could turn into anything permanent, granting me escape from the classroom much earlier than anticipated. “I mean,” I stammered, suddenly not sounding so professional nor confident. “I am always looking,” I finally spit out, though I instantly wanted to facepalm. I resisted. “Yeah…if I found something I could do and that paid well enough…”

“My girl just resigned.”

…what just happened?

Cindy understood my expression and continued. “Right before I walked in here. And I just love her, she does such a great job. But it really blindsided me! I am so sad she is leaving in two weeks.”

Fate?

Fate.

“So, there’s an opening,” Cindy continued as she started to pack her things. “Think about it, Kaitlin. Maybe we can meet again to discuss the job further. Especially if you’re not all that thrilled with teaching.” And at that, she left, just as swiftly as she had come in.

What just HAPPENED?

She gave me a shot. She even helped me write my letter of resignation to the school. Resigning from a job isn’t easy. Writing a letter to the principal and superintendent to announce you’ve basically found something better and doing it in a pleasant and professional way is certainly #adulting.

There was something about her the moment I met her, and it went deeper than the first impression of intimidation followed by “I think I like this human.”

“I think I connect with this human.”

Cindy, Director of Special Education.

AKA badass.

I often joked that I was in love with my boss and would marry her if I could. I was just so enamored by everything she did and could do. She was, in my opinion and perception, the perfect adult. She passionately ran an entire special education program for 84 charter schools across the United States. She never backed down for what she believed in, and by golly your fancy law degree scares her not. She built an orphanage in Mexico with her husband and to this day gives those kids the life they all deserve.

She is a mother and a grandmother. She has history. She is the image of professionalism and still manages to maintain a sense of humor. She cared about her employees as people.

She cared about me.

Once I finally completed my master’s degree (#adulting!!!!!), the thought of searching for my next growth opportunity played in the back of my mind. I searched casually for jobs, more the “dream come true” type. Just in case. But I loved my job. I loved working for Cindy. We were the dream team, man! I was so good with her, I could predict what she needed before she even asked for it. I understood her brain and I respected the hell out of her.

The thought of leaving Cindy and the Special Education Team I came to love like family sort of made me want to barf. So, I never looked for my next career all that hard. I just knew someday, somehow, I would need to spread my wings. Like we all must at some point… that inevitable leap of faith one must take before the comfort seeps too deep. But for the time being, my connection with Cindy, the Team, and NHA’s mission was enough for me.

Cindy’s resignation two years into our adventure altered my entire reality.

We were sitting in a small room at DeVos Place in Grand Rapids. Leadership Summit was the biggest event of the year for the organization, and the team was preparing Cindy for her big presentation.

Looking back… there were signs. She glanced at her phone frequently that morning…more frequently than usual. She was unusually worried about the whereabouts of her boss…And there was an awkwardly placed slide in her presentation entitled

“personal professional announcement”.

In a way, I wonder if she left that slide in there as a purposeful foreshadowing… just for me… as I edited her presentation for her.

But I didn’t pick up on it.

Not then.

Not until she sighed at the end of her practice presentation.

And her boss stepped into the room.

Then I knew.

“I need… to make an announcement…” she started.

Shit.

“This is probably the hardest professional decision I’ve ever made.”

Shit. Shit. Shit.

She teared up. “I have made the decision…”

Shit!

“…to leave NHA.”

Dammit.

I shattered.

I felt as though something was being stolen from me…but unsure what that was. My entire job stood before me announcing her resignation. My emotional attachment to her burned behind my eyes and I bit my lip, struggling to keep my shit together.

I couldn’t.
She was my professional everything.

“I need to seek greater work-life balance in my life. I can’t keep living the way I’m living… I can’t keep working this many hours and drowning in my work. I need to be with my grandkids… I need to be a part of my family’s life. I’ve accepted a position with Grand Valley State University as a professor of Educational Leadership.

I cried. I wasn’t the only one. The entire room was a storm of saltwater.

“No,” Cindy demanded between her own tears. “You all have to keep going. We have worked too fucking hard to go back now!” She fired up, red-faced, passionate, fists clenching. I would expect nothing less of her. “We have helped so many kids. I have been so blessed to work with such a fine group of professionals in it for all the right reasons.”

And I can’t remember the rest.

I can only remember the relentless tears rolling down my cheeks, and then….

then the inexplicable sudden wave of cold fear.

Like being slapped in the face with an ice block.

What does this mean for me?

What happens to me?

What about me?

Me, me, me, me, ME, MEEEEEEH!

I had selfish feelings as I drowned in emotional silence. I didn’t feel much like an adult. An adult would be able to keep her shit together and stand up and applaud Cindy’s accomplishments and be happy for her.

And I was happy for her.

Somewhere deep, deep,

deeeeeep

down.

All of our experiences were flashing before my eyes, from the time I picked her up off the side of the road because her husband was too late to take her all the way to work, to the time she handed me her personal credit card and told me to go buy myself a pair of shorts that fit because I lost so much weight. There was so much more between us than just a boss-assistant relationship. And now I was faced with losing that connection, and just plain couldn’t freaking handle it.

We adjourned the meeting, and everyone rushed to hug her and congratulate her. I hung back and waited a moment, fighting for some composure, still struggling to understand why I felt the way I felt.

“I’m so pissed at you!” I said to Cindy as I embraced her. We cried together a moment, and I didn’t want to let her go. “But I really am happy for you,” I whispered.

I had a complete meltdown in the DeVos bathroom shortly after that moment.

And was caught.
“She’s my entire job,” I tried to explain.
So pathetic.
I stood beside Cindy just hours later as her audience filed in for the big presentation. I worked her laptop for her, preparing the presentation and ensuring all audio settings were perfect. I watched Cindy out of the corner of my eye with vague fascination. What must be going through her head? She was about to announce her resignation to over 100 people in person.

“Doing okay?” I asked, touching her arm.

“Oh yeah,” she said, forcing a smile across her face. “And you?”

“Not really,” I said honestly, also forcing a smile.

“You’re funny,” she said. She said this to me often.

“But it’s true,” I admitted.

“I know.”

Did she, though?

“You know,” she began, staring off into space. For a moment, I thought shit was about to get philosophical. “I forgot to wear a slip under my dress.”

I paused a moment to study her before laughing. She wore the same floral dress she had worn to my wedding a year prior.

“Well,” I offered, “the only one who knows that is you. …And me. Now I know. Totally judging you.”

She giggled with me and brushed her blonde hair behind her ear. “Okay. Ready?”

“Always.”

She was flawless. And when she announced her resignation to the entire room, I felt my emotions spiraling out all over again. The crowd gave her a standing ovation as she signed off, and she cried.

It’s amazing what a little liquid courage will do for you. I sat at the team dinner later that evening, my head slightly spinning. The bar tender asked what I was having.

“Whatever can take away the devastation of my boss’s resignation,” I said.

Still not really sure what he gave me.

“I’m gonna give a speech,” I thought to myself half-drunkenly somewhere after two drinks and before the arrival of the dinner plates (as a rule, an adult should never have two drinks before eating… especially at a corporate event. To think I would have learned my lesson at this point… but a corporate Christmas party a few years later sure knocked me on my ass. Literally.) I awkwardly stood, taking my beer and a knife in my hand.

I clinked my glass with the knife at the head of the long outdoor table for attention. Cindy sat at the head just beside where I stood.

“We need to acknowledge the woman of the hour,” I began, gripping my beer glass tighter to hide the shaking in my fingers. Cindy reached up and took the knife from my other hand, laughing and joking about fearing for her life.

“Don’t worry, I’m already passed the anger stage in the stages of grief!” I razzed. “I am so honored to be standing here with a team of amazing people. And we can all agree the most amazing of us all is Cindy.” There was a round of applause in agreement, and I realized other tables around us were now silent and listening to what I was saying. “We are so happy for you. We have this awkward mixture of excitement and devastation that makes us all want to barf, but we are happy for you.” I paused as the team laughed, and I relaxed a little. “Really, though, I have one question for you… Are you breaking up with me?” The team laughed again, Cindy too, and she shook her head. “Never!” she said. I smiled.

“You are on a new adventure and you will be terribly missed.” I looked up to address the team. “So, if you all are, like me, #teamshinsky4life, raise your glass! Cheers, Cindy!” And glasses clinked. I bent down and air-kissed Cindy’s cheek saying, “I love you.”

And I meant it.

I resigned two weeks later.

I told everyone, myself included, that my resignation wasn’t related to Cindy’s departure. But part of adulting is being honest with yourself. And to be honest, I did leave in part because Cindy resigned. It’s true I needed to grow and move up and really start my career… you cannot remain in an associate position if you want to be a leader… but I didn’t have any desire to go to that office every day if Cindy wasn’t going to be in it.

Don’t get me wrong– Cindy wasn’t the only one I cared about at that office. I made some lifelong friends there. But between the hours of eight and five Monday through Friday, Cindy was my entire world. And if my entire world was going to shift, I might as well be moving up and out of it.

Loving and respecting another adult for what she’s done and how she handles herself is part of #adulting. Dealing with the hurt of my mentor moving on and making the decision to move on myself was #adulting. As pathetically devastated as I was, this was a huge growth moment for me and pushed me toward success.

Don’t ever feel pathetic…the way I felt pathetic… when feeling emotion. It’s okay. You’re not the only one. Emotion is this annoying tag-along to our humanity, and it’s not always convenient and it is not always simple. But it’s always there, this glistening apparition trudging at our sides, something we always feel but can never touch. We drag it everywhere and we learn to cope, even when we don’t want to. Cope the best way you can, but don’t seal it up. Feel it, let it flow through your veins and remind yourself this is who you are, and this is okay to feel.

To this day I still rely on Cindy for advice and comfort. Perhaps I use her as a sort of “crutch”, a small piece of comfort zone to retreat to… perhaps it would be more #adulting to let her go completely.

But I can’t.

She was key in my adult development, and I can’t picture life without her in it.

“I’m not sure that I love it as much as I loved NHA,” I wrote in an email to Cindy several weeks later, after we both moved on and began our new jobs. “But I am going to focus on moving up and being successful. I am going to focus on being the ‘Cindy’ to a team like ours one day.”

Cindy replied almost instantly. “You want to be the ‘Kaitlin’ to the team. Not me. You will pave your own way. You are strong. You are woman!”

Connect with a “Cindy”. Find someone who will always encourage you and push you forward as an adult and as a professional. Find your mentor. Find someone to coach you in adult situations when you are lost in the dark. Find someone.

A parent.

A sibling.

A supervisor.

All of these and more.

#adulting doesn’t mean going at it alone.

A “Broad” Abroad

If you have the chance to travel,

take it.

“I need an adventure,” I said to myself as I sat alone on my double bed, rubbing a hand across the brown cotton comforter. “A real adventure.” Then I opened the yellow booklet beside me, the scent of new paper engulfing me. I scanned my eyes across the page, admiring the colors and words.

“Maybe a new hemisphere kind of adventure.”

I was trying to pull myself together after a bad breakup and after suffering significant career doubts. (Go figure… I was about to turn twenty and didn’t feel the same way I felt at eighteen. Who knew?!) I hoped perhaps a study abroad experience would ground me in a way… help me find myself and help me connect with my Spanish major in school. I needed something…anything… to help me connect with myself.

Feeling

unsettled

with yourself isn’t abnormal. As we journey into adulthood, sometimes we stumble. Losing your footing is okay. Treat it as a learning experience rather than a mistake.

Then I closed the book and set it aside, allowing my slender body to stretch out across the bed. My mind spun on its own accord as I stared unblinkingly at the white ceiling.

I thought of work… of school… of my friends, family, and exes. I thought of myself, stumbling through life, trying to find who I am and where I am.

I sat up then, inhaling deeply, looking at my face in the mirror.

“Where are you?”

It was time to find myself. Maybe my old self… maybe the self I hadn’t encountered yet.

“Maybe you’re in Salamanca,” I said. Then I grabbed the yellow booklet and trotted from the empty room.

Quiero encontrar a un lugar donde hay aventura… esperanza… vida… Quiero… mejorarme.

Quiero…

Quiero ser diferente.

Quiero ser yo…una nueva yo.

“Let’s do this thing,” I said to myself as I galloped toward airport security with my family behind me. I should have been nervous; international travel under the age of twenty without my mommy? Terrifying.

But I was ready.

I was ready to experience a plane ride over the sea.

I was ready to submerge in a completely different culture.

I was ready to taste the food and drink the wine and take it all in.

I was… ready.

It wasn’t until my plane finally landed in Madrid that I panicked.

Like, really panicked.

I was so stressed out and had to force myself to breathe and read the Spanish signs to figure out where to go to be picked up by the study abroad program. To add to my stress, the wheel of my big-ass suitcase was damaged, and it wouldn’t roll. This may seem like a little thing that isn’t worth sweating, but I was sweating a lot.

A LOT.

Like, pit stains a lot.

It took me a solid 24 hours to finally get my shit together. But when I did, boy was it the experience of a lifetime. Not just for the Spanish language and all the amazing learning opportunities; I really grew as a person (and I’m not referring to the twenty extra pounds that came back with me). I learned what was really important, and the homesickness I felt halfway through was profound; you learn what you truly love and what really makes you happy.

I came home the same “me”, but sturdy. Settled. Something restless finally broke free of my soul on the other side of the planet and left me feeling prepared to tackle the next chapter in life. It even had me feeling better about my career selection

For maybe a few months.

Then I started my student teaching and had to start telling myself the big girl lies.

Here’s the thing. Travel. Have fun. But be safe and be smart. Don’t completely empty your bank account in Spain because you feel like you need to buy shoes and dresses and every single pastry you walk past for the “full experience”.

Your wallet (and your ass) will thank you.