A Sense of Accomplishment

With these words, I have ensured that I have not broken my very first New Year's resolution! AMAZING. I have already broken others that weren't written down, like getting to work on time every day and bringing my lunch rather than buying it. But since I didn't write them down, they don't count. Duh. So I'm pretty much on the right track in this first week of 2012. You can stop applauding now.

Or keep it up if you like, because I've had a very successful week filled with exciting, grownup accomplishments! You will be very proud to know that:

1. I went to work. And I did important things.
2. I went to yoga for the first time in months.
3. I didn't eat banh mi, not even once.
4. I painted my nails a weird color. And I liked it.
5. I downloaded nerdy word games on my iPad.
6. I sat through an entire football game with my boyfriend and his friends without complaining or making rude comments about the corpulence of the players. This was managed by accomplishing the previous two activities simultaneously.
7. I went to the Museum of Chinese in America and learned all about the hardships faced by Chinese immigrants throughout the years. I'd like to go back because I didn't get to finish seeing everything before it closed, but now I know who Bing cherries were named after.
8. I cleaned my kitchen multiple times after the boyfriend made dinner (using food that I bought at the grocery store! BONUS!). And I cleaned it at other times when he didn't even cook, like today! I EVEN SWEPT THE FLOOR. I'm pretty much a domestic goddess.
9. I caught up with a dear friend I hadn't seen in far too long and we conceived a new plan for our book club. BECAUSE WE ARE GROWN UPS!
10. I went to see not one, but TWO movies. This is big news, because I never see movies. I saw "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo" and "My Week With Marilyn." Go see them. They are both excellent. And I didn't stuff myself full of popcorn til I was sick, I actually practiced restraint! YOU GUYS, THIS IS SERIOUS.

In other news, even though it's Saturday and I had planned on doing NOTHING all day except maybe (MAYBE) cleaning my room and petting the cat and not talking to anyone because my boyfriend is working all day and night, I actually left my house. I forced myself to stop watching "Portlandia," even though watching it is another accomplishment in itself because I kept meaning to and I never did before. Yay! I made myself take a shower and put on actual clothing and shoes and I went for a walk around my beautiful neighborhood and drank in the sights and enjoyed the fresh air and unseasonably warm temperatures. It was lovely. I even saw a puppy! Her name was Peaches.

To recover from all this activity, I got a coffee and sat on a bench and talked to my mother for a long time and then got a delicious bagel to take home. On my way back I ran into an old friend who was visiting with his adorable little boy, who after a year of living in England HAS AN ACCENT. He told me he was "three and a hoff" and I nearly peed my pants. Then I came home and cleaned my kitchen (again!). I took off my nail polish. I talked to another friend on the phone and got the scoop on his love life. Now I'm here. WRITING.

Wow. I'm so proud of myself.

This probably won't last. My life tends to follow a trajectory much like the one pictured here. Doing stuff is HARD. But tomorrow I'm going to try again to be a grownup who does things. I'm going to wake up early, go to yoga, go to a musem all by myself, clean my room, and then be social by seeing a few friends play music in the neighborhood. Dear god, at least I am going to try. I AM GOING TO DO THINGS. Or not. I don't know. Maybe I won't do any of those things. I still have plenty of time to just give up and shut down altogether.

I think I'll go watch some more "Portlandia" now. Or perhaps I'll just browse the Internet! FOREVER...

Adulthood

Our futon broke last weekend. Rather, I broke our futon... I was sitting on it as I Facebook stalked my friends from childhood with my mom (no joke), and suddenly it just came crashing down. So we put the mattress on the floor in front of the broken frame, moved the coffee table over, and have proceeded to live for the next week like this is a perfectly normal and acceptable way to hang out in your living room. It's not, of course. Yet I don't really mind. It's nice to just kind of flop down on the ground, read, watch TV and movies, waste time on the Internet, and occasionally sit up to eat off the coffee table. It's like camping in my own home.

I really ought to be more grown up than this by now. I mean, on the outside, I seem like a perfectly responsible adult. I'm nearly 25, I have a boyfriend of 5 years, I graduated on time from a good college, I have had two full time jobs in the 3 years since school, I have held a second part time job for a year and a half, and I actually have a savings account! I have never worried about not being able to pay my rent or feed myself... I can even feed my cat! All of these mean that I am a responsible adult! Right...??

Then I look around my apartment from my little nest on the ground and I see bizarre things. A futon mattress on the floor is the first glaring clue that I am not a real grownup. And why is there an empty lemonade bottle sitting inside the plastic pitcher we use to water our plants? Judging by the multitude of dead and dying plants on our windowsills, perhaps it's because that pitcher doesn't get much use. There is an air conditioning unit sitting on the floor and a fan is sitting on top of that. Nick's boxers are for some reason crumpled on the floor by the piano. On a chair in the corner there is a pile of unread magazines about which I keep saying to myself, "Someday I'll read these...Someday..." Our ironing board is never used for what its name specifies, but rather as another surface where we can pile all our crap. Speaking of crap, my bedroom looks like a bomb went off around my closet and dressers. Yes, I have multiple dressers. Three to be exact. And yet my clean and dirty clothes, many of them folded carefully by the nice ladies at Big Apple Laundry, are strewn across multiple dressers and the floor, as well as on a kitchen chair which has been kidnapped by my room and held for ransom. We aren't just messy or disorganized. We're hopeless. Well, it's mostly just me. I am the guilty party most of the time when it comes to not putting things away or doing stupid things with food and clothing that don't make any sense. Nick's pretty good about being domestic. I'm more than hopeless. I'm a lost cause.

I looked at Facebook today and it seems that everyone is getting married. And I mean EVERYONE. Not my close friends, thank god, but about half of my high school class. Ugh. And they have children. LOTS of them. I can barely even keep houseplants alive, and I worry every day that my cat doesn't get enough attention. I can't even fathom what it would be like to be responsible for another human life. I'm barely responsible for my own life! In the last two nights I went to three different parties. Yesterday I didn't get off the mattress (it's not a couch anymore, it's a mattress) all day. I spent my whole day watching YouTube videos of kittens and puppies, reading about serial killers on Wikipedia, watching "Grandma's Boy," eating bacon sandwiches, and snuggling with the cat. Today, after waking up at noon, we spent most of the day waiting for some legendary pizza at Di Fara. That's what you do when you don't have kids. Serial killers, kittens, bacon, and pizza. All this and more in between drinking Bloody Marys and lots and lots of beer!

Good thing Rachel turned me on to Hyperbole and a Half. This little blogger makes me feel better about myself, because apparently we're just about the same age and she lives in squalor as well. Only she has pet rats, so I'm jealous. I held a ferret the other day and now all I want to do is go adopt some rodents. Anyway, this girl is hilarious, and while she is a famous blogger and I am not, she makes me feel like I'm not a total failure. Does it matter so much that my houseplants die? That my apartment is a mess and frankly, I don't care?!? Since I'm not married and living in suburbia with a bunch of kids, DOES IT MATTER?!?! Hell no. Posts like This is Why I'll Never Be an Adult and Am Adult help me come to the conclusion that the longer I can perpetuate this absence of real responsibility, the better. I have my life together for the most part, so who cares if there is a random teddy bear sitting in the middle of my living room floor covered in cat hair? At least I'm not on crack. At least I have a job. At least I have an education. At least I'm not fat. HAH. I win.

New York City enables the Peter Pan Syndrome to take hold and never let go. Here, it is perfectly acceptable, perfectly normal, to simply never grow up. To live life as if you will always be young and the future is only a dreamy destination to be arrived at someday, but that day is far far away. And the real world is only as real as you allow it to become during the work week, because when the weekend arrives, you're free. Free to drink and sing and slack off and stuff your face full of terrible foods, and wear what you want, or not wear anything at all. Free to not budget or plan ahead or worry about what your grandchildren will think, but just live in the moment and always, always go with the flow... And even during the week, there's always happy hour.

So does it matter that for the duration of writing this post I've simply been procrastinating the cleaning of my apartment, as I have planned to do all day and then promised my boyfriend I would do? Does it?? No. He knows and I know that I'll get to it eventually, when the motivation strikes me. Because right now, I'm young enough and free enough that I can do that. I can say, "I'll do it when I feel like it." And the world will not come crashing down. Everything will be fine. Because I am a responsible adult. Responsible for me, and only me.