Fake it 'til You Make It

I remember sitting around as a child and waiting for the day that I would be an adult. A real, on my own, eat only the marshmallows in Lucky Charms without getting yelled at, adult. I used to joke that you got this memo on your 18th birthday that divulged everything you possibly needed to know to be an adult.

I didn't get that memo. In fact, I spent the majority of the next few years waiting for that magic moment where it would all make sense. My 19th birthday came and went: nothing. I bought my first car: zilch. 21st birthday drank away: nothing the next morning but a brutal hangover. College graduation: all I got was a piece of paper worth $160,000 and the realization that I was being thrown kicking and screaming into a whole new world that I didn't feel prepared for at all.

I definitely expected to be further along in my so-called "life aspirations" by now. It's been one year since I graduated from college. While I have accomplished some pretty neat things in my post collegiate life, I'm nowhere near where I thought I'd be. And I'm definitely nowhere near feeling like a real adult.

While I'm told that my resume is fabulous, that I've accomplished more at 23 than most people do by the time they are 30, I cannot shake the feeling that it's nowhere close to being good enough. This feeling isn't helped by the fact I've been unemployed for an entire month but I digress. I feel like I'm fooling everyone; that I'm not really as talented as everyone thinks that I am and faking it until I make it.

Truth of the matter here is I am still learning so much about myself and what I'm capable of. I bounce back and forth between kicking myself for not doing better in undergrad, for not going to graduate school/law school right out of undergrad so I could put off this existentialist crisis for a little while longer and just enjoying the ride and being optimistic that somehow everything will work itself out.

I've come to the conclusion that being a real adult isn't about living on your own, paying your own bills, or eating dessert before dinner without consequence. Being an adult is the acknowledgement that you are accountable for your actions, or lack thereof. It's the satisfaction you feel after doing something 100% on your own. Whether it be acing a project at work, paying off a debt, moving to a new city where you know no one, etc. Adulthood is not a status, it is a state of mind.

Who knows what the next few months will bring for me? I don't even know what tomorrow will bring. The only thing I know that I can do is keep my head up and power through. Twenty-three has been such an awkward age.