I'll tumbl for you...

So I’ve been wondering: at what point in your life do you get to call yourself a real adult?  In a year, I’ll have a masters degree.  Will that make me an adult?  Or do I have to wait until (or, more likely if would be the operative word) I get married and have kids?  Will it be when I stop having to borrow money from my parents?  Or when I’m done working minimum wage jobs?

I guess this all stems from the fact that I still feel like a kid (fueled by the fact that every time I go and visit Scott, I feel like the dorky kid trying to impress her big brother.  And that I’m 27, but still take family vacations like I’m 7).  And I think that this is my biggest frustration in coming back to school/moving down here.  I loved Lansing because I spent time with people who had careers, people who had stable lives, people who knew (at least for the most part) what they were doing and where they were going.  I was working a job with a nice steady routine.  I really felt like an adult. 

Now, I’m thrown into this crazy, transient world where I’m amongst kids who guess I’m 24 and say “wow” when they hear I’m 27.  Where I can’t seem to ever work enough hours or make enough money (and lets not even start to talk about student loans…).  Where I meet friends who I know will only be a part of my immediate life for a year, two if I’m lucky.  Where I’m spending most of my time at a job where complete and total strangers lecture me about the quality of how the onions are cut.

This is much harder than it was during the school year.  And I know subway is just a means to an end— because as “good” as a job Jackson was, we all know I didn’t like the job.  And getting this degree will give me more options with what I can do with my life. 

I can’t help but play the “what if” game.  What if I hadn’t moved down here.  And truthfully, I know exactly what this past year would have contained.  I would have been able to audition for Riverwalk shows, maybe directing again.  I’d still be working at JNL.  I’d still be living with Meredith.  I probably would have gotten into the derby craze with Steph and Mandy.  But are those things better than what I’m doing now?  Better than living on my own for the very first time, for the amazing experience that was Company and the learning experience that was Figaro?  Better than the upcoming opportunity to do paid theater?  Better than taking a risk, and not playing it safe for once in my life?

Perhaps this is just all a case of the grass always being greener.  Maybe I just have to learn to be more content with what I have instad of wondering what could have been.