The older I get, the more I incessantly stress about the idea of "growing up" and making the "right decisions". What's most frightening for me is what if you make the wrong ones? Are you doomed for the rest of your seemingly miserable life? Are you able to make amends with the universe for your misdeeds and avoid an ill fate? What if it's something of a long term consequence that doesn't hit you until you're forty-five years old, sitting in your overpriced plastic surgeon's office, getting numbed up for your far overdue collagen injections? What, then? However could you defend your allegedly bad decisions with a numb face??
.... I think I'm getting ahead of myself.
Alright, let's be real, friends: this may not be something that happens to everyone on a daily basis but it does happen. When I'm at any sort of social gathering or am meeting someone for the first time, I find that words like "college", "goals", "graduation" and the ever popular, "my five year plan" are thrown around like war chants at a Florida State game. These words often make me uncomfortable because it has taken me nearly ten years (count 'em, ten...) to earn an Associate's Degree (for reasons that I will disclose in a later post if I ever get drunk enough).
What's weird about growing up is that people only tend to focus on degrees, marriages, engagement ring sizes and babies. It's like, "Hello, I'm Kate. I'm married and have dental insurance and am therefore a grown up." And the proverbial me will stand there wearing her Michael Kors watch like it means something, shake her head and think to herself, ".... look who grew up!" It doesn't really matter if no one will talk to you because you're an insensitive, infant manchild. You have a degree in underwater basket weaving and are therefore hugely important. Oh, and obviously grown up...
Here's what I'm saying: There comes a time in everyone's life when they realize that a big part of growing up means that you can no longer get drunk on crappy Bacardi Select every night and sleep until two in the afternoon. But the living is all in the getting there. It took me eight or so years to get a degree that I can do nothing with... but I also have great friends who have stuck with me when I felt like giving up. And I also have some not so great ones who didn't and taught me the real value of friendship. The hard way. I have a husband who loved me when I didn't love myself, an absolutely crazy family that I love more than... most people. I have the cutest dog who ever lived and a killer music collection. (Not to mention Pandora. How great is that, seriously??)
Those people who try to take years off your life by saying, "Don't make the wrong decisions...." are clearly not being totally honest with you. Wasn't it Adam Sandler who never graduated high school? Or was it John Travolta? OH WAIT! It was both.
Moral of this craziness: Try to go all the way in school to ensure you don't wind up broke as a joke. But do what you feel in your heart is right. And remember how you got there.
"Try not to become a man of success. Rather a man of value." -Albert Einstein
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