In Canada, it always feels like it's cold. Even in the summer, there is a cold breeze as the sun goes down that reminds you that winter is always just around the corner. It is with that same kind of chilled autumn feeling that I see adulthood with. I don't know how or why, but my thoughts and feelings for the future have faded from an effervescent bauble of science fiction joy into this dirty, grey-brown mud of responsibility and safe choices. Some days I need to remind myself that my life isn't ending, that it's just beginning.
That is why I need to write this, my think. Some days, after a long day of being a grown up making grown up decisions, I come home and my apartment is so cold. Its cold in the way that adulthood is cold. I don't consider myself a pessimist, but on days when my finger tips are tingling and two sweaters doesn't seem like enough, I have such a hard time trying to be a reckless, naive child. The summer is over and now I must prepare for the long winter ahead.
But that's not true at all! I still get to dance around my house with the radio blaring. I still get to play my video games for hours at a a time. I still get to have fun. That is the hardest thing I need to understand about growing up. I don't have to be serious and responsible all the time. I don't really have to be anything at any time. Being an adult is whatever I want it to be! (Check out this webcomic to see what I mean). My parents laid down a solid foundation in my formative years, but I don't have to answer to anyone anymore. Well, that's not true. There's still the government, the police, my bosses... okay, there's a lot of people who I need to answer to, but I am nobody's charge. My piles of responsibilities that I oh so often complain about are all my own. I don't have to do anything I don't want to.
I named my blog "May Again" because of the phonetic pronunciation of my name. I am not MEE-gan, I'm not MAH-gan. I explain it like this: Another year goes by, and it is MAY again. Maygan. Megan. Get it? I just really hate it when people call me MEEgan, I think it's ugly. I started writing it as an exercise to keep me writing. before I started keeping this blog, I was working on a novel that outgrew me. I couldn't write about anything else except this one story, so when I was at a wall in the plot, all productivity shut down. Keeping a blog meant I had a place to shunt auxiliary ideas without taking away from my novel. (Which I've given up on. It needs a total re-write.)
I've started a project here on my blog that I call "Adultlescence". Basically, it is a look at my life, and the lives of the people close to me, and how growing up hasn't been at all what we were expecting. We don't have the awesome jobs we thought we'd have, we don't have the super cool apartments with a ball pit and an arcade like we were expecting when we were kids. There aren't any Disney romances, and the nobody cares about your problems as much as you do. (Except maybe your mom)
'Tweens' get their own demographic, and for some reason that bothers me. I can only assume its because I am jealous that we 20-somethings don't. We aren't teenagers anymore, and hardly anyone considers us 'adult'. So what are we? I've heard 'Students' a fair bit (as in: apartment for rent, no students) but that hasn't fit for me for as long as the word 'teenager' has been inaccurate. I've also been called a 'young professional' but what the fuck does that mean? I mean beyond the fact that I have a job, how can that be a title? I wouldn't call my employer an 'elderly professional' and it would be offensive to do so. "Adultlesence" is an attempt to qualify this feeling of homelessness. Or really, it is to attempt to give a voice to a demographic that goes largely unheard.
I'm glad I picked "May Again" for my blog title, even if it was a little at random at the time. I like it because some days, when it is cold, it reminds me to be optimistic. The nights are longer, the sky is pearly grey instead of blue, but all it takes is patience and perspective. Nothing is dark forever. The snow will melt eventually, and soon we can all pull out our shorts and sleeveless tops again, even if the air still has a bite to it and our skin turns into goosebumps. I just need to keep reminding myself it'll be May again.
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