If you are interested in Joining the Love or 30 Project, please email me and I will give you all of the details to guest post. Mythirtyspot[at]gmail.com
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Here’s lookin’ at you, 30
Three days before my 22nd birthday I woke up with a black cloud over my head. For the next 48 hours I Eeyored around my college apartment, eating cheese nachos and leaving the dishes in the sink for my roommates to growl at, taking vapid quizzes on OK Cupid, and wondering why I was depressed. Sometime Sunday night I realized it had crept up on me—my adulthood. This is my last day to be 21, I thought, which as everyone knows is the last birthday that matters. After this, every year is just another year, each becoming more like each other. I mean, what’s the next milestone birthday? 30??!
I’d like to go back and smack that girl. Then give her a hug.
I’m 29 and a half years old. Those eight years that seemed like an eternity when they were in front of me have snuck by in a blink, and are now giggling at my back like the children they are. While I’m not sorry to leave them behind, I won’t pretend I’m not intimidated by the big 3 to the 0. Let’s face it, there wouldn’t be so many lists of why turning 30 is awesome if the reasons were obvious and self-evident.
What’s not as obvious and self-evident is why being young* is actually pretty terrible. Shiny hair and low-severity hangovers notwithstanding, most of us, if it came right down to it, would never choose to relive our twenties, much less—egad!—our teens (Now if we could have the body, that might be another story. But then again, maybe not…hello, have you seen Kate Middleton?). So instead of a list of the reasons I’m looking forward to next February, I hereby present:
30 reasons it sucks to be under 30
1. Chance of being taken seriously – 25% at best
2. On the other hand, the things you take seriously? Like, everything. Everything that doesn’t matter.
3. Lack of funds
4. You can’t reach high places oh wait—that’s still true
5. Your sense of style is as unstable as a bipolar Irishman on St Patrick’s Day
6. No idea what’s going on/what you’re doing
7. Asking the ‘rents to cosign your apartment lease is a drag
8. High auto insurance rates
9. Trying to find a birth control method that doesn’t make you fat, weepy, or panicked every 28 days
10. You believe people when they say they know better (or maybe you don’t, and you should)
11. So many speeding tickets. Please say it’s not just me.
12. When figuring out who to trust, you’re wrong at least 50% of the time
13. Digging out your ID every time you order a drink/see an R rated movie is actually kind of a hassle
14. The men/boys
15. A drastically impaired ability to say no (at least without an elaborately concocted excuse)
16. Shopping with plastic seems like such a good idea. Hashtag: hellodebt
17. School work. Grad school doesn’t count, you poor, poor people who are studying only what interests you.
18. Standing up for yourself and the things you believe in is uh! whine! so hard.
19. Lack of basic life skills, such as obtaining a money order or which kind of soap to use in the dishwasher (sorry about those warped floorboards, mom)
20. Judgment calls: you only think you know how to make good ones
21. Case in point: you spend the money for the utility bills on shots for the table and/or a Coach bag
22. Sure, you might be in the best shape of your life, but you hate your body anyway
23. Working at a fast food joint/mall/ mailroom/theme park
24. You don’t even realize how many words and how much time you’re wasting. On second thought, that’s probably a good thing.
25. Caring about what other people think is exhausting
26. Ramen noodles and Easy Mac are dietary staples—and you think they’re actually good (don’t deny it)
27. You’re much more likely to get scammed (make thousands of dollars from home with just the purchase of this introductory kit? Awesome!)
28. Curfew, legal and parental
29. The number of people bossing you around is at its zenith
And the top reason it sucks to be under 30?
30. So much of the good stuff hasn’t happened yet
*and of course by young, I mean little whiny baby young, not sophisticated-got-sh!t-together-and-can-still-be-considered young.
BIO
Janie Young will be young forever (HAHAHAGETIT?) and is a performer, writer, reader, lay fashionista and mommy who blogs about performing, reading, fashion, mommying, and everything else you care about at Cushion Cut.
Cushion Cut: janielyoung.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/janielyoung
Twitter: @itsmejanielee
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