2009 has, in many ways, so far been a very critical year for me: the year that, i think, i will look back on as the year i became an adult. i realized that i sort of was an adult in january; that's stuck. while rascal me is still getting into weird situations, adult me is handling them with much more evenness and aplomb. i had the one last fling with my old self (disguised as a comely maiden), which lasted a month and ended predictably poorly (as i knew it would), though even there i feel like i handled the end much much better than old-me would have (which is not to claim that it was perfect.)
it seems like i'm probably making personality strides on some level, including the all-important step of being a happy person. i'm always going to have mood swings and be a little prone to self-flagellation and depression. the trick is not letting the lost hours turn into lost days, not letting the lost days turn into lost weeks, and not letting the lost weeks turn into lost months. and quite honestly, i feel like i've been presented with situations to let that happen and have tended to pass them.
perhaps today's anecdote is a good example. i've been quite sick this week, so i'm behind on work. i drove into work today, and when i got to the building i realized i'd left my keycard at home. old me would have been depressed for the whole day and felt horrible and like a complete fuck-up. instead, i yelled at myself for about 15 seconds, and then, since i was closer than usual, i drove to santa cruz -- don't worry, i'm still intuitive and spontaneous.
but maybe the most telling sign of adulthood was that there i was, on the santa cruz beach board-WALK (stupid commercial...), and i had no desire to get funnel cake. i'm pretty sure this is the first time in my life that this has happened. instead, i walked around the beach, sat down, and made a to-do list of what i needed to do at work, and started speccing out a dominion robot. now, i'm not claiming that this was the acme of productivity a la michael bluth and a child's sand castle, but somehow it brings things home.
will you notice the change? no, unlikely. i think for me, action tendencies are always slow to catch up to my internal self, which goes with the territory of being an instinctive intuitionist. and i'm not talking about some incredible drastic change that happened overnight, at any rate. but i do think that it merits capital letters, and i do think that, at 28, i've finally (phew) exited my emo phase. only about 8 years too late.
i look forward to seeing you over there. and hey, it'll even have a comments section, or so i hear.