July is the month we say goodbye to writers who are retiring or moving on to new adventures, and this is Laura’s last post. She has been writing with us since August 2019.
“Got any fun plans for the weekend?” My friend asked me.
I froze. Wracking my brain for an interesting activity and finding none, I was forced to answer with the single task I intended to do that weekend. “I’m going to…hem some curtains.”
As I spoke, I had a vision of all my cool band shirt logos, my memories of backcountry adventures, and my photos from European nightclubs fading to black. I felt the realization dawning. Am I…boring?
The feeling has been coming for a while now. When the theater offered a free upgrade from a small popcorn to a large and I declined. When I only made it five minutes in downtown Grand Rapids before complaining about all the scooters and weed. When I chat with friends who are parents and see their kids’ eyes glaze over as they listen.
My conversations these days are about such riveting topics as the ideal term for a car loan, which grocery store has the best watermelon, or how my apartment needs a linen closet. Housing prices, car prices, food prices, airline prices. Federal interest rates. The state of public schools.
I used to excitedly talk on dates or with friends about plans for the future, envisioning with breathless excitement where I’d end up in the future. Now the future is here, and it is emails and budgeting. Good God, I used to be cool!
As I ponder turning thirty, I make myself remember that everybody goes through this. I’ve seen an old photo of my parents with shaggy ‘70s hair posing around a fancy car with their friends, oozing old-school hip, and I’ve wondered how they must have felt as they later transitioned into quiet adulthood. Now Progressive even has a viral marketing campaign about getting old and becoming like your parents. Appropriately, sharing my favorite funny insurance commercial makes me more like my mom than I’d care to admit.
Settling into this low-key phase has its upsides. At least I’m not twenty-two anymore. Mixed in with those cool adventures of my early twenties were plenty of unhealthy infatuations, untreated anxieties, and unstable careers. The slew of bad dating app experiences that are fun to laugh at now were miserable while they happened. Sure, my body was thinner, but so was my wallet and my understanding of healthy personal boundaries.
Today, I’m glad for the less-than-exciting things that bring joy. The job that I am good at. The friends’ babies that I’m getting better at holding. The quiet walks in nature with my husband and my dog. Would the younger me have cringed if she saw how simple my wedding was, or how lame I sound telling people I’m a “software support technician”? Definitely. But the best part of growing up is not needing to impress anyone anymore, especially not your teenage self.
So what if I’m boring? Sure, I stretch before bed and pizza gives me heartburn. But life doesn’t run out of cool experiences once you have a 401k. Many adventures are yet to be had, though the younger me might not have thought of them as adventures. Saving for a house, taking a nice vacation, thinking about growing our family. I like where I am now, and I’m still excited for what’s yet to come.
And hey, my hemmed curtains look great.
Laura graduated from Calvin in 2015 with a degree in art and writing. She lives in Toronto, Ontario, with her husband Josh and dog Rainy. She works as an IT support analyst and enjoys painting, rock climbing, and exploring the city.
