Adulting: The Second Puberty?

      Please, we already had to deal with enough going through our first puberty.  No one told us about a second puberty! I wasn’t prepared for this.  It snuck up on me like a cold front in the middle of summer.

During our first puberty, there were the memorable classics of our voice adjustments, practical overnight growth spurts, hair…need I say more?? And of course, our ever-growing sexual curiosity.

This “second puberty” I find sometimes chooses to continues the previous puberty…more & more hair, again a shifting in voice register (but only at random and inconvenient times of course; i.e., the day before or of an interview, etc…).  I have known guys who have gone through two-three growth spurts during their lives, the last into their 20’s and being in such pain from the muscle & bone growth at that age. (I can’t imagine, I am only 4″ 11′).  Lastly, I imagine sexual curiosity matures with age 😉 .

However, there are differences that the majority of us did not encounter during our first puberty of which we are now all too familiar.

• Wrinkles for NO reason! (…let’s call them “laugh lines”)
• Aches & pains after only 20+ years?  WHY?!?
• Taking forever to gradually climb out of bed.
• Sometimes too busy to satisfy our sexual curiosity.
• Stretching has become part of the necessary morning routine – otherwise, yer fucked.
• Body parts crack for no reason as well, and if I don’t crack them it drives me nutso!
• I’ve started using creams and lotions; nightly face cream, moisturizer, & pain reliever.
• My skin is a whole different animal than it was 5-10 years ago. It decides when to break out and where…even though I already have face wash and preventative acne medication that took me 5-10 years to perfect. I think my epidermis is finally figuring out it isn’t as invincible as it thought it was.  It makes me feel unprofessional and like a teenager again; can’t we just get in the same boat for once?!?
•  Don’t even get me started on the weight that I have gained and not been able to loose lately.  I feel like I’m pretty new to this whole “Adulting” thing, but I think that’s because in my head I feel as if I’m still 21. I actually have to think for a moment when someone asks my age. Eating is one of my favorite activities, not because I’m the laziest person ever and can’t/won’t do anything else, but because I have a very precise palate – I love the taste. I love to eat and unfortunately pay the price.  My “freshman15” turned into my “college40”.  This wouldn’t be as big a deal if say I were still a freshman, with maybe a higher metabolism, yet here I am, 30+ lbs later unable to loose the weight as easily. Our bodies onto tidbits.
• One of the biggest situations I am having troubles with currently is my circadian rhythm being completely flip-flopped! For a while I thought it was – again – just me being lazy, but no, it turns out that this is normal and that typically during this phase in a human’s life they are more apt to stay awake during the nights and sleep more during the daytime. I am tired ALL the time! I want my other half a day back!!
• One other thing I found was having zero control over your body temperature! It’s almost pre-menopausal sounding, (and that’s scary)! It feels so true too. There are times when I am freezing when everyone else is comfortable, or hot. Other times when I am trying to peel off my skin and adjusting the thermostat as low as possible, others complain that I was just cold!! Which is so true.

What the fuck life?

When does this end? When do we get to just be old like we agreed to in the first place?

Is this “second puberty” the longest phase in a human’s life? I think it truly depends on the human. As I mentioned earlier, I still mentally feel as though I am 21 or so, although I am 27.  I think it is fair to say that our “second puberty” ends when “middle-age” begins (I know nothing about that, so I’m going to take a liberal guess). Please feel free to correct me. My guess is that the Adulting phase starts around 21, ending around 45.

      This “second puberty” is a natural cycle of a human’s life.  Why is it that people are recently having such a hard time accepting what comes with life?

Passionate Planning

Towards the middle of January 2017, my mom encouraged me to invest in a Passion Planner. Fortunately there was a sale going on at the time (we’re those people who only ever buy things on sale; if they aren’t, we go without.) It was a 50% off sale! So I indulged.

My justification being that, now that I am out of school and looking for work, making appointments all the time (and hopefully having interviews every other DAY), that this purchase would be extremely beneficial.

Before making my purchase, which was last minute (we’re also those people), I did a little research about the Passion Planner. Not only do they have good information/ideas on how to use the planner on their own website.

http://www.passionplanner.com

They also have YouTube videos with great suggestions

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t46Bemvsjcw .

I learned that the organizational ideas came from founder, young entrepreneur, Angelia Trinidad. The Passion Planner came from her need to organize her life in such a way that other agendas didn’t provide. So she made her own. Trinidad knew that others needed a lifestyle/planner based on goals and positiveness, instead of just a “To-Do” list. One of the first pages in the Passion Planner is the “road map”, which is supposed to help the user stay on track throughout the entire Planner.

One of my favorite things about the Passion Planner, one “tip” which was mentioned in the video I linked, is the fact that there is less structure to this agenda. As Trinidad said, it may be intimidating to those who are used to structure; however, it is slightly liberating to be able to just…do whatever the fuck I wanna do! Not to mention if I miss a day or two (or a week) because I haven’t been keeping up – why waste that week’s page, when I can just write in the dates of that current week without skipping and wasting trees?! This also applies to months. Nothing is marked; as the video says – you fill in the blanks. This planner could last you a very long time!

I like to keep the monthly and the current week pages available to flip back and forth between, I have them clipped together for ease.

Recently I drew on the front of the Planner with a gold Pen-Touch liquid pen. I traced the lines of the things that mean the most to me: the Walkman, the bike, the coffee mug, a star, a cloud the palette and paint brush, and the pencil at the very bottom which leads up to all of the stenciling (the picture cut off some of the things I colored in). It was an interesting experience, also liberating, because I was afraid the gold liquid pen wouldn’t dry on the leather-like material, so I had to do a test area, small and inconspicuous. Also, the pen wasn’t as fine-point as some of the areas that I wanted to color in – but I did my best, and I am happy with it. Embellishing it made it more unique and more my own. 🙂

The Passion Planner suggests that you spend a few moments planning your day,or planning the next at the end of the day. Even if it’s not a Passion Planner that you use, having an agenda can help with time-management, calming stress, and peace of mind.

Hopefully I’ll get better at it, and be able to use it more efficiently. It has been a great investment.

I’m Drowning.

On my second cup of coffee at 1:54 pm. I don’t even know what I am doing here any more. There are times I get lost in the music I listen to or Netflix, but truly, I am chasing – running away from the thoughts that leave me cold and empty. Mundane things like organizing, and reading are no longer tasks that bring me joy because my mind flows towards darker places.

It’s silly, I think, that I’ve held on. I should just put it out of my mind and move on. I am no longer motivated to do the things that need to be done and I want to resort to uglier ideas.

There is a plant on my desk that has no water. I can see the life being drained from it daily; it dies along with my heart. As much as I think to water it every day, I look at it and then look at myself and am just glad that I am getting out of bed. I can at least check one thing off of my list.

I look at my tassel from my cap and I don’t feel overwhelmed or proud. It brings no sense of accomplishment because the bigger part of me that was there, the part that I took for granted the entire time, is now gone.

I look out my window and wonder if I’ll ever get another chance to make things right. It hurts my heart to know that I hurt someone else – and that this is not the first time.

I’m drowning in my emotions, but my insides feel like they have been carved out.

“Don’t Sweat the Petty Things, and don’t Pet the Sweaty Things”

I’d love to say that this is a motto to live by, because it is so funny, and I’d also love to say that I live by it. But realistically, there’s so much more to life than the petty things (and petting sweaty things :/).

As I age, I find that being petty is a waste of my energy and also a waste of other people’s time and energy as well. I used to think that I was somehow – covertly – teaching said person a lesson, or trying to subconsciously tell them to change something that they’re doing that annoys the hell out of me.

Unfortunately most humans aren’t mind readers.

Fortunately, I learned that fairly quickly after moving in with my current boyfriend after numerous attempts at being petty.

I think for a lot of people, it starts off as, “I’m not good with confrontation…I don’t want to be mean to them…I don’t know how else to ask them what I’ve already asked them 100 times!”

For me it was that and more. I grew up in a petty-ass household. My parents are petty with each other (sorry mom :/), so of course I learned from the best!

Here, I’ll give you a little example, months ago every time I would use the bathroom and we were out of toilet paper it just didn’t get replaced! What the hell! It bothered me to no end (still, honestly just thinking about it makes me a little angry). No, It’s not because I’m a controlling girlfriend, it’s a case of common decency – when you finish the roll, put a new one on.

So, eventually it got to the point where he would get the roll down from the cabinet, yet not put it on the toilet-paper-holder-thingy…how hard is that?

(Yes, I know I’m ranting, indulge me just a few more sentences, there is a point to this.)

After continuously asking nicely, and then moving straight into bitching and moaning about it (we go through a lot of toilet paper), I started to get petty. I started putting the empty toilet paper rolls on his desk, stacking them. Oh they gathered. Well that didn’t go as planned because he rarely even uses his desk.

See the game of being petty requires the player to be silent and patient for as long as necessary. You can’t be one of those little girls that can’t hold a secret or gets tired of waiting around for some one to discover something…It’s really all about a surprise attack, or so I was taught.

Once I realized the desk idea wasn’t working, I decided to give it another try and put them into his shoes so that every time he put them on he’d be like, “Whhaa? Why the fuck is there a toilet paper roll in my shoe?” The guy has a lot of shoes. I’m talking more than most girls. He has a pair for every outfit, and that gave me a lot of rolls to hide. I started with the shoes in the back of the closet, the ones he wore the least and started filling them randomly. I’ll admit, it got out of hand.

Once he started finding empty rolls in his shoes and I guess realized that they didn’t just get in there themselves, he asked me about it and finally the tissue issue was resolved.

Except now he puts it on the wrong way. 😦  No, but honestly I’m just glad he puts in on the dohicky at all…

Planning that whole toilet paper roll fiasco thing required a lot of time and energy, and it was all spent in the wrong direction. I knew that then and I know it now. Petty shit can get a person in a lot of trouble, it’s just not worth it. Sometimes people take things too seriously and after a while it becomes an annoying competition (nudge, nudge – parents). There’s no reason to let things get that far, just be real. Open up and talk to the other person about what’s on your mind. It may not be easy, it may cause a little or a lot of pain, but maybe in the long run you’ll both be better for it.

Stop sweating the petty things, and please for God sake DO NOT pet the sweaty things.