Now, believe it or not, this has never managed to be how I get ready in the morning. Even on the nights where I chamomile myself into a sleep coma at 8:00 p.m. and psych myself up to the nth degree about how adult my morning is going to be the next day, I will inevitably live out the Groundhog Day-esque torture that is my perpetually infantile morning routine:
• Set an alarm for far enough in advance from my actual wake-up time that I can get some decent snooze action and still have wiggle room.
• Hit the snooze no less than six times, waking up only when I look at the clock and let out a muffled “Ohshitjesuschrist!” as I flop out of bed like a dying fish. Leave bed looking like it has been freshly napalmed.
• Take the world’s fastest, least efficient shower, not even fully rinsing off the soap before I stumble out and stand in front of the mirror.
• Shake the maximum amount of water out of my hair before putting it into the least aesthetically assaulting style, slap on some makeup (ten gold coins if you can apply liquid eyeliner—the Rubik’s Cube of modern cosmetics—without looking like a velvet-painted sad clown), and run back into my bedroom.
• Grab the first outfit that is clean, reasonably color-coordinated, and ironed enough not to look like crumpled-up aluminum foil and throw it on.
• Pick up something from the kitchen as I run out the door to grab some form of public transportation (it’s been a while since I’ve lived in a city that has an even vaguely reasonable ROI on owning a car).
• Find out that I managed to grab a Swiss Cake Roll and an ankle sock in my blind, early-morning haste. Grudgingly eat the Swiss Cake Roll as I avoid the stare of fellow commuters.
Taking time to make mornings a pleasant, refreshing, fulfilling experience just seems impossible. The early twenties is that strange limbo where your body—and your douchebag friends—are all insisting you stay out every night to enjoy all the wonders and mysteries your city has to offer (usually costing around $10 a glass), and your body somehow does not have the resilience of a rubber band when it comes to snapping awake in the morning.
THE THINGS WE’RE LIKELY TO DITCH WHEN PRESSED FOR TIME
And even if I were a morning person, there are so many steps involved, it seems just exhausting. Just eating a balanced breakfast has a myriad components—and people who take Instagram photos of their morning spread cannot honestly be rushing off directly afterward to some soul-crushing job. Who sits there, iPhone in hand, and thinks, “I want to make my entire Twitter community feel inadequate this morning. Look, you peasants. I’m eating sliced kiwi and yogurt with lychee syrup. Don’t know what lychee is? I thought you wouldn’t.”
So it seems as though three clear obstacles stand in the way of what could be considered an “adult” morning, provided you’re able to get up at a reasonable hour. Obviously, setting your alarm and adhering to it is the point upon which your entire day hinges, but there are only so many ways to go about that. Short of hiring someone to hide in your closet until she jumps out at 7:30 and splashes ice water on your face, I’m pretty sure that’s just going to be a battle you fight with yourself. You either learn to get up or you don’t. But once you’ve mastered that, there remain clear steps to bring yourself into “full-grown status,” and none of them can be left unchecked.
Making Yourself Look Like an Acceptable Member of Society
I’m not here to lecture you on what fashion is—frankly, I’m the last person who should be talking about that. I see photos from New York Fashion Week and am thoroughly convinced they were taken straight out of The Onion. I have no idea what fashion is supposed to look like. (And 99 percent of what I see on The Sartorialist makes me sad for humanity.) But I do know what it means to be presentable, and to at least put together an outfit that will transfer well from work to shopping to socializing in some form or another. Simply presenting yourself like someone who knows vaguely what you’re doing seems to be the key to happiness in life, since people are incredibly judgmental and will make assessments about you everywhere from the produce aisle to your job interview. So hedge your bets and put your best foot forward.
But it’s often difficult to find that healthy middle ground between “stylish” and “practical” when the kinds of fashion we are told to emulate, as in said fashion shows and street photography blogs, are simply impossible to achieve in real life. Unless you literally ooze money, you are not going to be able to afford nearly anything in most magazines on a regular basis, and people dictating the latest in fashion are rarely eager to explain how to make an on-sale Gap sweater work for you. Finding a way to dress that is both professional and still appropriate for a twenty-something—without selling your kidneys on the black market—is kind of a tricky problem.
So what are we supposed to look like? Skirt suits with bright-colored shirts? Knee-length skirts that our grandmothers would approve of? Day-to-night wrap dresses that forgive nearly any tummy pooch? The kind of liquid eyeliner that somehow makes your eyes just look naturally sexy without screaming, “Look at the spackle all over my face!” Sure, these are all probably good calls. And, if you’re lucky, your job allows a Zooey Deschanel-esque dress code for women and you can just wear any dress to ever appear on ModCloth. Eventually, getting ready should become, if anything, more an essential list of things to get rid of, and never look back on.
Some things we must leave behind forever:
• Uggs: Your feet looking like melting marshmallows stopped being cute years ago.
• Black leggings: I don’t care if you only wear these to the gym; they are eventually going to work their way into your wardrobe in some actual clothinglike capacity, and before you know it, you’re going to be tricking yourself into thinking these are pants. Eventually, you’re just going to go out in some body paint and a T-shirt that says 2 Hot 2 Handle.
• Anything unsustainably trendy: Let’s put it this way. If you are twenty-six and continue to invest heavily in things like jeggings or endless cardigans with those stupid elbow patches, you deserve to lose all your money to Forever 21.
• Flip-flops: Some people like these things, but they are truly the Chicken McNuggets of dressing yourself. They are lazy, unattractive, and, unless accompanied by a pristine pedicure, rather unpleasant to look at. To be reserved for the beach only.
• Boob curtains: I am referring here to the dresses and shirts that simply hit you at the boobs and go straight down from there, also known as tent dresses. I don’t know why anyone would ever want something that makes her look nine months pregnant when she actually has rock-solid abs, but these continue to be manufactured, so go figure.
• Butterfly clips: No explanation needed.
I think it’s safe to say that the removal of items like this—and anything else that lives in squalor in the back of your closet, never to be worn again but always to be kept out of some misplaced sense of nostalgia—will ensure at least a decent wardrobe. Because, really, most people look pretty okay, provided they remember to wipe the toothpaste off their shirt and zip their flies up. It’s more a question of preventing yourself from ever going for a windbreaker, tennis shoes, sweatpants, or anything of the like when you’re running late and temporarily forget that the omniscient eye of society never, ever takes a break.
Eating the Kind of Breakfast Your Mother Would Approve of
Perhaps I am the only one to have fallen prey to this phenomenon, but I was denied much of any autonomy when it came to my breakfasts as a child. While, yes, looking back, making me eat oatmeal and orange juice and whole wheat toast was probably for the better in terms of my physical and mental development, as a child, I dreamed of breaking free and essentially freebasing spoon after spoon of Fruity Pebbles. I craved sugar, I craved fat, I craved a glass of chocolate milk so deeply brown it was like staring into George Clooney’s eyes as he proposed to you. I shouldn’t have been left to my own devices, and I wasn’t. Thank you, Mom and Dad.
But now that the era of being told what and when to eat is over, and
I am essentially set free in a grocery store with a debit card and no idea what trans fat actually is, things are kind of bleak. When I want to reach for a pint of Häagen-Dazs that I know very well I will finish myself, no matter what my original intention, I have no one to stop me. When I have something of an existential crisis in the snack aisle deciding whether Cooler Ranch or Nacho Cheesier better describes me as a person, my mom can’t redirect me to the bone-dry pretzel rods. I can unironically buy Cheez Whiz. And never is this complete lack of discretion more apparent than in the things I choose to get for myself in the mornings.
First and foremost, sugary cereals are literally the devil. Even if you buy them with the intent of eating one reasonable bowl every other day with soy or skim milk as a little treat for when you wake up extra early, it will never turn out that way. Ever. Cereal can be eaten (and thoroughly enjoyed) at any time of the day, and in any physical state. Whether in the bowl with milk, crushed up over ice cream, or eaten straight out of the box with impunity, it’s always an appropriate time for Reese’s Puffs. (Sidenote: What Machiavellian prince sicced such a cereal on the human population? Wasn’t life hard enough to keep in balance before we had access to Reese’s Cups in powdery ball form?) Anyway, whether it’s cereal with the nutritional value of melted plastic, or a stack of pancakes that stares at me with the never-closing eye of Sauron, I can’t take care of myself when it comes to morning nourishment.
I have found that the best way to prevent myself from eating such things is simply not to keep them in my kitchen, as I am far too lazy to get up and run to the grocery store at 7:30 in the morning simply to replace my empty Toaster Strudel stock. Normally, this works wonders in keeping me drinking vanilla soy milk and eating bland banana after bland banana. I usually do pretty well. However, this empty-kitchen trap can occasionally lead, in those desperate-for-a-sugary-embrace moments, to a shame-filled trip to that Mecca of twentysomething wastefulness—Starbucks.
Nothing at Starbucks is healthy. Nothing. Even if you get an espresso, judging by its vaguely burnt-rubber aftertaste, I’m assuming you are drinking more straight carcinogens than anything else. And, yes, Starbucks’s drinks are delicious. We all know that health consciousness is not what drives us there, no matter how much they want to somehow pair up with yoga and “ethnic jazz.” Starbucks is not good for your soul. Yet somehow we’ve managed to convince ourselves—especially during those particularly difficult mornings—that drinking twenty ounces of hot milk with a couple squirts of sugar and coffee in it is some kind of breakfast. It is truly the nutritional equivalent of taking your brain out on a nice dinner date only to never call it again. By 11:30, you find yourself staring blankly ahead of you as you are somehow hungry, tired, twitchy, and depressed all at once. Starbucks drinks leave you with this lingering feeling of vague melancholy, only to be swatted away with another $5 spent on twenty minutes of coffee. It’s a cycle we should do our best to avoid.
But, like sheep to the slaughter, we’ll keep going back. I love Starbucks. I am legally required to, as a twenty-three-year-old urban white woman, but I would like it even if I weren’t. It’s like getting a lollipop when you were at the bank as a kid, a little bright spot in an otherwise bland day. But this doesn’t mean we should become one of those people who are never seen without their signature white cup. The more we can keep the foods like this—as well as the tiny demons like sugary breakfast cereal—out of reach, the better. Perhaps we should tattoo this mantra on our forearms.
Getting from Point A to Point “I Wish I Still Had a Car”
Let me begin by saying that I love public transportation. I haven’t owned a car for nearly two years, but when I did have one, I had been reduced from a functioning human to a walking fly strip for tickets, fines, and citations. I am incapable of parking, driving, or being inside a car for fifteen minutes in any city without immediately accruing half of my net worth in bills to the city. So it is for the best—for me, not for the state and local governments who are undoubtedly losing half their revenue—that I am no longer behind the wheel.
That being said, riding in what are essentially petri dishes on wheels with every other Tom, Dick, and Harry to get to and from your daily activities can definitely get you down. Unless you are one of those people who have a beautiful, pristine bike that has essentially taken the position in your life usually reserved for first children, you’re probably stuck with the rest of us schmucks. And just a word on said bicycles, because I am not referring to those of us who schlep ourselves around occasionally on bikeshares, because anyone who has ever used those things knows it is about as far from the actual city-biking experience as anything can be—but more on that later.
The point is, we know that people who take their biking seriously are going to (a) talk about it all the time, (b) be completely unaware that it has usurped their life entirely and turned them into an enormous douchebag in lycra, and (c) fill every social media outlet at their disposal with filtered photos of their precious two-wheeler in various city locations. These people are too good for public transportation, which is probably for the best, as the stench of smug self-satisfaction radiating off them would likely clog up any subway car.
So you generally have three options in terms of public transportation (and we’ll consider trams and light rails and all that nonsense under the “metro” heading, because once you’re inside one, they’re essentially the same thing). You have the metro, or “subway” as many of you insist on calling it. You have buses. You have bikeshares. Now, all three can provide a safe, convenient, and rapid means of getting you where you need to go—though each have their definite pros and cons, and navigating them is essential to any young adult’s survival.
THE METRO
Pros:
• Relatively fast, depending on the city.
• Affordable sometimes, especially in terms of how far you can travel in it.
• Underground, so you don’t have to deal with the overwhelming grayness that can sometimes envelop cities.
• Pretty generous seating arrangements, depending on the city.
Cons:
• Consistently, overwhelmingly smells of urine. Reeks. Reeks of urine.
• Is for some reason considered an appropriate place by many amorous couples to get their “uncomfortable public makeout” quota filled.
• Is late all the time, just to fuck with you.
• Can vary in price on one metro in one day from “basically free” to “you could just break my kneecaps” (I’m looking at you, D.C.).
THE BUS
Pros:
• Sometimes you can find one that goes exactly where you want to go, in which case it’s almost like a car you don’t have to park.
• Extremely cheap.
• Above-ground, so it can sometimes be pleasant to sightsee on a bright, warm day.
• If you get a good seat, it is relatively comfortable.
Cons:
• You’re riding the fucking bus, man. Doesn’t that just sound bad?
• The bus is often where the crazies gather to sit next to you and eat a full chicken dinner/tell you about their many cats.
• If it’s crowded, you’re literally just bouncing around holding onto a strap as you barrel down an open road.
• The stops are outdoors, meaning if it’s anything other than seventy degrees and sunny out, life is terrible.
THE BIKESHARE
Pros:
• Extraordinarily convenient, provided you start and finish near a station (that isn’t always taken up).
• Beautiful on a nice day.
• Exercise, or whatever.
• Makes you feel cool, if even briefly.
Cons:
• You are never near a station—starting point or destination—and even if you are, they are entirely full 24/7.
• People apparently beat the bicycles mercilessly with a sledge-hammer every time they use them, judging by the state of most of them.
• They w
eigh approximately one zillion pounds.
• They have two gears: stuck in molasses or free-falling down a hill.
• No matter what the weather is or where you are going, you will arrive drenched in sweat.
Of the three, personally, I prefer the metro. But each is necessary in its own turn.
Regardless of your preference, not having a firm grasp on any and every form of public transportation at your fingertips is an unforgivable sin. It is often the difference between having the morning of a True Adult and flailing down the street with coffee spilled down your shirt as you come up with an excuse as to why you are late for the fourth time this week.
But I am convinced that this hurdle—learning how to start our days right from every angle—though one of the hardest, is one of the most essential. We always admired our parents for somehow getting everything together, being awake and aware, and even handing us a packed lunch all while we were trying to brush our teeth. Now is the time we should be learning how to make the most of our early day—or even be up to see it at all—because, let’s face it: For every worm we’re not going to get this morning, there are three perky white girls named Sophie who’ve already gotten three. We can’t let Sophie win—we have to get our mornings in check.
Chapter 2
FINDING AND KEEPING A JOB
Or, How to Make a Résumé the Right Mix of Lies and Actual Work Experience
Almost everything in life, from eating a sparse bowl of Trix (which they inexplicably turned from whimsical fruit shapes into colored balls), to paying your rent on time, requires money. And such is perhaps the most devastating realization of adulthood: If you want something, or need something, you’re going to have to take care of it for yourself. The things that, as children, we always assumed just materialized in our homes—food, new clothes, dishwashing liquid, toilet paper—are the things that often sneak into your wallet while you’re sleeping and abscond with the last $40 or so you have in your checking account. Worse yet, this money that is so essential to the living of daily life and the ability to do your laundry, eat food occasionally, and live in some kind of four-walled structure that prevents you from being rained on, has to be earned. We have to go out and get jobs, work at them every day for many hours a day, and wait for a check to come every two weeks. (I know, I was just as brokenhearted as you when I got this news.)
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