Nobody puts baillee in the corner

(In case you didn’t get the Sixteen Candles/Nicki Minaj mashup, this is a blog post about birthdays).

It’s a little over a month until my 24 birthday, and I feel like it’s going to be a weirdly beautiful year because 23 has been an emotional roller coaster, to say the least. (I get it now, Coolio and blink-182). As a kid, I romanticized my 20s. According to my eight grade journal (I was super angsty, so the word “diary” was simply out of the question), I’m supposed to be married to a minimum of three pop punk lead singers who are no longer socially relevant.

All joking aside, it’s a really in-between age. I’m not a kid anymore in the sense I now pay rent but still in the sense I will buy Star Wars freezer pops from Target when given the opportunity. A wise English professor once told me (I hope she forgives me for slightly paraphrasing, but I swear this is almost verbatim) to date a lot of greasy, stringy-haired musicians I knew were bad for me (she dated a member of Spin Doctors), work at a Starbucks (more importantly, she told me to take advantage of their health benefits), and if I felt like I had absolutely no idea what I was doing, I was definitely doing my 20s right. I work at a quirky ice cream store, and I feel more lost than Paris Hilton at Comic Con (or maybe not? I feel like The Simple Life humbled her), so two out of three ain’t bad.

Don’t get me wrong, I love staying up all night watching music videos and going for late night pancakes and living up to the expectations Friends outlined. I love being able to call my mom because I always forget what temperature to cook baked potatoes and living in the same city as most of my best friends (and having the freedom to constantly text my other best friends whenever I want) and still being able to use phrases like “legit” and “defs” without feeling like an old timer. I just guess I thought I would have more figured out by now.

That’s not to say I was already expecting my white picket fence. (Plus, I’m not really one for convention, so it would definitely be fuchsia or turquoise, thank you). I just thought I would be in an entirely different place than I am now. I’m unbelievably thankful for the great job, amazing friends, and crazy adventures I have right now, but I guess Past Baby Baillee gave me some really unrealistic expectations, including the idea I could actually sleep on a trampoline like Dharma did in Dharma and Greg. (Btw, that show DID exist, and it wasn’t some weird, collective fever dream we all had). I’ve never had a birthday bother me before, and to put it mildly, birthdays are a big deal in my world, but I’ve gone so far as to tell multiple friends lately I didn’t want to celebrate this year.

(Insert a time lapse montage of me pacing around my apartment while tapping a pen against my leg as a coffee shop indie rock song plays in the background here)

For the past day or so, I’ve been trying to figure out how to end this blog post. I didn’t want to end by saying “And now birthdays suck, and we’re all getting older and disappointing ourselves!” because that isn’t me. Finally, it hit me a few seconds ago: I’m being an idiot. Twenty-four isn’t a big deal. (Even though the lack of songs chronicling being 24 is a huge bummer). As every movie about adulthood has ever taught me, I have another six to eight years before I absolutely have to get it together. The only person pressuring me to do better or be more of an adult is myself. So what if I still watch Spongebob Squarepants (reruns, obvs) or listen to most of the same music I listened to in high school (unironically, might I add) or only buy cartoon Band-Aids (you should definitely get the Finding Dory ones if you haven’t already). No one else in my life cares. Hell, most of them are right there in the toy aisle with me. It doesn’t matter where we are in our relationships or parenthood or career (or if only the career category applies to me); we’re all in the same boat, and we’re all trying to figure out what adulthood really is. Spoiler alert: so far, it’s a lot of Google searches, a lot of late nights, and a lot of being poor.