Is This What You Thought Adulthood Would Be Like?

I'm not quite sure it is

hand holding a cup of tea

This is a sort of surreal week for me.

For starters, the puke. There’s a lot of it. I’ve got three kids, all with a stomach virus right now (’tis the season). My kids aren’t good at sharing, until we’re talking about germs. Then suddenly one is sick, they’re all sick, everybody is sick, and we have no more towels.

But, also, yesterday was my husband’s first day as a permanent employee. Let me rephrase: yesterday was my husband’s first day as a permanent employee in seven years. After one fateful layoff, for seven years now, we’ve been skating by on side gigs and scraps, freelancing and personal projects. Even writing for a pretty awesome, well-paying blog (ahem), there are still five mouths to feed. Five is a lot of mouths. We used the very last of our food stamps this week, with so much hope that they’ll be the last we ever need.

If you’d have asked young, fresh-from-college me what adulthood would be like, I wouldn’t have guessed any of the above—the pile of kids, the delayed career path, the financial struggle, or even the vomit. This wasn’t exactly what I had in mind when I was wrapping up my Master’s thesis, or when we plotted out a five-year plan for babies (quick math: that means we’d maybe be on our first one). I thought we’d have a few more bucks and a few less kids. At the very least, I thought I’d have learned how to do my eyebrows by now.

It feels a bit like we’re still figuring everything out, when I expected this part of life to be both more stoutly settled and more glittery with possibility. And it’s fine, really, it’s fine. These boys are three of the brightest parts of my day (just try and stop me from putting their chubby faces all over Instagram). I’ve stumbled into doing some work that I truly love. I’ve managed to spend years huddled inside with my husband, both of us working from home together all day. A lot of it has been really great. But it for sure wasn’t what I expected.

Anyone else find adulthood to be a little less clearcut? Did you find yourself on a path you totally didn’t see coming?

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