adulting

Step 285: Before you write off a piece of clothing as ruined, take it to the drycleaners

There is a special pain that comes the moment after you have gotten some of that viciously orange soup-grease on, say, your one nice shirt. You know. The one that didn’t have any grease stains, unlike everything else that was once nice.

But! Don’t throw it away. Take it to the dry cleaners.

There is a big difference between announcing to yourself that it’s going to the dry cleaners versus actually getting it there, so hang it up on your front door, and the next time you leave your house, take it with you and drop it off.

Dry cleaners are magical. They are sorcerers. They are a man on the moon. Something can seem completely unsalvageable, and not only do they fix what’s wrong with it, but they make it look new again even though it was floppy and faded and sad when you dropped it off.

Case in point: One time, I got bright lipliner all over a camelhair coat. I don’t know how I did this, even accounting for my lax stain-noticing standards, because every single panel of the coat had those cruel coral streaks. I was utilizing an ineffective problem-solving strategy (crying in the gym locker room and complaining to anyone who’d listen that I’d ruined my one nice coat) and then a kindly naked lady took pity on me and suggested I take it to the dry cleaner.

I still have that coat. Because dry cleaners operate outside normal laws of physics, at least when it comes to stain removal.

Also, you should take your nice coats to the dry cleaners once a year. No matter how dingy they look when you take them, they’ll arrive back in your arms looking brand new for the reasonable sum of, like, $16.

A very special Adulting step for any readers who became the Pope today

Don’t forget this one, Pope Francis! It’s important. Print it out and look at it every day, if necessary.

(originally published here)

Step 284: Today is probably not really the worst day ever

I was pretty convinced of this morning’s irredeemable awfulness - early! Cold! Allergies! Shower without towel! Ants in the kitchen! - and then I saw an elderly woman wearing a t-shirt pushing herself agonizingly slowly across a five-lane road. Ha, ha, Perspective. YOU’VE MADE YOUR POINT.

Step 283: Class privilege is real, and you need to be aware of it.

Utterly non-thematic entry for those who are looking for a good red lipstick

A lot of y’all seem to ask about my lipstick. I have found the holy grail of red lipstick, and it is Revlon Colorstay in Top Tomato.

It’s … (deep sigh of satisfaction) perfect. It stays forever, does not smear, or stay behind on things, or run and make my mouth look like a weird spidery blob. It also looks very nice on those who, like me, are piglet-colored. This isn’t a promo or ad or paid or anything, I just really love it, and having already spread the word to ShotGunHeart, wanted to pass it to everyone else. 

Adulting classic: If you want to do something well, keep doing it. Even if you suck.

And now, an amazing quote from Ira Glass, courtesy of Bekki Jam. Please believe how true this is.

“Nobody tells people who are beginners, and I really wish somebody had told this to me, is that if you’re watching this video you’re somebody who wants to make videos, right? And all of us who do creative work like, you know, we get into it and we get into it because we have good taste. Do you know what I mean?

Like you want to make TV because you love TV. You know what I mean? Because there’s stuff that you just like love, OK? So you’ve got really good taste and you get into this thing that I don’t even know how to describe but it’s like there’s a gap. That for the first couple years that you’re making stuff, what you’re making isn’t so good, OK? It’s not that great. It’s really not that great. It’s trying to be good, it has ambition to be good, but it’s not quite that good.

But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, your taste is still killer and your taste is good enough that you can tell that what you’re making is kind of a disappointment to you, you know what I mean? Like you can tell that it’s still sort of crappy. A lot of people never get past that phase and a lot of people at that point quit.

And the thing I would just like say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting creative work, they went through a phase of years where they had really good taste and they could tell what they were making wasn’t as good as they wanted it to be. They knew it fell short, you know, and some of us can admit that to ourselves and some of us are a little less able to admit that to ourselves.

But we knew that it didn’t have the special thing that we wanted it to have and the thing what to do is… Everybody goes through that. And for you to go through it, if you’re going through it right now, if you’re just getting out of that phase or if you’re just starting off and you’re entering into that phase, you’ve got to know it’s totally normal and the most important possible thing you can do is do a lot of work.

Do a huge volume of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week or every month you know you’re going to finish one story. You know what I mean? Whatever it’s going to be. You create the deadline. It’s best if you have somebody who’s waiting for work from you, somebody who’s expecting work from you, even if it’s not somebody who pays you but that you’re in a situation where you have to try not to work. Because it’s only be actually going through a volume of work that you are actually going to catch up and close that gap. And the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”

Step 282: Do not raise your voice to strangers to signal that they need to pay attention to you

Do you remember the last time a stranger yelled at you? Was it pleasant? Did it make you want to help them? Did you think to yourself, “Oh, my. I have upset this fine, reasonable person, and now will move heaven and earth to right this wrong!”?

I don’t care how useless the Comcast customer service guy is. Yelling won’t help.

Step 281: Don’t assume you know better than others about how *they* should live *their* lives

From last night’s conversation about a mutual friend:

Me: But … I don’t know. I mean, she has a lot of strong ideas and specifications about how she wants her life to be, but doesn’t actively, constantly try to export it to others. So in that way, she’s not what I think of as a Super Liberal.

Boyfriend: Yeah, that is the hallmark. But same for Super Conservative people. It’s the judging, and the trying-to-make-it-a-law thing that’s awful.

Caveat: I know there’s a certain cognitive dissonance to posting this kind of thing on an advice blog. So, as always, a gentle reminder that this entire project is a series of suggestions that you may take or ignore. Rest assured that I will never lobby for the Adulting Act of 2013 (federally mandated oil changes for all!), or anything.

What makes a good life?

Via Andrew Sullivan, a review of George Vaillant’s book on the Harvard Grant Study, which followed (an admittedly limited/privileged) group of 268 men over the course of 70 years, checking in with them regularly:

The study, a product of the period in which it was conceived, has its limitations. Its only subjects are white, privileged men. Still, many of its findings seem universal. If they could be boiled down to a single revelation, it would be that the secret to a happy life is relationships, relationships, relationships. The best predictors of adult success and well-being are a childhood in which one feels accepted and nurtured; an empathic coping style at ages 20 through 35; and warm adult relationships. …  Mental health, as Sigmund Freud and Erik Erikson indicated, is embodied by the capacity to love and to work.

The other overarching message of this book is that resilience counts. Men with the most mature defense mechanisms—defined as altruism, humor, sublimation (finding gratifying alternatives to frustration and anger), anticipation (being realistic about future challenges), and suppression (yes, “keeping a stiff upper lip”)—were three times more likely to flourish in later life. Furthermore, men with good defense mechanisms were able to alter their paths by developing the capacity for emotional warmth and connection to others despite difficult upbringings or individual setbacks.

 

Obviously, none of us can go back in time and edit our childhoods. But we can work on those other things. So two tasks for today:

1. When something irritating/bothersome/bad happens, see if you can’t spend your emotional energy working around it rather than feeling upset and powerless. Coping mechanisms! Resilience! Wooooo!

2. Reach out to a friend who is valuable and that you love, but have not been in touch with lately.

Small traveling triumphs.

Super smart tip, courtesy of alert reader Sara: When you make a packing list, make it in Google Docs. That way, the next time you travel, you’ll already have a great template and can just modify it a bit.

By following her advice, I was able to make my packing list for New Orleans in, like, 37 seconds. It’s my first trip back to my beloved hometown since I moved to Oregon in 2008. I expect to gain 14 pounds’ worth of fried seafood weight and regress at least eight years. It will be the best.