live or tell

DOING THINGS LITERALLY EVERY SECOND

I don’t know exactly when it happens, but there’s a switch between girldom and womanhood where your life takes on the qualities of a take-out coffee (overfull; too hot; expensive: BETTER METAPHOR, RIGHT? I JUST MADE IT UP!) and you will be busy or should be busy all of the time. What is, by necessity, not done—which will include friends not seen or even really thought about; work not pursued; entire swaths of music and art and literature that you wholeheartedly care about not experienced—will remain undone.

The up-slash-downside of this is that there’s no time to be all George-Michael-in-Arrested-Development-as-sad-Charlie Brown about anything. It feels really good to play with marshmallows in bed for six hours but eventually your nerves will be Jiffy-Popping to go do something productive.

The entire piece is pretty great (particularly the points about boys and feeding yourself and going out/staying home and swagger) but sometimes you read a paragraph that perfectly describes the trials and anxieties of a year and you just want to cry because YES.