Feeling...23?

 This post is in honor of my husband's birthday! Wooooooooooooo! He's turning 23!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Old fogey.

Anyway, typical birthday wishes aside (I love you, you're amazing, I'm so glad to have you in my life), I thought I'd make a fun and (hopefully) witty post to explore my thought process on the 20-something experience, as well as an excuse to write something just for my baby on his birthday.

And, without further ado, here it is

23 things you realize when you turn 23:

1. Life has suddenly turned into a race to out-achieve your peers–from traveling the world to starting a 401K.
2. At least one major cultural trend went by without you having the slightest idea what it was, e.g. who is Iggy Azalea anyway (who dat, who dat)?
3. You laugh at the horrifying reality that someone you know is responsible for molding the minds of a classroom of children.
4. You’re not sure what’s more difficult; doing your own taxes, or finding a full-time job.
5. You’re old enough to know everything, but too young to actually know anything.
6. You worry about the stupid neighbors who don’t know how to park like normal human beings.
   
   
7. You’re beginning to realize that “planning your future” is somewhat useful, and useless at the same time, because it all ends up its own way anyway.
8. It does not seem financially feasible to have a child within the next ten years.
9. You’ve outgrown eating ridiculous amounts of candy (wait, who are we kidding here—you freaking LOVE candy) . . . or rather, you just exercise small amounts of self-control.
   
10. You’ve started to qualify your age with what year you graduated high school, which seems inherently wrong. You didn’t even care about high school, so why does it determine how you measure time?
11. Rather than comparing petty things like size and strength, you’re more interested in comparing job benefits and student debt.
12. You’re not sure how many more years you’ve got until you can no longer be proud of the fact that you like bands like Mae.
13. You’ve only got a few more years until you can eat fast food without tremendous repercussions.
14. Fortunately for you, grey hair is closer to being the latest trend instead of an embarrassment.
15. You’re around five years older than most popular movie and NHL stars.
16. Five minutes from now, you’ll probably get really tired for absolutely no reason.
17. You’ve quit taking the bait on itemized/numbered articles like, “23 things 23 year olds do.”
18. Your life centers around work, school, work, and Netflix/watching and re-watching your favorite TV shows.
    
    
    
19. You now actually know what AKA means. #nojudgement
20. You’ve begun to lose touch with friends for the sheer reason of no reason at all.
21. You’re beginning to identify less with pesky neighbor kids, and more with parents. And you actually say the word “pesky.”
22. You’re pretty sure all your thoughts are a giant cliché, you know they’ve all been voiced before, and you’re pretty sure any contribution you could make to society has already been contributed. But you try anyway.
23. You identify all too well with certain Blink 182 songs, and realize that teens today think of them as an “old band,” if they know who they are at all.

Happy Birthday, sweetie. I love you!!