Keep Moving Forward, and Other Things I've Learned I'm Doing.

Two things happened to me today --  I had my mid-year review, and I saw someone I knew at the grocery store.

Now, you're probably wondering why or how those two things are related, so let me back up.

I don't actually know the person I saw at the grocery store. It was the cashier who rang out my groceries. I don't know him, but I recognized him. The last time I was at this particular store, he was the one who rang me out.

The only reason I remember this is because I happened to be wearing a large, distinctive cameo necklace,which he asked me about.  He was kind of cute in the scruffy,  tallish, beat-poet kind of way, so I told him I'd purchased it for a steampunk costume, and that it seemed appropriate for work that day. (True stories, both. Although now that I stop to think about it, I remember being very uncomfortable with the question at the time.) He, of course, wanted to know more about the costume,  and where I worked, which at the time was a local history museum, and then he wanted to talk about our civil war event, and the little old lady in line behind me looked about ready to spit nails that I only had fifteen items and she was still waiting for me to stop  flirting with the cashier, if you want to call it flirting. It was more of a hold-up where you have to keep doing small talk until the receipt prints.

Anyway. This was at least a year ago. (Obviously he made an impression. Most guys don't go out of their way to make small talk with me. The ones that do stick.)

 Who should be checking out groceries again? Tallish beat poet guy!  Not as cute as I remember -- and today I am not wearing a cameo, or anything vaguely historical. Instead I have my logowear for my new job at a very well-thought-of local cultural institution. The kind of shirt that makes everyone stop and go, "Oh, you work there? We love it there!" It's not a very attractive shirt, but it does get a nice kind of attention.

Lo and behold, he starts doing the small talk thing again! But I'm not having any of it today. I'm a little curt, more than I mean to be, because there's another long-suffering housewife in line behind me and I'm not going to be that twenty-something flirting with the cashier, who's not that cute anyway. So, what do you do at the Arboretum? Oh, this and that. Must be nice working there. Oh, yes, it is. I like it a lot. He manages to drop the fact that he was at a Civil War reenactment this weekend into the small talk, which is impressive and, quite frankly, a little scary -- does he remember me or something? Or is that his thing with all the vaguely attractive single women who come through the checkout?-- and I manage to say something about how the weather must have been nice for it this weekend, which it was.

Then I take my groceries and get the heck out of Dodge before my frozen yogurt melts.

Last year, the Civil War thing would have been really cool to me, cool enough to make me awkwardly hold up traffic in line at the grocery store and maybe leave this guy my number. This year, it's still cool, but I'm wearing a different shirt, even if it is an ugly shade of green and slightly too small. I have a full time job doing what I love. I just had my review this morning and they've told me that they like me, that I'm doing a really good job even though I've only been there three months, and that I'm a valuable member of the team.

I'm moved up in the world...and this guy is still working as a cashier at the local grocery store. It makes me a little glad I didn't leave him my number. Now, I'm sure he's got plans and dreams and I'm also sure he's a great guy, and maybe I should have given him a chance. But it also makes me aware of how incredibly blessed I am. I've been so worried about being staid and staying in the same place and being afraid that I'm not moving forward, but I am moving forward. From outward appearances, I'm practically in the next galaxy!

It's easier to see the change in our lives when we see something else that's stood still while we were moving.

So, in conclusion, sorry, cashier-dude whose name I could probably find on my receipt. My priorities have shifted. And your hair was cuter last year.

Moving Out, and other 'Emerging Adult' Life Choice Quandries

A room with a view or a room of one's own, it's all the same to me...

Yesterday at lunchtime I sat, by myself, in the heat of a Midwest afternoon, and contemplated selfishness, fiscal responsibility, and moving out of my parent’s house. Not necessarily in that order.

Yes, I am one of those recently graduated twenty somethings still living in my parent’s basement. (Yes, I am actually in the basement.) I’m not complaining – I love my parents and they’re very easy to get along with. In fact, I rather enjoy living at home. I’m not contemplating this move because of anything anyone said or did, or didn’t say or do. I’m doing it because I’m afraid I’m lazy, because I’m too comfortable, and that if I don’t do it now, I won’t do it at all.

I’m a member of that generation that the phrase ‘emerging adulthood’ was built for. We graduated with degrees in things we liked and moved back home  to cower underneath a lot of student loan debt. Some of us had helicopter parents. Most of us grew up with internet connections in our homes and technology to help us around every corner. We’ve been called entitled, lazy, vain, and overeager for our quick fix of self-esteem boosting. People write all kinds of articles about us telling how we’ll be the downfall of civilization or just a new chapter in human history or points in between. (You can read articles here from Time, here from the New York Times, and here from USA Today).

It’s hard to be an ‘emerging adult’ and not take some of this to heart. As someone who grew up listening to everyone talk about twenty somethings and credit card debt and the housing crisis and student loans, I feel like a pretty financially responsible person – I pay more than my student loan lender asks me every month (part of my evil plan to pay back my loan early) I have a pretty healthy trio of savings accounts that get regular deposits, I don’t use my credit card except to buy plane tickets, my new job allowed me to start a 401(k) that gets 3% of my paychecks, I almost can’t bring myself to shop in regular retail stores after thrifting for so long, and I always consider what the cheapest thing is at Starbucks before I take myself out for coffee, which only happens once in a blue moon anyway, because from my side of the tracks a Starbucks habit sounds like the first step on the road to ruin.

And I don’t want to consider myself a mooch, either. In high school, I had no part time job, no money, and no car. I ended up getting a lot of help from a lot of people that I couldn’t necessarily pay back. Oh, you’re ordering in pizza and everyone has to pay their share? Someone had better pick up Merc’s five dollars. When I got to senior year, my parents not only bought me a car so I could get to my student teaching gig but also started giving me what amounted to a stipend ($75 dollars every two weeks to make sure you eat and keep gas in the car we bought you.)

As I quickly discovered, $150 dollars a month can go a long way towards keeping a car in gas and paying for groceries for just one person if you play your cards right. I learned to love my crockpot, and I made sure that every time I had something, I shared it. Oh, we’re having a birthday party for someone on the floor? Let me bake you cookies. Pizza on Friday night? In reparations for years of other people paying for mine, let me pick up the bill. You just invited me out for frozen yogurt? I have a coupon, and in the interest of making things easy for the cashier, let me get this.

My grandmother, who is one of the most generous people I know, explained to me once that the reason she is so open-handed with her grandchildren is because she never got anything from her grandparents (who were emotionally distant as well). She wanted to be the exact opposite for her grandchildren, and she is, and that’s the kind of person I’ve striven to be, in college and after. Generous, but not to the point of exceeding my income.

But now I’m back at home, and thrift and economy aside, I’m starting to feel like a mooch again. I pay my share of the car insurance, fill my own tank and pay for my own oil changes, I contribute to the communal cupboard once in a while, I do the dishes and any other chores when I’m asked, and I participate without complaining in the yardwork. And I know that whatever evidence there is to the contrary, I’m still a burden on my parents.

Which is why I’d like to move out.

My younger brother, who next year is starting his sophomore year at college, just signed a lease (with mom and dad’s help) on an apartment. He commuted to school last year to save money, and now he’d like to live closer to school and have a normal college student social life that doesn’t involve two trains and a bus trip. I get that. But my brother is also significantly more independently minded than me, and I’m worried, as the oldest and a bit of a homebody, that my staying at home is setting a bad example.  (It also doesn’t help that my other brother, who is also younger than I am, asks every couple of months when I am getting my master’s degree and when I am moving.)

I’ve been at home for two years since graduation. I have a full time job now. Why shouldn’t I strike out on my own? Isn't that what Virginia Woolf alluded to when she said "A woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction"?

I put this suggestion to my parents, listed off several apartments I’d seen on craigslist, talked about how I’d run the numbers and thought I could make it work.

My mother shrugged and my father said no. “I want you to be financially stable when you move out,” he said, citing something about owning your own car and being able to put a downpayment on another when the old one goes and being able to afford a house. He’d spoken with a co-worker of his who owns shares in several apartment complexes as a side business. When this co-worker was younger, his grandfather had given him the same advice about owning and not renting, and he didn’t take it until several years later. Renting is a black hole for money that doesn’t pay you back. But buying a two-flat living in one half and renting out the other, that is the way to go.

 Where do they even have two flats? And when will I be able to afford one of those? And if I save a little every month for the long-awaited for house, can’t I have my own front door right now? Surely a little 600 square foot studio that I can bicycle to work from isn’t too much to strive for. My grandparents also keep asking me why they haven’t met a boyfriend yet. There’s not a whole lot that sounds more derpy to a potential date than ‘Sorry, no, not my place, I live with my parents.’

I rustled up a list of potential apartments anyway, sat down at lunch to call them – and then felt incredibly guilty about it. Am I only doing this because all my friends have their own apartments and I'm embarassed to say, "Here, come over to my house. My parents might join us for dinner"? Was I being selfish for wanting my own front door and forks and a rice cooker and a washer and dryer and a place to bring my friends on Friday nights? I’d be buying more things just to furnish the place, and that’s a little materialistic. Am I only doing this because I want more stuff? The energy use of a small apartment like that would be more than if I was living at home – lights to keep on, dinner to cook.   Just the other day, in light of six family members needing to be six different places with only four cars, my dad had dropped me off at work and taken my car. They couldn’t do that if I didn’t live with them and didn’t give them the flexibility of that extra vehicle. Living in community means that you save on things like energy use (if five people are all in one room they can use the same lights) and cooking dinner and yes, driving to work every day.

And it would be lonely, being just me. Living in community means just that -- community.

So, friends, I am putting this question out for you. What are your thoughts, your feelings, your experiences with moving out?