I Am An Adult

On Sunday I will be 20-years-old. I will have been alive for two decades. That's 7305 days, 175320 hours, 10519200 minutes and 631152000 seconds. I can’t even really wrap my head around those numbers, but I do know that it is a pretty long time.

Here’s the thing though. I don't want to pass 19 years. Not that I want to end it there, I just don't want to have any of the responsibilities that come with going into the second decade. I want to stay around 166550 hours or so. 

It's such a great age, because according to law and, like, social norms, I'm an adult. I can swear, I can drink alcoholic beverages, I can drive, I can vote, I can have sex (Not that that makes it more likely to happen). But according to life and numbers and general societal perceptions of maturity, I'm still a teen, so I can blame my mistakes on my lack of life experience and raging adolescent hormones. But when I turn twenty, the game changes completely.

Apparently, being twenty means being an adult and being an adult means I’m not allowed to do certain things anymore because of age. 

Suddenly...

I’m too old for video games. 
I’m too old for cartoons. 
I’m too old for toys. 
I’m too old to eat irresponsibly. 
I’m too old to like things that were intended for children. 
I’m too old to like superheroes this much. 
And also, I can't like superheroes this much because I’m a girl. (Insert middle finger here). 

Well, you know what I say? I say fuck that. Age has nothing to do with it. (Or gender). It’s about what I enjoy; it’s about what makes me happy when I’m feeling down. It’s about what makes me feel like I’m on top of the world. 

So, screw it. As long as I’m happy, 20 won’t be so bad.

I ♥ Books: Paper Towns by John Green

Name:  Paper Towns
Author:  John Green
Pages:  305
Publisher:  Bloomsbury (2014)

Summary
Quentin is a senior in high school who spends most of his time doing normal teenager things, like preparing for college, playing video games with his two best friends and obsessing over the adventurous girl next door who he used to think he knew. One night she drags him along on one of her adventures and never shows up at school the next day, leaving it up to Q to unravel the mystery that is Margo Roth Spiegelman.

Discussion
I loved this book, but in a weird way. I actually discussed this with a friend after she'd read it too and we were both torn about the ending. It was just a little unsatisfying. But now, months after actually reading the book, I realised that it is perhaps my favourite John Green book of all time, because of the supporting characters and road trip alone. 

My one true critique of this book though would have to be Quentin and Margo. Quentin's fixation with Margo was a little awkward to read sometimes, but then the clues he pieced together helped me get over it. There were a few pages in which I hated Margo, because of reasons. Also, Quentin Jacobsen, Colin Singleton, and Miles Halter are all the exact same person. Or at least that's how I feel now that I know them all okay enough to compare them. The same goes for Margo, Alaska and most of the Katherines. In terms of those relationships, it's been pretty two-dimensional, but that's where the side characters swoop in and save everything.

The side characters in this were just the absolute best. They were all just really funny and endearing and real. I genuinely wanted to be friends with them, because they can just turn anything into a good time. Radar was someone I would have exploited in high school. His homework and mine would be strikingly similar. Ben though... Ben was just a barrel of laughs. If I'd known him in real life, he would probably annoy me a little bit, but then I would get over it and realise that he's actually a really fun guy.

Favourite Line
This part: “Poetry is just so emo." he said. "Oh, the pain. The pain. It always rains. In my soul.” 

Also the made-to-quote lines, like “That's always seemed so ridiculous to me, that people want to be around someone because they're pretty. It's like picking your breakfast cereals based on colour instead of taste.” and “The town was paper, but the memories were not.” 

Verdict
The sense of adventure and mystery in this story was so wonderful. It made me feel better about my own dull life, which is always great. That aside, this was a really great book full of fantastic characters. 5/5, will read again.

Rating

The Lonesome Crowded West

I have this weird habit of listening to Modest Mouse when I'm feeling existential. I think it's a pretty good match.

I'm planning on getting my first tattoo at the end of the year; two paper planes on my right ankle. Paper planes have a ton of cool symbolic meanings, but they're also just something that immediately remind me of my childhood.

While I save for this tattoo, I figured I'd look up all the different things this tattoo could mean. Then I remembered a song. It was a Modest Mouse song I'd stumbled upon a very long time ago while I was browsing through their work and for the life of me, I couldn't remember the name. For some reason I thought that the song contained the words 'paper planes', but when I eventually found it I realised that he was actually singing 'a paper plate'.

That's a pretty big difference and not just physically. The song is called Trailer Trash off of their album The Lonesome Crowded West and quite possibly the worst thing to listen to when you're feeling down on yourself.

It was pretty hard for me to figure out why I liked this song so much and I why I wanted it to add some kind of extra meaning to my tattoo. Maybe because I'm a little pretentious that way, but it ultimately won't contribute anything to my tattoo. It will just be a song; A song by a band I love very much and whose music means a lot to me. Heck, their songs Float On and Dashboard helped me through a rough patch in high school. This is the only way in which the paper plate song will mean anything to me and that's perfectly fine.

I don't need anything else to validate my tattoo or my choices, because the meaning I gave it myself is already enough.