Being 20.

So, it's been about 2 weeks since I have given up being a teenager. People say old habits die hard, and this being a teenager habit has been especially hard to kick. I had been plagued with these visions of what I would now have to do now that I am in my twenties. Get a car, find a job, buy a house, have a life etc etc. Fortunately, none of these big heavy ideas have come to fruition in the past 14 days of me being 20. 

Since IU had a snow day the day of my birthday (while everybody likes a day off, the actual snow was a bummer), I had a lot of unexpected free time. And by free time, I mean time I should have spent catching up on the insane amount of work I have, but hey who works on their birthday? Anyways, I figured 20 was a good number for me to quit some of the habits I had had for a long time. Like, when my birthday would be about a month away, I would start to mark of dates on a calendar. I'd set up countdowns counting the number of hours, minutes, seconds to the exact point of midnight. But one of my bigger traditions was one I started around my 15th birthday. This was 2004, just about the time the 10 year sitcom run of Friends was coming to an end, 10th grade was upon me and most of my friends, people I would die for, were either leaving, or moving away to different sections. The night of my 15th birthday, I came up with an idea. I decided I need a theme song. I have a song playing in my head when I wake up  anyway, I figured it might be good to have a feel good song of the year. Something that I can listen to when things are rough, and it will always remind me of how sweet and optimistic I felt the night of my 15th birthday. I ended up picking "I'll be there for you", the theme from friends. Yeah, not that imaginative. But, over the last 5 years, this concept evolved into more of a song of the year, something that sets the tone for the entire year. 

This year I didn't make a calendar. I didn't set a countdown. I was physically dreading this big event, so much so, I didn't even pick out my song. When a friend asked me on 27th midnight what my song was, I just said, "I think I've outgrown that."

But here's the weird thing. I hadn't. Turns out turning 20 is pretty much like turning anything else. The initial shock of being 20 was done, and now I'm just excited. I may not qualify as a teenager anymore, and I'll never be able to use the "I'm just 19, how would I know" excuse. Pretty soon, people are going to care whether I have a full time job, what car I drive, how big my apartment is, what my life goals are, et cetera,  et cetera. But for the moment, all that is long term.  For now it's a brand new day. Keeping in tone with that, this is my birthday song: Brand New Day by Joshua Radin.