Today I chilled in a hammock that sits between my home library and the LEGO room. I’m 38 and allowed to do these things.
The library was originally designed as a sitting room… a place to have guests sit that is kept clean so the rest of the house is kept hidden. It’s very annoying and not particularly useful and my family has a lot of books. So we put in floor-to-ceiling IKEA bookshelves and filled them with our books.
Some are text books. Several hundred are middle grade and YA. Terry Pratchett, Tolkien, Butcher, and Liana Brooks have whole shelves dedicated to them.
I’m not organized to do social media competitive book decorating, but I did sort the books in the fantasy section by how good their fight scenes are. This is an important metric to my family and makes it easier to find what we want to read. AND NO ONE CAN STOP ME.
Because I am an adult.
The LEGO room is filled with LEGOs sorted by color palette. My kids (ages 8-18 at the time of writing this) chose them. We have Fire, Ocean, Dark, Twilight Sparkle, and Forest. They are in heavy duty drawers meant for work shops on a table we got as a hand-me-down from friends back in 2011 or so. There’s also something that started life as a vegetable display stand at Fred Meyers in Alaska and now hold minecraft and comic books exclusively.
Why?
Because I’m an adult and I can.
In fact, I am a Super Responsible Adulty Adult, the kind of adult the other adults look to for advice because I have mastered many adult skills like keeping kids alive and feeding myself and running a business. And I do it with some stuffed animals at my desk.
Why?
Because I like them. And I’m an adult. So I can.
Everyone in my house – including my super-serious spouse- has stuffed animals. Why not? They make us smile.
There’s no reason to give up things that make you happy because you’re an adult. There’s no rule saying adults have to be boring. There’s nothing stopping you from enjoying fanfics, games, and fandom because you’ve hit the magical age where you are a legal adult in your country.
Adulthood is about making choices for yourself and being responsible for yourself. Part of being responsible is making yourself happy.
You know why adults don’t have dessert for dinner every night?
Because it isn’t a filling meal.
A tub of ice cream might taste good, but it’ll probably leave you kinda hungry and sick in the end so maybe eat a balanced meal and then get a scoop of the good ice cream that costs a little more and tastes amazing.
Adulthood isn’t perfect. You have to make a lot of decisions for yourself (bedtime, food, get yourself to work) but you also GET TO MAKE DECISIONS FOR YOURSELF.
Want that haircut? Get it!
Want to read that fic? Read it!
Want pancakes for dinner? Eat them!
Want to paint your room bubblegum pink? (check your lease and then…) Paint it!
There will be choices you make that you regret, and that’s okay. Because you’re an adult now. And you can fix this. Or you learn to live with the choice. And, as you get better at this, you learn to think about whether you can live with the fallout of a choice before you act.
You don’t stop having fun, or dreams, or favorite things because you’re an adult. Being an adult usually means you can enjoy your favorite things more.