All grows up

When did you become an adult?

Can you narrow it down to one year, one day, one instant? Didn't it just seem like you woke up and realized, despite what you'd been saying for the better part of two decades, that you really had been pretty stupid and worked up about the wrong stuff?

I'd like to think it was an early moment for me. I was a relatively mature teen, which really just means I was a boring teen. Someone was telling me the other day about how maturity is related to your brain development, as you build inhibitions that pull you away from your reptilian core, blah blah blah. So maybe my brain developed quicker, but that's not to say I had my shit together for a few more years.

Talking about this with a friend the other night, I realized that my right of passion really did come down to one day, when I was a sophomore in college. Sorry, guys, but it's not a very sexy story.

After a year of working at the student paper, I agreed to help fill in as arts editor at the student magazine for their last few issues of the year. I didn't know anybody on staff, and my job was minimal. Next thing I knew, the year was done, and it was time to elect a new editor.

The choice was obvious. The managing editor had been with the magazine for more than a year, she was the No. 2 editor, she was close friends with everyone on staff, and she was the chosen successor of the editor. But for reasons I still don't understand, I decided to try for it. I literally had people asking what I was thinking, wasting everyone's time like that.

I realize now that I was trying to prove something to myself. I had been passive for 19 years, standing by and waiting for someone else's orders. I was fed up, not with how I was treated by others but by how I was treating myself. There was nothing to lose by running for editor, and at least I would feel I made the new boss do some homework instead of waltzing into the job.

So I gave a speech. The first of what would become several ad-lib talks to crowds of strangers. Just like my recent presentation at a conference, I couldn't have told you what I said if you had asked three minutes later. Something about how we could embrace new technology to make our mag one of the best in the nation. Or, you know, something. Maybe I just beat-boxed and ripped a phone book in half.

Whatever it was, it worked. They tallied the ballots, and I won by a slim margin. Over the next year, we did redesign the magazine into what was probably the state's best student publication. I stepped down after six great issues. The next editor put together four. The next editor put out none, and the magazine died a quiet death.

But getting back to the point, I realize that my turning point with maturity was the moment I stepped up and decided to stop letting others make my decisions for me. It wasn't until I scraped together this confidence that I could really hold my ground with anyone, confident that I was someone whose opinion mattered.

So why is it that this remains so difficult throughout your adulthood? Why are so many people still so quick to let others dictate the flow? Lately, I've found myself falling into that same trap. With a new boss and a more hostile work environment, I often think, "It's just not worth the energy." It takes a lot out of you to stand up for yourself, especially when you're constantly losing. It seems so easy to submit, the way death must start to sound good to someone crawling through the desert.

Maybe now I just need to harness that energy to get the hell out of Dodge and find a place where I can feel like an adult again.