you’re almost human after all

Six months ago I told a friend I didn’t feel like a grown-up. Well, it was a big fat lie. Or maybe I didn’t, maybe I’ve just re-adjusted my definition of what it means to be a grown-up since then. Yesterday we went to say hi to my friend’s two month old daughter, which sparked a discussion on being and feeling like a grown-up, and I had to concede that I have felt really grown-up a long time now.

To me being a grown-up means realising I am nobody’s responsibility but my own. It is my job to look after myself, and it is my job to make sure somebody else is looking after me if I am uncapapble of doing it myself. It is my job to make sure that I am happy, and I am the one who is responsible when I am not. It doesn’t mean it’s necessarily my fault if I’m unhappy, bad stuff happens all the time that we have no agency over. It does mean that it’s my job to do whatever I can to fix whatever is wrong or come to terms with it, either by myself or enlisting the help of others.  Sometimes getting help can be the most responsible thing to do.

I don’t know what feeling like a grown-up means to everybody else. I am pretty sure I feel the way I do about being grown-up because as an adolescent I mostly let things happen to me and then was emo about it and waited for it to fix itself. Not realising that I had the power to make a difference on my own. What does being a grown-up mean to you?

amanda fucking palmer wants to be dropped from her label:

She even wrote them an e-mail.

“the times they are a-changing fucking dramatically, when pong-twittering with trent reznor means way more to your fan-base/business than whether or not the record is in fucking stores (and in my case, it ain’t in fucking stores).”

And I am stalking her blog and she has a lot of thoughts about the changing music industry, and the changing relationship between artists and fans and management. I love it.