Blessed by the Potato

I was preparing my lunch earlier: peanut butter and jelly, with the crusts cut off, of course. It was then that I was hit with an epiphany: I am not ready for this.

I don’t even know what this is, but here I am, an idealistic kid cutting the crusts off his sandwiches. I’m clearly not ready to deal with browned and less-tasty bread (or “sandwich handles”), and that is one of the less rigorous challenges life will throw my way.

People have been asking me what I’m going to do after I finish my degree. It’s a big terrifying question, and one I don’t really have a good answer to. I mean that’s still a long way away, isn’t it? (Isn’t it??) I still have no idea what I’m going to do with my life.

So I face the paradoxical fact that I’m also a grown-ass man: I’m going to graduate with an advanced degree in AWESOME any day now (any day now); I have a bald spot, and my metabolism has reached the point that I have to watch what I eat (except on milkshake and cookie days). I have students of my very own, and I teach them things. I’m married; my friends are reproducing — my former students are getting married and reproducing!

How did this happen? Shouldn’t somebody have stopped this? I mean, I recently stayed up to 5 am playing video games (though getting home from work after 1 am made this no great feat). There is no way that I’m grown up and ready for a real job or a family or a healthy balanced diet. I was always a very responsible child, but that’s on the kid scale of hooligan to quiet nerdy type; that’s a far cry from actual responsibility.

I suppose I’ll just have to take a cue from XKCD:

And define what being grown up means my own damned self.