16 Signs You’re Approaching Adulthood (Kinda)

1. At one point in your life, you understood why Ke$ha’s franchise catapulted her to fame. It was because people like you wholeheartedly related to and sympathized with how she embraced the DGAF lifestyle. Now, Sheryl Sandberg has replaced her as your spirit animal, and you think you’d rather “lean in” than brush your teeth with a bottle of Jack.

2. Speaking of Jack, you still can’t afford much more than the wares on the discount shelf at the package store (the kind of stuff that smells like gasoline and makes you feel like you could sprout hair from your chest after you take a sip). However, you’re trying to cultivate what you consider more sophisticated drink preferences. Hopefully, you’ll have all the pomegranate martinis your heart could desire one day.

3. With the eagerness you once added people on Facebook, you now just connect with them on LinkedIn.

4. You finally deleted the MySpace account you haven’t used since you were 14. And the Xanga account. And…the Neopets account that has collected cyber dust for even longer.

5. These days, it is far more exciting when guys ask for your resume as opposed to your phone number.

6. Once upon a time, guys could woo you by playing covers of Oasis and Phish songs on their acoustic guitars. Now that you’re older (and a bit tougher around the edges), you wonder why these same guys often smell like burritos, and you’re proud of yourself for steering clear of romantic interests who only shower on a semi-regular basis (as beautiful as they might be).

7. Though you used to hold an embarrassing large number of grudges, you have learned how to release your frustration (healthily) towards those who have wronged you — either in reality or in your own head. You understand the futility of staying mad.

8. You’ve thrown out all the pairs of holey or excessively ripped stockings that you own. Well, you told your roommate that you threw them out while actually stuffing them in the back of your underwear drawer in case, you know, the appropriate occasion beckons.

9. When you were naïve and guileless, you thought that coffee tasted alarmingly similar to how you imagined toilet bowl cleaner would taste. In fact, that time your boyfriend kindheartedly handed you a mug of his organic, Colombian brew, you dumped it in the sink when he wasn’t looking. Now, you can’t imagine drinking anything but black or going a day with coffee. Death before decaf.

10. Your friends are finally willing to watch HBO shows with you because you can finally get through them without giggling childishly during the nude scenes (though, c’mon, watching Hannah Horvath hook up with dudes is pretty entertaining).

11. You can now back into parking spots with ease. Before you know it, you’re going to start waking up at 7am to read the Wall Street Journal everyday before work.

12. In fact, you’re already on your way because you finally subscribed to the Wall Street Journal after cancelling your longstanding subscription to Seventeen magazine. All of a sudden, capital markets in Asia are ten times more interesting than choosing the most kissable shade of lip gloss.

13. Now when you enter stores like Ann Taylor or J. Crew — which you once perceived as “too adult” — you feel the same rush of mind-tingling adrenaline you once felt whenever Ed Westwick’s character appeared in episodes of Gossip Girl.

14. You’ve taken to carrying cash in your wallet because you’ve realized that you can’t go through life paying for $2.50 bagels with your debit card.

15. Recently, the cashier at the drugstore by your apartment mentioned that you haven’t been buying as many frozen meals, boxes of cereal, and packs of Easy Mac as you once did. Briefly unnerved, you wonder how big of a problem you must have had if even the cashier noticed this. However, overall, you’re fairly proud of yourself for graduating onto more involved meals.

16. Even though you’ve accepted the sad truth that you probably will never speak loudly enough to serve as the voice of your generation (the struggle is way too real, y’all), you know that your whispers — however faint —  will carry far enough for at least someone to hear.