Earlier this week, NPR had another bleak, the-world-is-sooooooo-fucked-up-for-young-people article about how millennials aren’t buying houses like previous generations (forwarded by Andrew Brown, yr an adult’s moral conscience). They explain this trend by rehashing all the other bad news millennials are faced with; there aren’t any jobs, credit is impossible, real estate is either prohibitively expensive or in regions with no economic prospects. Also, since millennials are sooooooo entitled and want the freedom to pick up and move whenever they feel like, they’re not even thinking about owning their own home. It’s depressing news, which is why I felt compelled to look on the bright side, to help you consider it a blessing that you’ll probably never be able to afford a home. Don’t say I never made you feel better. .

1.)   Owning a house is, like a job in itself. Every Sunday is another trip to Loews, for new fixtures or appliances. If you live in apartment and you have a shitty kitchen, you just have a shitty kitchen. And you’re life is pretty much the same as it would be after you could have spent $50,0000 and 700 hours making your kitchen awesome. Think about. What do you want to do this weekend? Watch Prometheus, go get drunk in the park, watch Game 7 of the Eastern Conference Final and play ‘Cards Against Humanity’? Or do you want to get in a argument with your girlfriend/boyfriend in the drapery section of Home Depot?

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Holy shit, is Hank really going there? I am, shocked reader, I really am. Some of you will never have to deal with the sprouting of hair in unwanted places. Some of you are only now starting to notice emerging new follicle pastures in the heretofore-bare patches of your adult bodies. And some of you started sprouting early; perhaps a unibrow or thick, lycanthropic zones of hair on your forearms. Maybe, if you’re a lady, there is the faintest shadow of upper lip-hair, an assumed affront to western beauty standards. Or, if you’re like, me, thin clusters of black, curly, itchy back hair sprang up on your back around the time of puberty, 16 or 17. I know. Gross!

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stickK is a website, founded a by a couple Yale professors, that helps people reach their goals, usually weight-loss or exercise related. Their method to motivate the unmotivated-able is as old the putting money in the swear-jar; you don’t stick to your commitment, you pay. You can set it up so that if, say, you don’t go to the gym three days out of the week, your credit card gets charged and the money goes to a charity. Smart, right? What I like even better is the twist that instead of making the money go to a charity you believe in, say, Habitat for Humanity, you can make the money go to a charity which you would NEVER support, say Sarah Palin’s political action committee. That way, if you’re like me, you can’t easily rationalize not going to the gym by saying “well, at least the money is going to a good cause.” It’s not. The money is going to a terrible cause, all because of your laziness.

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Nothing I’ve written about in yr an adult has freaked me out as much as a little link I posted to New York Times op-ed by Dr. Meg Jay, about how moving in with your significant other (without a marriage commitment) is a bad idea. Dr. Jay is a clinical psychologist and professor at the University of Virginia, who specializes in twentysomethings and recently published “THE DEFINING DECADE WHY YOUR TWENTIES MATTER—AND HOW TO MAKE THE MOST OF THEM NOW.” I wanted to ask Dr. Jay about her research and practice, but our conversation basically turned into an impromptu session for my own problems. Which was great. The book is out now.

yr an adult: What we here at yr an adult like torefer to the twenties as “New Adulthood”, and this is clearly a focus of your research and professional practice – I’m curious how and why you started to research it?

Dr. Meg Jay: I had so many twentysomething clients and twentysomething students – I taught at UC Berkeley, and had a private practice for many years – and I just realized I was seeing the same things over and over, and saying the same things over and over. I realized there was a real need, that twentysomethings were hungry for real information about this developmental moment.

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Joshua Heller is a writer, humorist and internet-meme-maker, based out of Southern Calfornia. Heller is currently working on his most IRL-based project yet, helping to coordinate “Summer Commune” , what is described as a “temporary, intentional community”, sort of a cross between adult life and a summer camp (Heller refrained from calling himself the “Leader” of the project, as it is, in his words, a leaderless movement.

Essentially, this summer, a bunch of “new adults” will descend upon Moscow, Idaho (pop 25,000) and live there for a while, hanging out together and having a fun, memorable summer. For the past six months, Heller has been working on Summer Commune, so I wanted to check in and see how it’s going.

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Like many new adults, adrift in a sea of undesirable career options ,with a lack of firm real-world skills, you may have asked yourself, “Wait, should I go to grad school?” We know that we have, usually while toiling away at our dayjobs, and so we decided to ask people who are actually in grad school, what it’s actually like. First up is Allison Davis, an old friend, who left a successful career as tv/ad/doc producer to go back to school to change her career course.

Ok, so first of all, what are you studying and where?

I am an MFA Candidate in Dramatic Writing at Tisch School of the Arts, NYU. The translation is that I write for stage and screen.

What were you doing before you went back to school and what made you feel like you needed to further your education?

I freelancing as a writer and producer, and was working as a production manager for ITVS, a company that funds and co-produces documentaries for PBS.  It was an amazing job – good hours, great benefits, noble work on award winning documentarians on subjects that I cared about and stood behind – but I was still writing anytime I could.  Before and after work, lunch breaks, etc….  It got to the point that my “job” was getting in the way of my “work” and I knew I had to commit myself to what I clearly loved, or I would never be happy.

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I really didn’t want to write a “thinkpiece” about TV’s latest internet meme, HBO’s new comedy series Girls,which has been over-exposed in the blogosphere while underexposed in real-life. However, the idea of the show, about four early-twentysomething women in Brooklyn, has clearly struck a nerve with people who write about things on the internet. And being one of those people, I reluctantly admit I’ve read a couple different blog posts, thinkpieces and reviews of the show. And I’ve actually seen the show myself, and liked it ok to continuing watching it, and it does deal with themes about adulthood, which clearly are of interest to me.

However, instead of offering my opinion on the cultural import of a show that has only had two episodes aired and was watched by only .33%  of Americans, I just thought I’d list all the things I could say about Girls, IF I was a moron.

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My girlfriend and I don’t fight very often, and when we do, it’s either about whether or not I’m using sarcasm appropriately (which I take EXTREMELY seriously) or about how often we should clean our apartment (which I rarely ever think about, unless forced). This last weekend, several days out from our last big argument, where we bickered about exactly how gross our bathroom was, exactly how often we should clean it and exactly how condescending I could be, I decided to clean our entire department. My girlfriend was conveniently going out of town on a ladies-only camping trip, so I decided to break out the 7^th Generation™ Kitchen Cleaner and the Method Le Scrub™ Bathroom Cleaner, throw a doo-rag over my hair, “We Can Do It” style and break down some grime like a mid-00’s UK undergound music blog. Here’s what I thought about while cleaning:

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Does this get adulthood?’ right is a blog series where a yr an adult writer watches or re-watches or reads a cultural work about adulthood and consider whether it’s depiction of adulthood is reflective of real life.

What’s the thing called? Party Down

When was the thing made? The show consisted of two ten-episode seasons produced between 2009 and 2010 and ran on the Starz premium cable network.

What’s the thing about? Party Down was about the relationships and aspirations of a crew of caterers working different events in the greater Los Angeles area. Each episode centered on one single event, and only followed the main characters, a mix of LA-types, when they were working the event. Adam Scott played a failed actor, Ken Marino was a burn-out-turned-crew manager, Martin Starr played an aspiring “hard sci-fi” screenwriter, Lizzy Caplan was a feisty comedienne and Ryan Hansen played an airhead, aspiring actor. In the first season, Jane Lynch rounded out the cast as a new-wavey-old-lady actress who never gave up the dream, and in the second, Lynch was replaced by Megan Mullally, who played a weird stage mom. It was a cast full of ringers, who each got chances to shine in the different, absurdist scenarios presented by the catering events.

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