Adulting (Updated Edition) by Kelly Williams Brown

How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps

I’ve started referring to January as Self-Help Month. I know it’s really in the summer, or something like that, but if working in a books store for the last 4 Januarys has taught me only one thing, it’s that the best selling section of the store this month is Psychology/Self-Help.

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Synopsis

From the back cover:
“Adult” isn’t a noun; it’s a verb. Just because you don’t feel like an adult doesn’t mean you can’t fake it ’til you make it. ADULTING, based on the blog that started a movement, makes the scary, confusing “real world” approachable, manageable – and even conquerable. This guide will help you to navigate the stormy Sea of Adulthood so that you may find safe harbor in Not Running Out of Toilet Paper Bay. Along the way you will learn:

• How to be a better person in today’s often-crummy world – It involves the intersection of NPR and hair-straightening.
• What to check when renting a new apartment – Not just the nearby bars, but the faucets and stove, among other things.
• How to avoid hooking up with anyone in your office – Imagine your coworkers having plastic, featureless doll crotches. It helps.

From breaking up with frenemies to fixing your toilet, this comprehensive handbook is the answer for aspiring grown-ups of all ages.

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Review

First me, then the book. I’m a millennial. A stereotypical, I suck at adulting, type of millennial. On my next birthday I’ll be the big 3-0 and while my goals for the 25 year mark pretty much went ignored, there are some aspects of my life I hope to have sorted out by 30. Some aspects of my life may make me seem like more of an adult in most people’s eyes (full time job, married, self-sufficient, school loans paid off, etc), I still feel like a hopeless failure when it comes to most measures of adulthood success.

I have a great job, but it’s not what I went to college for, it’s not even what I went back to college for. I should be a lawyer or teacher if I were putting my degrees to use. I’m now frequently mistaken as an English major and that bothers me for some reason. I struggle to appropriately handle awkwardness, I can be a right terrible friend at times because I fail to communicate effectively, and, while my coworkers (and mom) tell me I’ve matured a great deal in the last few years, I just don’t feel like an adult.

I was reading an article a few days ago, I wish I remembered where, but it mentioned that the new threshold for finally “feeling like an adult” for millennials has been set at “having your own kids.” Once you are a parent, you are officially an adult. It isn’t a steadfast threshold, but one gleaned from conversations and interviews with members of my generation. And I would say, I agree. Whether or not I’ll be having kids is still in the air, but if I don’t, will I ever feel like an adult?

Now the book. I’m here seeking advice from one of my peers about adulthood. Which is fair. I probably wouldn’t listen to an old rich white dude mansplain being an adult, which, he probably wouldn’t actually do, but instead tell me to stop whining and suck it up. But Kelly I can relate to. Her unique white female millennial problems are my white female millennial problems. Which is problematic.

This book is great for me. And other suburban-middle-class-raised millennial women. While there is a tremendous amount of helpful (and some less than helpful) general information in Adulting, ranging from relationships with other people to relationships with your houseplants, there’s an inherent bias that I’ve come to find exists in most of the self-help books that I’ve read. I pick up the ones that I do because either a, they’re funny, or b, the girl on the cover looks a bit like me.

Which leads me to my biggest theoretical question, is the pop-psychology style of self-improvement a luxury of the privileged? I’ve taken stock of the customers at the bookstore this past holiday season who have been asking for Girl Wash Your Face, the bestseller from Rachel Hollis, and I have discovered that they are mostly middle-aged, white, stay-at-home moms.

I’m not entirely sure of the answer to my question, but if you are really seeking to make a great change in your life, one that will require actual effort and perseverance and will have an outstandingly positive impact on your life, skip this book. If you’re a middle-class millennial woman who really just needs someone to tell her how to clean her kitchen like me, go for it. Knock yourself out. There’s some helpful bits.

Rating: 7 out of 10 stars

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