I'm Only Here for the WiFi (2 page)

Yet, every day is a new chapter, the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step, and other clichés. I firmly believe that if we can just make it through this day, and the next, something is bound to pop up. Maybe just take yourself less seriously, accept that your mom may not be gloating about your job at whatever boring mom meet-up groups she goes to, and learn to laugh a tiny bit at the overall bleakness of the situation. I know that we'll likely be reading endless articles over the next ten years about how the dating prospects are bad, the job prospects are LOL, and the real estate market is essentially breaking our collective kneecaps, but it's really not so bad. You'll see—deep down, we're all in this together. Yes, even that girl on the subway every morning with the manicure, dry-cleaned skirt suit, energy smoothie, and not a hair
out of place—she's in it, too. She's struggling to figure it out somehow. And if she's not, well, we'll push her off a cliff. I promise.

For now, though, we'll all find a warm spot to congregate while we bemoan our respective difficulties in finding our place on the socioeconomic ladder. For some, it will be in the break room of a terrible temp job. For others, it will be at a house party on a Friday night where no one judges you for bringing a bottle of Boone's or Mad Dog because everyone is broke. For still others, it will be at a coffee shop. It may not be the proudest moment of our lives, but at least we know that we'll be able to work on our computers until the manager starts shooting us dirty looks around shift-change time. This is the land of milk and honey: The caffeine is hot, the Muzak is inoffensive, and the WiFi is unlimited. This is home.

I
should probably say, right off the bat, that I am not a morning
person. I know that such people exist, and I know that they are the ones largely running society, inventing new technologies, and ridding the world of disease. I know that they are a necessary—if not
the
most necessary—part of society. But I, quite simply, am not one of them. I often wonder how much easier, healthier, and more lucrative my life would be if I were one of those people who jumps out of bed at 7:00 a.m. and butterfly kisses her motivational poster (as I imagine all morning people do), but I doubt I'll ever reach such a lofty status. For me, and I assume for many of you, mornings will always be a bit of a struggle.

So things are already off to a bad start, reaching over and slapping the alarm clock. Depending on where you are in your twenties—and in your life—there could be any number of things you're off to do. School, for those who are prolonging it painfully throughout as many years as they possibly can, perpetually deferring adulthood and paying off loans by accruing more loans (I assume in hopes of marrying a Saudi oil tycoon the day of their graduation with a master's in creative writing). Work, for those who have either been lucky enough to get a “real” job or are slogging through with one that pays the bills and funds brunch two weekends a month. And then, for some of us, setting an alarm and giving us a time of day (arbitrary as it may be) to get up and join humanity is just a small, innocuous way to keep some kind of sanity, since being unemployed and living in your
parents' basement can become a slippery slope into delusion without a little routine.

Mornings, in any case, are full of checklists. Whether or not we write them down (and if you are the kind of person capable of physically making checklists and actually moving through them with some kind of accuracy, you will never know how I envy you), it is essential that we have at least some kind of routine. Some step-by-step process that we can hone and master as we grow up and begin to see life as not just one large obstacle, but a series of smaller, more refined obstacles that can be traversed if taken in small enough increments. And with any day's tasks ahead of us, it is essential that we start things off on the right foot with our mental checklists, though it would be a lie to pretend that some things are harder to wake up for than others.

Perhaps the most unsatisfying of all the possible reasons to be waking up is for the menial work that many of us are forced to take to pay the bills, the kind of job that provides the Triple Crown of young adult despair and:

•
 Calls for long, tedious hours of barely compensated work that requires only a high school diploma (if that) to attain, and is filled with people we secretly despise/feel superior to on some sick level. Usually comes with a manager who is everything we want to avoid when we are his age.

•
 Has absolutely no value in terms of telling your parents; their
horrendous, judgmental friends; or your own friends who have known the sweet taste of professional success.

•
 Leaves you perpetually in the hellish limbo of needing the job for the bare necessities it provides you with, and, despite your lack of respect for the position or your coworkers, finds you utterly disposable and replaceable.

Now, don't get me wrong: Not every service, retail, or temp job is going to be such a soul drain, but it certainly makes getting up every day feel all the less satisfying. It promotes that ritualistic early-morning conversation with yourself, the one in which you debate quitting the stupid job because you could probably spread your cash super-thin and make it through the time it would take to find another job scooping ice cream or doing something like that. As the economy falters, this monologue becomes ever more a farce.

Sure, we've all had moments where we didn't show up or we quit on the spot because we were so fed up with being tethered to a job for which there was zero respect on either side, but how long into “adulthood”—and financial responsibility—is that really going to be an option? There is a vast difference between an impassioned walk-out of your job at Target when you're a carefree eighteen-year-old, and when you're a twenty-five-year-old with evening master's classes and a one-bedroom apartment to pay for.

So the morning routine. What is it supposed to be? What have
we always imagined how “adults” transform themselves from a snoring pile of sweatpants into something that could theoretically interact with other humans? Well, at least in my imagination, it has consisted of:

•
 Set an alarm for a reasonable hour, allowing yourself at most one slap of the snooze button and giving you a perfect window of time to accomplish all that needs to be done before you begin your day.

•
 Turn off your alarm, get up, stretch, and make your bed behind you.

•
 Go to your bathroom, and take a relaxing fifteen-minute shower that gives you ample time to both cleanse and have the kind of soul-shattering philosophical epiphanies that only occur while standing naked under hot water.

•
 Dry and style your hair, apply your flattering but subtle makeup, and go back to your room (not before putting away the things you took out to get ready, of course).

•
 Stand pensively in front of your closet for approximately 1.23 minutes as you contemplate which outfit would give you the most effective combination of approachability, professionalism, and youthfulness to make the most out of every interaction you will have that day.

•
 After putting on said outfit, return towels to a drying rack so as not to leave them crumpled and moist on some unsuspecting bedroom furniture.

•
 Go to the bar in your kitchen (because you are an adult, and your kitchen has a bar on which to eat your less formal meals).

•
 Spread out for yourself a low-fat Greek yogurt, granola that you made yourself in your oven like a living Etsy doll, some sliced-up fruit (bonus points if it's some crazy-ass Indonesian fruit that no one's ever heard of), and a cup of tea or free-trade coffee with soy milk.

•
 Eat delicately while you read something for cultured, refined enjoyment, like
The New Yorker, W Magazine, Newsweek, I'm a Pretentious Fop,
or
This Sweater Is Vintage Monthly.

•
 Clean and put away all your breakfast accoutrements.

•
 Get on your adorable bicycle (it's always perfect bike-riding weather, and your bicycle has a basket in which to store work shoes/purses/necessities) and ride off into the fresh morning air.

Now, believe it or not, this has never managed to be how I get ready in the morning. Even on the nights where I chamomile myself into a sleep coma at 8:00 p.m. and psych myself up to the nth degree about how adult my morning is going to be the next day, I will inevitably live out the
Groundhog Day
-esque torture that is my perpetually infantile morning routine:

•
 Set an alarm for far enough in advance from my actual wake-up time that I can get some decent snooze action and still have wiggle room.

•
Hit the snooze no less than six times, waking up only when I look at the clock and let out a muffled “Ohshitjesuschrist!” as I flop out of bed like a dying fish. Leave bed looking like it has been freshly napalmed.

•
 Take the world's fastest, least efficient shower, not even fully rinsing off the soap before I stumble out and stand in front of the mirror.

•
 Shake the maximum amount of water out of my hair before putting it into the least aesthetically assaulting style, slap on some makeup (ten gold coins if you can apply liquid eyeliner—the Rubik's Cube of modern cosmetics—without looking like a velvet-painted sad clown), and run back into my bedroom.

•
 Grab the first outfit that is clean, reasonably color-coordinated, and ironed enough not to look like crumpled-up aluminum foil and throw it on.

•
 Pick up something from the kitchen as I run out the door to grab some form of public transportation (it's been a while since I've lived in a city that has an even vaguely reasonable ROI on owning a car).

•
 Find out that I managed to grab a Swiss Cake Roll and an ankle sock in my blind, early-morning haste. Grudgingly eat the Swiss Cake Roll as I avoid the stare of fellow commuters.

Taking time to make mornings a pleasant, refreshing, fulfilling experience just seems impossible. The early twenties is that strange limbo where your body—and your douchebag friends—are all insisting you stay out every night to enjoy all the wonders and mysteries your city has to offer (usually costing around $10 a glass), and your body somehow does not have the resilience of a rubber band when it comes to snapping awake in the morning.

And even if I were a morning person, there are so many steps involved, it seems just exhausting. Just eating a balanced breakfast has a myriad components—and people who take Instagram photos of their morning spread cannot honestly be rushing off directly afterward to some soul-crushing job. Who sits there, iPhone in hand, and thinks, “I want to make my entire Twitter community feel inadequate this morning. Look, you peasants. I'm eating sliced kiwi and yogurt with lychee syrup. Don't know what lychee is? I thought you wouldn't.”

So it seems as though three clear obstacles stand in the way of what could be considered an “adult” morning, provided you're able to get up at a reasonable hour. Obviously, setting your alarm and adhering to it is the point upon which your entire day hinges, but there are only so many ways to go about that. Short of hiring someone to hide in your closet until she jumps out at 7:30 and splashes ice water on your face, I'm pretty sure that's just going to be a battle you fight with yourself. You either learn to get up or you don't. But once you've mastered that, there remain clear steps to bring yourself into “full-grown status,” and none of them can be left unchecked.