Being an adult is hard. Very hard in fact. There’s taxes and rent and cleaning your own bathroom and not sleeping with ex boyfriends and figuring out if/when to add new favorites to your Facebook profile. They warned us about this stuff, and they were right. It’s not easy.

Still in all the stresses of life-without-parents, there’s a select list of tasks/responsibilities/social goals that most of us can’t seem to master. None of it is rocket science, but for whatever combination of laziness, confusion or just plain we- don’t-want-to, we can’t get it together. Here, briefly though with ample sarcasm, are the Top Ten most difficult things for us so-called adults to handle – according to me.

1. Thinking of ourselves and also others (being defined as one or more people who are not ourselves) at the exact same time. We can think of ourselves – expertly. And we have, once or twice before I’m sure, thought of others, but combining the two seems to be our Goliath. This is a piece of the Herculean struggle that is thinking of others before thinking of ourselves, but frankly that’s too hard and so just not fair to include in this list.
2. Drinking alcohol and not trashing people. Self explanatory, well researched, and completely impossible.
3. Being genuinely happy for people in really wonderful, stable, good-looking relationships. It’s not that we can’t express happiness towards these people. That we’ve got covered. It’s that we cannot actually be happy for them. We’re not proud, but we’re not changing.
4. a. Brushing our teeth without getting little flecks of toothpaste stuck inside the sink.
   b. Removing said SO GROSS flecks of toothpaste if/when this happens. Why the fuck is this?
5. Budgeting our money. In my case it’s because I don’t add or subtract well and really like both vodka and shoes. We all have our different reasons. Bottom line – we have zero willpower and 1-3 credit cards.
6. Refusing free drinks. This relates to the above. Free drinks are to today what Jolly Ranchers were to our 3rd grade lunch table. Gold. We will change any plan, complete any project, and schmooze with any asshole in pursuit of drinks we do not have to pay for.
7. Letting go of first loves – legitimate or ridiculous. We’ll stop talking to them, and we’ll make every effort to stop talking about them, but in the presence of our closest friends, too much alcohol, or the actual person – we are putty. Older people claim this will improve with time, but on Easter Sunday I watched my 50-year-old mother become a blubbering idiot after bumping into her high school boyfriend at church. I’m not buying it.
8. Being 100% honest about what we actually do at work. Whether we over exaggerate it, down play it, or flat out lie about it – unless the answer is as simple as “I teach third grade” or “I am a professional baseball player” – we don’t explain it right.
9. Flirting in a social, professional environment with a client, colleague, or person of close periphery to either. Normal bar/drunk rules do not apply. Our boss is usually in the room. We still can’t quite figure out if it could get us fired. Too many X factors, work nerves, and alcohol. Trouble.
10. Reading and/or understanding the newspapers – online and/or in print – every day. We have a very good handle on the “Top 10 Ten Emailed Stories of the Week” as well as anything someone posted that pops up on our News Feed. Anything else is a mystery.

Let’s commit to working on the above. Yes I know it’s hard. But we’ve developed the ability to find anyone and the last two people they dated on the Internet in less than 7 minutes – the least we can do is whipe off the fucking toothpaste and check our bank account from time to time.