How to Deal: Home Transitions

When you're in that age range when you're kind of independent, but that waitressing job doesn't quite cover all the bills, it can be difficult to classify what is "home." You might be living in an apartment or dorm during the school year, but over the summer and after graduation, it's getting more and more likely that newly-grads and the like will have to return home. It can start to feel like neither place is really home.

I dealt with my first "where do I live?" freakout when I was sixteen. It was the first time I'd lived in a place that I didn't grow up in, that didn't have a direct correlation to childhood bliss and cookies.

Oh, there were many cookies.

Since then, it's gotten a bit easier to find tricks to feel like I'm not floating from place to place, calling nothing home. I'm not perfect at it, but hey, who said this blog gave advice on how to be perfect?

I believe you'll need Paris Hilton's number for that. Either that or ways to successfully get through the jailbird diet.

1) Find a "regular" public place.
If your transition homes aren't too far away, try to find a restaurant, café or field where you go to do something you enjoy. You can always have the comfort of that place, and you won't be forced to move out of it. Unless you live in New Jersey and get a job in Utah. That would be quite a commute to go sit in a field.

2) Have a weekly dinner/event with family
While this is nice at any point in one's life, it's especially essential during the home transition period. During the college years, it's easy to wonder what the hell you're still doing in your parents' house. You may feel like a nuisance who should be working harder to be independent. But if you and your family make an active effort to socialize, the reason for living at home becomes more than "because I have no money."

3) A change of mindset
What really trips people up is when they graduate from high school or college and they think "well, I'm on my own now. I should probably go get a job, get hitched, and start having babies."
Dude. You're like, 18-22 years old, give or take a few years. That's so young, you could change your mind about what to have for dinner, much less how to spend the rest of your life. Your twenties were invented for the sole purpose of exploring yourself. You can be boring and go to bed at 8P.M. next to your husband who resents you for selling all the power tools when you turn thirty. But trust me--your twenties are not a race against time. Unless you're in grad school. Totally different story here. Half the fun of being young is bumming around and storing up crazy roommate stories.

4) Just because you're where you grew up, doesn't mean you're helpless.
Even if you do have to go back home and goof off on Tumblr figure out your life for a while, that doesn't mean you're subject to your parents' every rule and whim. You can help out financially (maybe not the price of apartment rent), or get your own groceries, or dog-sit while your parents go wild and crazy talk about the good ole' days when Woodstock was a thing.

Little do they know, Burning Man exists. Do they know that? Anyway.

Namaste.