September 14, 2026 | Thirty-six years, four consecutive night shifts, and the missing instruction manual for adulthood.

At 3:17 in the morning, I was seriously considering whether a fifth cup of coffee would constitute a beverage or a medical intervention. I had reached that peculiar stage of a night shift when the hospital remains fully operational but the person inside the uniform begins questioning some of life’s more fundamental arrangements. The corridors were illuminated with the usual unforgiving fluorescent lights, the air carried the familiar smell of disinfectant and exhausted coffee, and somewhere a clock continued performing its duties with an enthusiasm I found increasingly offensive. I was halfway through my fourth consecutive night, and my body had apparently submitted a formal complaint about working conditions. My eyes believed I should be asleep. My stomach had stopped recognising conventional mealtimes. My brain, however, had chosen this precise moment to begin an unsolicited examination of my entire adult life. Apparently, when you deprive a woman of normal sleep for long enough, she eventually starts asking questions that no amount of caffeine can adequately answer.

The question was surprisingly simple. At thirty-six, shouldn’t I know what I am doing by now? I remember thinking about the age itself, which still sounds considerably more mature when spoken aloud than it feels from the inside. Thirty-six. When I was twenty, that number belonged to people who seemed properly established in the world. They presumably understood mortgages, pensions, insurance policies, and the various mysteries of household maintenance. They owned matching towels, purchased groceries according to sensible lists, and knew exactly what was inside their freezers without opening the door three times to investigate. I imagined adulthood as a gradual transfer of knowledge, with each birthday accompanied by a small improvement in judgement until, somewhere around the middle of one’s thirties, the entire system began operating smoothly. There would be confidence, financial stability, meaningful work, a well-organised home, and perhaps a mysterious ability to make decisions without reviewing them repeatedly afterwards.

I am pleased to report that none of this happened according to schedule. My freezer continues to conceal objects whose identities occasionally require investigation. I have walked into rooms and forgotten what I intended to do there, reopened the refrigerator shortly after checking it because apparently the contents might have changed during my absence, and purchased things I absolutely did not need because somebody had decorated them with a cat. I still reconsider conversations after they have ended, sometimes imagining better responses to remarks nobody else has probably remembered. I can make a perfectly reasonable decision and later conduct an internal inquiry into whether the opposite decision might have been superior. If thirty-six is supposed to deliver unquestionable wisdom, I would like to know whether mine has been delayed in transit.

To be fair, I have learned quite a lot. I know how to assess patients, recognise clinical concerns, work within a specialist nursing service, and make decisions that would have intimidated the younger version of me. I understand responsibilities I once struggled to imagine carrying. I have lived in two countries, navigated unfamiliar systems, and developed a life that would have seemed rather extraordinary to the girl I was in Cebu. Yet none of that prevents me from occasionally standing in a supermarket wondering which washing detergent offers the best value or discovering that I have managed to purchase three versions of something I was convinced we had run out of. Professional competence, apparently, does not automatically extend to domestic inventory management.

When I was younger, I imagined life unfolding through a reasonably orderly collection of milestones. Finish studying, establish a career, save money, become independent, get married, buy a house, travel, perhaps have children, and gradually become the sort of adult who could offer younger people sensible advice without secretly questioning her own decisions. I did not necessarily expect everything to happen at once, but I assumed the sequence would be recognisable. There seemed to be an invisible calendar attached to adulthood, with certain achievements expected before particular birthdays. I never remember receiving an official copy, although the people around me occasionally behaved as though everybody had been given identical instructions.

The problem with an invisible timetable is that you can spend years believing you are late without establishing what you were supposed to be on time for.

Somebody buys a house and suddenly you examine your savings. Another person gets married, and you begin reconsidering your own circumstances. Someone younger receives a promotion, and a perfectly ordinary working week develops an unexpected atmosphere of competition. Then social media contributes its usual selection of people who appear to have completed several major life achievements before breakfast. One woman is travelling internationally while managing a successful business. Another has purchased her second property. Somebody else is preparing an attractive meal in a kitchen so immaculate that I suspect actual cooking has been prohibited on the premises. Meanwhile, I am trying to decide whether the milk in my refrigerator is still acceptable and wondering why the laundry basket continues producing clothes at an alarming rate.

There was a time when such comparisons genuinely unsettled me. I would look at what other people had achieved and begin measuring the distance between their circumstances and my own. Sometimes the comparison motivated me to consider possibilities I had overlooked. More often, it introduced questions that were not especially helpful. Was I progressing quickly enough? Had I made the correct decisions? Should I have saved more, travelled less, pursued another qualification sooner, or arranged my personal life differently? It is astonishing how efficiently we can take somebody else’s good news and convert it into a complaint against ourselves.

I have become more suspicious of this habit as I have grown older.

We rarely possess enough information about another person’s life to make a fair comparison. We see the beautiful house but not necessarily the financial arrangements behind it. We see the wedding photographs without knowing what the relationship feels like during an ordinary disagreement. A promotion appears impressive, although we may know very little about the responsibilities or sacrifices attached to it. Somebody posts a photograph beside the Eiffel Tower, and the image tells us almost nothing about the rest of their year. We are examining selected evidence and attempting to reach conclusions about entire lives. It is not a particularly reliable method of assessment, which is unfortunate because many of us practise it with extraordinary dedication.

At thirty-six, I am becoming less interested in whether a life appears impressive and more curious about what it actually feels like to inhabit. I still admire achievement. I enjoy professional development, and I have plenty of ambitions I hope to pursue. I have not suddenly become indifferent to financial security, qualifications, travel, or the satisfaction of reaching an important goal. But I am beginning to question how much of my happiness should depend upon producing an outwardly convincing account of success. There are things that look wonderful from a distance but require compromises I may not want to make. There are also ordinary arrangements that would photograph rather badly yet contribute enormously to my enjoyment of everyday life.

A quiet evening at home, for example, rarely looks particularly impressive when described to somebody else. Jan may be nearby, Miyuki and Luna may be conducting one of their entirely unnecessary domestic investigations, and I might be reading, writing, or watching another historical drama in which everybody seems to possess an impressive wardrobe and an alarming inability to communicate their feelings directly. There may be laundry waiting, food to prepare, and some administrative task I have been postponing. Nothing extraordinary is happening, and I am unlikely to receive public recognition for participating in it. Yet these evenings have become important to me. They belong to the life I have gradually constructed, and I am beginning to appreciate them without requiring an accompanying achievement.

Money is another subject I wish my younger self had approached with slightly more curiosity and considerably less impatience. I understood that earning and saving were important, but I did not fully appreciate the difference between having enough money to purchase something and having sufficient financial security to purchase it comfortably. There is a particular kind of optimism involved in looking at a bank balance immediately before a tempting purchase and deciding that everything will probably work out. I have occasionally practised this form of mathematics, usually when confronted by books, travel arrangements, attractive stationery, or objects featuring unusually adorable cats. The calculations can become remarkably generous when the item is something I genuinely want.

I still believe money should be enjoyed responsibly. I have no desire to spend my entire working life refusing every pleasant experience so that a much older version of myself can eventually admire an excellent bank balance while complaining about her knees. I want to travel, eat good food, buy books, and occasionally purchase something delightful whose practical value would not survive an interrogation by a competent accountant. But I also appreciate the reassurance of savings, the importance of planning for future responsibilities, and the freedom that comes from having a financial cushion when something unexpected occurs. An emergency fund is extraordinarily uninteresting until an emergency arrives. Then it becomes considerably more attractive than the unnecessary purchase we nearly made instead.

Perhaps one of the more useful things I have learned is that financial responsibility does not require choosing between enjoying the present and preparing for the future.

It requires understanding the consequences of our decisions and recognising that our resources are limited, even when our interests and ambitions are not. I still make purchases I later reconsider, naturally. There are moments when the woman responsible for spending the money and the woman reviewing the bank statement appear to possess entirely different opinions. They continue living inside the same head, however, and I am gradually encouraging them to communicate before the transaction rather than afterwards.

My relationship with work has changed too. Nursing has occupied an enormous part of my adult life, and I am proud of the knowledge and experience I have developed. I enjoy learning, improving my clinical judgement, and becoming more competent in a field that continues presenting unfamiliar challenges. There is satisfaction in recognising a situation that would once have intimidated me and discovering that experience has made me better equipped to respond. I value the trust involved in professional responsibility, particularly when patients and colleagues depend upon appropriate clinical decisions.

But I have also learned that usefulness can become an unexpectedly demanding identity. When you spend much of your working life responding to other people’s needs, it can become difficult to recognise where professional responsibility ends and the rest of your life begins. There is always another shift, another task, another opportunity to help, another qualification worth considering, or another problem that would benefit from your attention. I enjoy being dependable, but I am becoming more cautious about confusing dependability with permanent availability. My professional role matters enormously to me. It is not, however, the complete description of the person who happens to wear the uniform.

I remain Anj when I take off my NHS badge. I am still the woman who becomes excited about books, enjoys travelling, writes lengthy reflections about ordinary experiences, and occasionally devotes a completely unreasonable amount of attention to photographing her cats. I enjoy music, food, friendships, and the luxury of spending an afternoon without needing to explain how it contributes to my professional development. These interests may not improve my clinical portfolio, but I would be rather disappointed to reach the end of my working life and discover that I had neglected everything that existed beyond it.

There is a modern tendency to convert almost every personal interest into an opportunity for achievement.

If someone enjoys writing, perhaps they should publish a book. If they take photographs, somebody suggests building a following. Cook something delicious twice and suddenly a well-meaning acquaintance is recommending a small business. I understand the appeal of developing talents, and I certainly have creative ambitions of my own. But I sometimes think we have forgotten that an activity can be valuable without becoming profitable, impressive, or publicly recognised. I would like to be allowed to enjoy something simply because I find it interesting, even if I remain thoroughly average at it.

Age has also changed the way I respond to being misunderstood. When I was younger, I was considerably more determined to ensure that people had the correct impression of me. If someone misunderstood my intentions, I wanted to explain immediately. I would provide background information, clarify the sequence of events, and occasionally revisit a conversation long after everyone else had moved on. I approached misunderstandings as though they were unresolved administrative cases, requiring supporting documents and a detailed response before the file could be closed.

I still believe in explaining myself when it matters. Relationships deserve honest communication, and if I have hurt somebody or contributed to a problem, I should be willing to acknowledge my part. But I have become less interested in endlessly defending myself to people who appear more attached to their interpretation than to understanding what actually happened. There is a difference between clarifying something important and attempting to control another person’s opinion. I cannot guarantee that everyone will understand me correctly, even after I have explained myself carefully. It has taken me rather longer than I would like to admit to accept this fairly obvious limitation.

I have also become more comfortable with apologising. When I was younger, being wrong could feel like a direct threat to my character, as though acknowledging a mistake meant conceding that I was somehow an inadequate person. I would explain my intentions, defend the circumstances, and occasionally become so focused upon being understood that I overlooked the effect of my actions. These days, I am more interested in recognising when an apology is appropriate. I can explain the context without using it to avoid responsibility. I can disagree with somebody’s interpretation while still acknowledging a mistake I made. There is something remarkably efficient about the words I was wrong, particularly when compared with the hours of unnecessary discussion people sometimes devote to avoiding them.

Forgiveness, however, has become more complicated. I once imagined it as the process through which everything eventually returned to its previous arrangement. Someone apologised, the hurt was acknowledged, and the relationship resumed where it had been interrupted. Experience has taught me that circumstances are not always so cooperative. Sometimes trust can be rebuilt through honest effort and changed behaviour. Other times, the damage alters what the relationship can reasonably become. I believe it is possible to let go of a grievance without automatically restoring the same level of closeness. Equally, I have become wary of treating every disagreement as evidence that somebody should be permanently excluded from one’s life.

People are complicated, myself included.

We misunderstand one another, become impatient, make assumptions, and occasionally respond to situations with considerably less maturity than we would prefer to admit. It is easy to identify the difficult person in a story when we are the ones narrating it. Less comfortable is the possibility that another person’s account of the same event might assign that role to us. I try to remember this before drawing final conclusions about people whose actions have disappointed me. Boundaries remain important, but so does the humility to recognise that I am not always the most reasonable character in every interaction.

Perhaps the greatest change has been in how I understand time. When I was younger, a year seemed enormous. Five years sounded almost incomprehensible, and ten years belonged to a future so distant that it hardly required serious consideration. I assumed there would always be another opportunity to say something, visit somebody, or arrange the gathering we had been discussing for months. I did not necessarily take people for granted deliberately. I simply had not yet developed a proper understanding of how ordinary routines can end without announcing that they are doing so.

Losing my father changed that understanding. There are memories of him that return through the smallest details, often without any connection to anniversaries or special occasions. A familiar expression, a voice I can still imagine clearly, or something ordinary that reminds me of home may bring him suddenly to mind. I sometimes think about the time when being able to speak to him was simply a normal part of my life. I did not consider every conversation something requiring preservation because I assumed there would be more. That assumption was not unreasonable at the time. It was simply something I had never needed to examine.

I remember ordinary Sundays at home differently now. Meals, familiar conversations, the sound of the television, people moving around the house, and the little interruptions that once seemed too commonplace to deserve attention have become important parts of my memory. Nobody was necessarily doing anything remarkable. There may have been disagreements about trivial matters, somebody asking where an object had been placed, or an ordinary conversation interrupted because food was ready. Those moments were not arranged as memories. They were simply life taking place while everyone involved assumed another day would follow in much the same way.

I think this is one reason I have become so enthusiastic about preserving photographs and writing about ordinary experiences. I know that a photograph cannot recreate an entire moment, and I have no desire to spend every gathering looking through a camera instead of participating in it. But I appreciate the details that become more meaningful with time. A picture of somebody laughing before they are ready for the camera, a short video containing a familiar voice, or an old photograph taken in an unremarkable room can eventually become more precious than the carefully arranged images we originally considered important.

If I could offer my younger self one practical suggestion, it would be to pay a little more attention to the people whose presence feels permanent.

Ask questions while the answers are available. Listen to the familiar stories, even when you already know how they end. Take the occasional photograph without insisting that everybody look perfectly presentable. Call home when there is nothing particularly important to report. Stay a little longer at the table when circumstances allow. I do not believe we can preserve every moment, nor should we become anxious about attempting to do so. But we can become more attentive to the ordinary relationships that give much of life its meaning.

Faith has become more complicated for me in similar ways. When I was younger, I often approached prayer with the hopeful assumption that a sincere request would eventually receive an answer I could understand. I believed in God’s guidance, but I also had fairly specific ideas about what that guidance should look like. I wanted opportunities to arrive, problems to be resolved, and difficult experiences to reveal their purpose within a reasonable period. I suppose I expected life to provide explanations according to a schedule that would allow me to remain sufficiently reassured.

Experience has not always accommodated that expectation. There have been prayers whose answers were different from what I hoped for, circumstances I still struggle to understand, and losses I would never have chosen. I have learned that trusting God does not necessarily remove uncertainty or provide immediate explanations for everything that happens. There are times when faith feels reassuring and others when I continue believing while carrying questions that remain unresolved. I do not think that contradiction makes faith meaningless. Perhaps it simply reflects the limitations of expecting a complicated life to unfold according to my personal preferences.

I have also become less interested in insisting that every painful experience must immediately produce a lesson. There is an understandable human desire to find meaning in what has happened, particularly when the experience has been difficult. But I am reluctant to suggest that suffering becomes worthwhile simply because we eventually discover something useful in its aftermath. Some experiences are unfair, some losses remain painful, and not every disappointment needs to be transformed into an uplifting explanation. I can learn from something without pretending I would willingly choose to experience it again.

There were things I desperately wanted when I was younger that I no longer consider particularly important. Certain plans changed, opportunities disappeared, and circumstances developed in directions I had not anticipated. At the time, some disappointments seemed enormous. They occupied my thoughts, influenced my expectations, and made it difficult to imagine a future that did not contain whatever I had hoped would happen. Years later, I can recognise how differently I understand those situations. The experiences still belong to my history, but they no longer occupy the same amount of space in my life.

There is something reassuring about that, although I hesitate to suggest that every disappointment will eventually become insignificant. Some experiences continue influencing us for years, and others remain difficult to understand. What I have learned is that the emotional size of a problem can change as circumstances develop. A concern that once dominated every thought may eventually become one part of a much larger collection of experiences. New responsibilities appear, people enter our lives, interests develop, and ordinary days continue accumulating. Life does not erase everything that happened before, but it can provide a broader context in which to understand it.

Music has an extraordinary ability to remind me of this. A familiar song can return me to a particular stage of life with almost embarrassing efficiency. I may be listening casually when a melody suddenly reminds me of school, a journey, a friendship, or a period when I was worried about something that no longer concerns me. For a few minutes, I remember not only what happened but also how seriously I took it at the time. Sometimes I feel affectionate towards that younger version of myself. Other times, I want to interrupt her and explain that the matter occupying her entire attention will eventually become far less important than she imagines.

Of course, I know that advice would not necessarily help her. It is easy to understand a problem differently once we have already experienced what came afterwards. When we are in the middle of uncertainty, the future does not arrive with a helpful summary explaining which concerns will matter in ten years and which will eventually become material for an amusing story. We respond according to what we know at the time. I think that is something I am learning to respect more as I grow older, both in myself and in other people.

At thirty-six, I remain ambitious, although my definition of success has become less interested in decoration. I still want to achieve things professionally, develop my knowledge, write, travel, and pursue the personal plans that matter to me. I enjoy setting goals and imagining possibilities. But I am becoming more aware of what I might sacrifice if every period of life is spent preparing for the next one. There is always another milestone waiting somewhere.

If happiness requires every ambition to be completed before it can begin, I suspect most of us will remain permanently waiting for permission to enjoy ourselves.

I have noticed that some of my favourite memories come from experiences that were never intended to be significant. A meal with friends, an ordinary drive with Jan, a quiet afternoon spent reading, or watching Miyuki and Luna become unnecessarily interested in a cardboard box can remain in my mind long after more elaborate plans have faded. Sometimes the memory is attached to a conversation that became unexpectedly funny. Other times, it is the simple pleasure of being somewhere familiar with people whose company requires very little effort.

These are not the sort of experiences people usually include when presenting an impressive summary of their lives. Nobody is likely to describe watching two cats investigate a paper bag as a significant achievement. Yet I find myself appreciating those moments because they make ordinary life enjoyable. I work hard, and I have plans for the future, but I also want to remember the little experiences occurring between those ambitions. It would be a shame to spend years building a life only to discover that I had paid insufficient attention to living it.

I sometimes wonder whether becoming older means gradually becoming more selective about what deserves our energy. At twenty, I wanted answers to almost everything. I worried about people’s opinions, compared my progress with others, and imagined that achieving certain milestones would eventually give me the confidence I lacked. At thirty-six, I still have questions, but I am less convinced that every one of them requires an immediate answer. Some matters deserve careful consideration, while others can remain unresolved without preventing me from enjoying the rest of my day.

I am particularly reluctant to spend valuable time attempting to impress people whose opinions have little meaningful influence upon my life.

I would rather invest attention in relationships that matter, responsibilities I have chosen to accept, and ambitions that reflect what I genuinely value. This does not mean I have stopped caring about criticism or become immune to insecurity. I still occasionally take things personally, reconsider decisions, and feel annoyed when I believe somebody has misunderstood me. The difference is that I am becoming more interested in deciding whether the matter deserves further attention before allowing it to occupy an entire evening.

There is a certain freedom in recognising that being thirty-six does not require me to possess a complete understanding of life. I can be competent in my profession while remaining inexperienced in other areas. I can make a sensible decision and later discover that circumstances have changed. I can continue learning about money, relationships, faith, and the responsibilities that accompany growing older. There is no particular reason why knowledge should stop developing simply because I have reached an age that once seemed impressively mature.

Perhaps I have been expecting the wrong thing from adulthood. I imagined it would eventually provide certainty, when what experience has actually given me is a better understanding of uncertainty. I know more about the consequences of decisions, but I also recognise how many circumstances remain beyond my control. I have become better at planning, yet I understand that plans may require adjustment. I value my achievements, but I am less convinced that they should determine the worth of an entire life.

Somewhere during these reflections, I glanced at the clock again. The hospital had continued operating without showing the slightest interest in my private discussion about ageing. The fluorescent lights remained unforgiving, the equipment continued its familiar sounds, and my coffee had long since surrendered any claim to being pleasant. There were still responsibilities to complete before the end of the shift. I found it rather amusing that I had managed to examine thirty-six years of existence while simultaneously hoping the next few hours would pass quickly enough for me to return home and sleep.

I suppose this is what I failed to appreciate when I was younger. I imagined the future as a destination where everything would finally become organised and understandable. But the future does not arrive all at once. It becomes the present gradually, through ordinary mornings, difficult decisions, unexpected opportunities, changing relationships, and the accumulated consequences of choices we made when we knew considerably less than we do now. There is no ceremony announcing that we have officially become adults. We simply discover that somebody expects us to understand a mortgage, a clinical responsibility, or an insurance renewal, and we proceed using whatever knowledge we have managed to acquire.

I still think about the invisible timetable I carried when I was younger. I had imagined where I would be at certain ages, what I would have accomplished, and how confident I would eventually feel. Some things happened earlier than expected, others much later, and a few took directions I would never have predicted. There are plans I still hope will work out and questions I continue to consider. I am no longer particularly interested in interpreting every difference between expectation and reality as evidence that I have done something wrong.

If somebody younger asked me what I have learned, I would probably tell them to approach their ambitions seriously without assuming that everyone should follow identical schedules.

I would encourage them to understand money before discovering its limitations through expensive mistakes, to choose work they can take pride in without allowing it to become their entire identity, and to make time for people whose presence matters beyond convenience. I would tell them that misunderstandings sometimes require apologies and sometimes require accepting that another person will retain an opinion they cannot control. I would encourage curiosity, kindness, and the willingness to reconsider assumptions when experience provides better information.

I would also tell them to enjoy their ordinary days. Not every afternoon needs photographs, elaborate plans, or a significant event attached to it. There is value in familiar voices, shared meals, little jokes, and time spent with people we love. Some of those experiences will become important in retrospect, and others will simply have been pleasant while they happened. Both seem worthwhile to me. I do not want to spend so much time trying to construct a remarkable future that I treat the present as nothing more than an inconvenient waiting room.

There is something funny about offering advice from the middle of a fourth consecutive night shift. My younger self would probably expect wisdom to arrive in a more dignified setting, perhaps over coffee in a beautiful café or during a quiet afternoon when everything seems thoughtfully arranged. Instead, I was thinking about life’s priorities beneath hospital lighting, feeling exhausted and wondering whether my bed had ever seemed more attractive. It was not an especially impressive environment for a philosophical revelation, but perhaps that made the experience rather appropriate.

Adulthood rarely provides ideal conditions for understanding anything. We usually have to make sense of things while other responsibilities continue demanding our attention.

The shift eventually moved towards morning. I still had work to complete, and there was no miraculous improvement in the coffee or the quality of my sleep. Nothing had happened to provide definitive answers about the next decade of my life. I remained thirty-six, with ambitions, uncertainties, responsibilities, and an occasional inability to resist purchasing attractive cat merchandise. But I found myself feeling slightly less concerned about the absence of that imaginary instruction manual.

I thought about the woman I was at twenty, so certain that thirty-six would be the age when everything finally made sense. I wish I could tell her that the future becomes easier to understand in some ways and considerably more complicated in others. She would be pleased to know that her professional ambitions eventually developed into meaningful work, that she would travel to places she once imagined from the Philippines, and that she would create a home filled with books, photographs, and two cats who possess little respect for the concept of personal property. She might also be surprised to discover that her older self still occasionally worries about the same ordinary things.

Perhaps she would be disappointed that I have not become the completely confident woman she imagined. I hope not. I would like her to know that confidence does not always look like certainty. Sometimes it involves making decisions while accepting that the outcome cannot be guaranteed. Sometimes it means recognising when we need guidance, admitting that we were wrong, or changing our minds because experience has taught us something useful. I would rather remain capable of learning than become so determined to appear knowledgeable that I stop questioning anything.

As the night shift continued, I realised I had spent an impressive amount of time considering whether I should know more by now. There were plenty of things I understood better than I had at twenty, although I suspected the list of questions would continue developing regardless of how many birthdays I celebrated. Perhaps I had been expecting adulthood to resemble an examination with a final answer sheet, when in practice it behaves more like an ongoing assignment whose requirements keep changing.

The clock moved forward, as clocks tend to do when they are entirely indifferent to human concerns. My coffee had become an unfortunate memory, and the prospect of returning home was growing increasingly attractive. I thought about the responsibilities waiting beyond the shift, the ambitions I still hoped to pursue, and the ordinary life that would continue unfolding whether I felt sufficiently prepared or not.

I had not solved adulthood. I had simply spent thirty-six years learning a little more about the person responsible for living mine.

And at that particular hour, the most sensible conclusion I could reach was considerably less philosophical than everything preceding it. I needed to finish my work, go home, close the curtains, and obtain several uninterrupted hours of sleep before attempting to offer further commentary on the human condition.

Perhaps that was evidence of wisdom after all. The twenty-year-old me might have continued searching for an impressive answer about life. The thirty-six-year-old version understood that some questions are better considered after proper rest, preferably while eating breakfast at an hour that actually qualifies as morning.

I still thought I would know more by now. As it turns out, I do know more. Just not necessarily the things I once expected to know.

And if the instruction manual for adulthood eventually arrives, I would appreciate a copy with diagrams, a section explaining financial decisions, and clear guidance on how many books a person may reasonably purchase before admitting that she already has enough.

— Anj,

thirty-six and still awaiting the official handbook for adulthood, increasingly comfortable with unanswered questions, occasionally responsible for decisions of genuine clinical importance, and somehow still unable to remember what she originally went into the kitchen to get.