On My Birthday 2018

Today is my 26th birthday. At this point, I'm basically done with all my culture's coming-of-age milestones, and it feels good to not be a teenager anymore, even though I still don't really feel like an adult. For any readers who did not grow up in the same culture as me, this is what I mean:

13 - Bar or Bat Mitzvah (Jewish)
14
15 - Multiple of 5
16 - Eligible for driver's license
17
18 - High school graduation, legally an adult, eligible to vote, (also legal to buy tobacco products and lottery tickets, but I'm less concerned about that)
19
20 - Multiple of 10
21 - Legal to buy alcohol (US; in the UK and Canada it's younger)
22
23
24
25 - Multiple of 5
*26 - Age out of parents' health insurance (Affordable Care Act)
27
28
29
30 - Multiple of 10; socially acceptable but incorrect to call oneself old

Here's an unpopular opinion I've had for a long time: I've never been afraid of getting old.

Sure, I've had unsettling moments of "where did the time go" and "I'm not the person I used to be" on past birthdays, but on the whole growing older has been good for me. I do still often feel like I'm the youngest person in my peer group, and like I missed out on things that everyone else experienced. But I find that, the older I've gotten, the more often people are willing to take me seriously.

This last year has been especially good for me being taken seriously. I've found a job that pays the bills and lets me travel; I've moved to a new apartment twice; and I've found myself reasons to get out of the house regularly and a social group where I can say "let's make plans to do a thing" and the thing happens. Talking to my parents the other day, I realized that somewhere in this last year, I became a cool person with interesting stories to tell about myself, and there are people who look up to me and want to be like me, something I never imagined could happen to me just five years ago. Being cool isn't just for teenage asshats anymore, and I think I'm gonna like the future.