I’ve been feeling kind of overwhelmed lately. Museum training is awesome (I fell hard for the little puffball of an Eastern Screech Owl we met last Thursday, and I’m pretty sure I’ve never found botany so interesting), but it’s really exhausting. I’ve taken on some extra work so I can finance my addiction to new books and eyeliner. I have a couple of other volunteer commitments that I’ve been neglecting, but that I need to get back in gear on. There are at least two major creative projects I’m working on that I never have enough time for, I owe six people letters, Peter’s been trying to get hold of me for two weeks, and I haven’t cut my toenails in way too long.

Oh, and also, I’m turning 27 in a few days.

When I was 15 — many of you know this story — I used to doodle this little stick figure on rollerblades a lot. She had a bandanna tied around her little head, and she wore sunglasses. Usually I drew her skating cheerily towards the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the sea, because I had this idea that when I turned 27 I would end my life (by skating cheerily off the edge of a steep cliff overlooking the sea).

Okay, in point of fact it wasn’t so much an idea as a thing I said to people every now and then, implying that by the time I got that frickin’ old I would surely have done all the wild and beautiful and fantastic things I could ever want to do, and would thus be able to die happily, and in a satisfyingly stylish manner. As a pronouncement, it had the advantage of being both dramatic and sarcastic, so that it had a good effect whether or not the person I was talking to believed that I meant it. If someone looked at me blankly when I told them my plan, it is possible that I may have gazed wryly up at them through my side-parted fringe and said, pokerfaced, “I work best when I have a deadline.”

Why 27? It was a pleasingly assymetric figure, it contained my favorite number (7), and — most embarrassingly — it happened to be the age at which Kurt Cobain killed himself.

Do you see, how much I love and trust you? That I should make these confessions to you? Count yourself lucky you did not know the pretentious black t-shirted witch I was at age 15. Unless you are a member of my family — in which case I say to you, thanks for keeping the faith.

Anyway, the point of the story is not that I am feeling introspective about turning 27 and meeting my mythical younger self in a dream all wailing “I thought I’d be someone by now!” The point of the story is mostly that 27 came along one heck of a lot quicker than I thought it would, since it seems like only 5 minutes ago that my sister turned 27 (she gets to be 30 this year, which I think is totally rockin’). The point of the story is that life is progressing pretty zippily indeed. This morning one of my friends at work told me that she’d just gotten a call to invite her to her 20th high school reunion. It’s been two whole decades since she graduated from high school! How do you wrap your mind around a thing like that?

I think about how I felt when I was 18, and how well I thought I knew myself. I think about how adult I seemed to be, and I wonder how many times in my life I’m going to have to redefine being grown up. When I was 18 it seemed to mean being free to spend my time any way I liked, and being able to choose the person I wanted to be. Now part of me thinks it means being responsible for spending my time any way I like, and being committed to accepting the person I am turning out to be. And I’m sure it will mean something different the next time I think about that silly little stick figure.

(Or maybe as soon as tomorrow, when I plan to sleep in like a luxurious cat.)