I have a theory: nobody actually knows what they’re doing. We’re all just making shit up.

Not in a conspiracy theory way. Not in a “the government is hiding aliens” way. I mean literally. I think most of us are walking around pretending we know what we’re doing, hoping nobody notices that we’re making it up as we go. Some people are just better at making it look convincing than others. Underneath the nice apartment, the six figure salary, the marriage, the kids, the matching workout sets, and the carefully curated LinkedIn profile, I have a feeling most people are just winging it. And honestly, I find that comforting.

When I was younger, I thought adulthood was something you eventually figured out. I thought there was going to be a specific age where the fog cleared and suddenly you understood money, careers, relationships, taxes, retirement accounts, health insurance, and why everyone keeps telling you to invest in the S&P 500. I thought adults had answers. Now that I am an adult, I have questions about the adults. Because who the hell decided we were qualified to be doing all of this? I can barely remember to take chicken out of the freezer before 9 p.m., but apparently I’m supposed to have a five-year financial plan.

Maybe the biggest scam of adulthood is that nobody tells you there is no official graduation ceremony. You just wake up one day and realize you’re responsible for yourself. There’s no handbook. No orientation. No little packet that says, “Congratulations, you are now 25. Here is what you should be doing.” Instead, you get a birthday, a bill, and possibly a new back pain you didn’t have last year.

I Thought I Had It All Figured Out

When I was younger, I genuinely thought I had life figured out. Or at least I thought I was supposed to. I had plans, ambitions, and an impressive ability to completely change those plans every few years.

My first ambition was to be a singer and actress. The first singer I remember being fascinated by was Britney Spears. I admired how she seemed to have everything: the looks, the talent, the men, the money, the time, and the attention. I wanted everything she had. Looking back, it is pretty funny because my childhood career plan was essentially to be Britney Spears. No business plan. No backup plan. Just Britney.

Then I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian because I loved animals. I figured it was basically the perfect job. I could make money and play with animals all day. What could possibly go wrong? Then I learned the concept of death, and that career ended rather abruptly. Turns out being a veterinarian involves significantly more grief than my eight year old brain had budgeted for.

After that came sports journalism. I loved sports, I loved men, and I thought I had once again figured out how to have the best of both worlds. I could talk about sports, be around athletes, and somehow make a living doing it. It seemed perfect. Then I discovered that sports journalism does not exactly come with the paycheck I had imagined unless you are a retired professional athlete or a professional ass kisser. I was neither.

Then came neuroscience.

I was nineteen when I fell in love with it, and I wish I had some beautiful, inspirational story about discovering my passion for the human brain. I don’t. The truth is, I liked that it proved I was smarter than just about everybody around me. Everyone I knew was either going to school for business or not going to college at all. Then there was me, neuroscience. A word some people in my family probably couldn’t spell.

And I was good at it. Really good. I adored it until one day I realized I wasn’t actually doing it because I wanted to spend my life studying neuroscience. I was doing it because I wanted to prove I could. Once I had proven it, I was left with the uncomfortable realization that I had built an identity around something I didn’t actually want.

That was probably one of the first times I realized that being good at something and actually wanting to do it are two completely different things. You can be talented at something and still not want your entire life to revolve around it. You can be praised for something and still feel completely empty doing it. And you can spend years trying to prove you’re capable of something only to realize that nobody was asking you to prove it in the first place.

Apparently, I Hate Authority

So I pivoted. Again.

I became a nanny, then went to an acting conservatory, and somewhere in that period of my life I learned two very important things about myself. First, I hate authority. Second, I am basically useless unless I am creating something.

Acting gave me a place to create. Nannying gave me a different kind of creativity, but neither one felt sustainable on its own. The problem was that in order to fully live in one, I had to sacrifice the other. I was constantly choosing between the thing that made me feel fulfilled and the thing that made financial sense.

Eventually, I decided it was fuck them kids.

I knew I was smart. I knew I knew how to hustle. And I knew I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life choosing between having money and doing something I actually enjoyed. So I went into nightlife, and I made bank.

For the first time, I had a job that worked around the life I wanted instead of forcing my life to work around the job. I could audition. I could do test shoots. I could create. I could make my rent in a week or less. For a while, I was satisfied.

Then I hit a ceiling.

And that ceiling forced me to sit down and get really honest with myself. I had to stop asking, “What job can I get?” and start asking, “What the fuck do I actually want?”

Not what sounds impressive. Not what makes my parents proud. Not what proves I’m smart. Not what looks good on paper.

What do I actually want?

That question is a lot harder than people make it sound.

We spend so much of our lives being told to figure out what we want, but nobody tells you that what you want can change. You can spend years building toward something only to realize you don’t even want it anymore. Then you have to decide whether you’re brave enough to admit that or stubborn enough to keep going because you’ve already invested so much time, money, and emotional energy into it.

I’ve done both.

The Money Problem

Nobody tells you how much of adulthood is just trying to figure out how to make enough money without selling your entire soul.

We’re constantly told to follow our passion, but nobody explains what happens when your passion doesn’t pay your rent. Then we’re told to get a stable job, but nobody explains what happens when stability makes you miserable.

So you start looking for balance.

You want flexibility, but flexibility usually means less money. You want more money, but more money usually means more responsibility. You want freedom, but freedom costs money. You want to work for yourself, but working for yourself means you’re responsible for everything. You want to work for someone else, but then someone else gets to tell you when you’re allowed to take lunch.

And somehow, we’re all supposed to make the correct decision at 22.

At 22, I could barely decide what I wanted for dinner, but apparently I was supposed to choose the career I would spend the next forty years doing.

Be serious.

I think that’s why I’m starting to believe that careers aren’t necessarily supposed to be one straight line. Maybe your twenties are just one long series of expensive experiments. You try something, you hate it, you try something else, you love it, you outgrow it, you make money, you stop making money, you discover you’re good at something you never expected, and you discover you’re terrible at something you thought you’d love.

Eventually, hopefully, you start building something that actually feels like you.

I’m beginning to think the goal isn’t to pick the perfect career. It’s to build a life where you have enough room to keep becoming different versions of yourself. There is something very strange about expecting a 20-year-old version of yourself to make decisions that a 30-year-old version of you will still want.

At 20, I thought being impressive was the goal.

Now I’m more interested in being happy, having freedom, and being able to pay my bills.

That feels like growth.

And Then There’s Dating

If career has taught me that I don’t know what I’m doing, dating has really driven the point home.

I never wanted to be a wife. I never wanted kids. I knew that, or at least I thought I did. But somehow, I still spent years trying to understand what kind of man I was supposed to end up with.

And let me tell you, the dating pool has not exactly helped clarify things.

I’ve dated a man who had money and was controlling. Apparently, having money does not automatically come with emotional intelligence. Who knew?

Then I dated a man who wasn’t rich but definitely had money, and I didn’t like him because he was so unsure of himself without the approval of his friends. He could have had every dollar in the world, but if his boys didn’t approve of something, suddenly he needed a committee meeting.

Then there was one guy who I am still not entirely sure likes women.

So, if nothing else, my dating history has taught me that money, attraction, confidence, compatibility, and emotional stability are five completely different things.

It’s funny how much society can convince you to participate in a game you never agreed to play. Get married. Have kids. Buy a house. Build a family. Settle down. And if you don’t want those things, people start treating you like you’re waiting for the correct software update.

“You’re going to change your mind.”

“Just wait.”

“You’ll understand when you’re older.”

Maybe.

But maybe I won’t.

I’m finally getting comfortable with that possibility.

I don’t think every woman secretly wants the same life. I think some of us genuinely want different things, and some of us are still figuring out what those things are. The problem is that we’re often encouraged to figure out the relationship before we’ve figured out ourselves.

We’re asking, “Is he the one?” before asking, “Do I even like the life I would have with him?”

We’re asking whether someone wants us instead of asking whether we actually want them.

We’re measuring relationships by longevity instead of compatibility, and we’re treating being chosen like it’s the ultimate prize.

I don’t know when being chosen became more important than choosing.

But I’m no longer interested in being impressed by someone simply because they picked me.

I want to like the life I’m living, with or without a man in it.

That’s a much harder standard.

Friendship Is a Different Kind of Heartbreak

Friendship has probably taught me just as much about myself as dating has, and honestly, some friendships have hurt more.

I’ve made friends with people purely by fate who I probably never would have spoken to if they hadn’t spoken to me first. Different backgrounds, different personalities, completely different lives, and somehow we ended up becoming important to each other.

I love that about life. Some of the people who end up knowing you best are people you never would have thought to look for.

But I’ve also lost friends I loved dearly.

Some friendships ended because I eventually realized the person wasn’t actually good for me. I’ve had to accept that some people I loved were envious of me, didn’t genuinely want the best for me, or simply weren’t the people I thought they were.

That realization sucks.

It is one thing to lose a friend. It is another thing to realize that the friendship you were protecting wasn’t actually the friendship you thought you had.

I’ve also had friendships end where I still miss the person.

And I think that’s something people don’t talk about enough.

Not every friendship ends because somebody cheated, lied, stole your man, or committed some unforgivable crime worthy of a three part Netflix documentary. Sometimes people just grow apart. Sometimes your lives change. Sometimes the friendship stops making sense. Sometimes you simply become different people.

And sometimes you miss them anyway.

I’ve had people I could reach out to today, but I don’t.

Not because I hate them.

Not because I don’t care.

But because I’ve learned that missing someone is not the same thing as needing them back in your life.

You can miss a person and still know that reaching out would take you backward.

You can love what a friendship was and accept that it isn’t what it is anymore.

You can appreciate the memories without reopening the door.

That might be one of the most adult things I’ve learned.

Because when you’re younger, you think every relationship has to end with either forever or hatred.

Now I realize there is a third option:

I love you. I miss you. And I’m still not calling you.

Growth.

Maybe We’re All Delusional

The older I get, the more I realize how many things I believed were just stories I told myself.

I thought being smart meant I had to pursue the hardest thing. I thought having potential meant I needed to use it in the most impressive way possible. I thought success meant having a career that sounded good when someone asked what I did. I thought money would make me feel secure. I thought relationships were about finding someone who wanted me. I thought friendships were supposed to last forever. I thought adulthood meant eventually knowing exactly who I was.

Now I’m starting to think adulthood is mostly realizing how much of your personality was built around things you were trying to prove.

Maybe that’s why getting older can feel so uncomfortable. You’re not just gaining wisdom. You’re losing illusions.

And some of those illusions were actually really nice.

It was nice believing there was a perfect career. It was nice believing there was a perfect relationship. It was nice believing that if I worked hard enough, made enough money, looked good enough, and made the right decisions, I could somehow guarantee that my life would turn out exactly how I wanted.

Unfortunately, life did not sign that contract.

And apparently, neither did men.

So What Now?

I don’t have some inspirational ending where I tell you I’ve finally figured everything out. That would defeat the entire point of this essay.

I don’t know what my career will look like five years from now. I don’t know what my relationship status will be. I don’t know where I’ll live. I don’t know exactly how much money I’ll make. I don’t know if the things I want today will be the things I want five years from now.

And for the first time, I’m okay with that.

Because maybe we’re not supposed to have it all figured out.

Maybe the people who look like they have everything together are just better at hiding their Google searches. Maybe your friend with the amazing career is secretly wondering if she chose the wrong field. Maybe the married couple you envy argues about dishes every Tuesday. Maybe the guy who looks like he has his entire life together is also Googling how to invest $200. Maybe the person who seems incredibly confident is just committed to the bit.

Maybe we’re all just committed to the bit.

And maybe that’s what September is for.

Not reinventing yourself. Not becoming a completely new person. Not making a vision board full of things you probably won’t care about by November.

Maybe September can just be a checkpoint.

A moment to look at the life you’ve been building and ask yourself whether you actually like it.

Not whether it looks good. Not whether other people understand it. Not whether it makes sense on paper.

Whether you like it.

Because I’m starting to think the biggest lie we tell ourselves is that there is one correct way to do life.

There isn’t.

There are just choices.

Some work. Some don’t. Some make you money. Some make you happy. Some do both. Some teach you something. Some teach you the hard way. And some exist purely so you can look back years later and say, “What the fuck was I thinking?”

I’ve had plenty of those.

I’m sure I’ll have plenty more.

The difference is that I’m not as interested in pretending I have it all figured out anymore.

When I was younger, I thought growing up meant finally having all the answers. Now I think growing up might actually mean becoming comfortable with not having them.

I thought I wanted to be Britney Spears. Then I wanted to save animals. Then I wanted to talk about sports. Then I wanted to study the human brain. Then I wanted to act. Then I wanted financial freedom. Then I wanted independence. Then I wanted a career. Then I wanted to figure out what the hell a career even meant to me.

I’ve loved people I eventually had to leave. I’ve dated people who looked good on paper and made absolutely no sense in real life. I’ve made friends with people I never expected to meet and lost people I thought would be around forever. I’ve chased things because I wanted them and chased other things because I wanted to prove I could get them.

And somehow, I’m still here.

Still figuring it out.

Maybe that’s not a failure.

Maybe that’s adulthood.

Maybe growing up isn’t becoming the person you thought you would be. Maybe it’s finally becoming honest enough to admit that you have no fucking clue who that person is.

Maybe we’re all just making shit up.

Some of us are simply better at making it look like we know what we’re doing.

I’m not sure if that’s reassuring or terrifying.

But I’m choosing reassuring.

It’s September.

We have four months left in the year.

I have no idea what I’m doing.

And apparently, neither do you.

So I guess we’re right on schedule.