Things no one warned me about being an adult

This is the post-married, post-education, pre-child edition. Keep that in mind.

1. Making new friends is like entering the dating game all over again. Only worse. When you're young and cute, potential dating partners abound at school. As an adult with an isolating job, even finding a potential friend is nearly impossible. Once you see some friendship potential, you literally have to ask that person to hang out with you....like on a date... or pray that a social event comes up naturally.

You will be rejected. You have to figure out the whole--when is it okay to call this person to hang out again thing. You have to assess whether you're being intentionally dissed or whether you're just adults and adult lives make for bad timing for events. And just as in dating, you'll get dumped by old friends. Only worse because it's not so clear this time. Instead of them saying "I'm breaking up with you," and you throwing yourself a pity party with chick flicks, your best girlfriend, and Ben and Jerry, they'll just never invite you to things, or say hi, or respond to you. It's a lonely road. 

Oh, and that best girlfriend? She doesn't live anywhere near you.

2. You're going to have to buy real shoes. Do you have a job? Yes. Are tennis shoes appropriate....no. Do you REALLY want to wear heels every day? Hell NO!  Then it's time to buy real live adult shoes to go with your business slacks (you're also going to have to buy "slacks"). These shoes will cost about as much as your Playstation, and they won't be comfortable. 

3. The opportunity to dye your hair dark violet has long since passed. All those pseudo-rebellious things you could have done? Well, no one is impressed  by them anymore. No one wants to hire an attorney with teenager shoes and no one wants to hire an attorney with dark violet hair. It doesn't matter that you finally have the ovaries to do it. It doesn't matter that it actually would look really cute with your complexion (because it would). You have a mortgage, dammit. The best you can do is pin it on Pinterest and think of what might have been.

4. You really can't go back to college. Sure, you can take some continuing ed courses, but you probably won't. And even if you do, it's not the same. You'll be the old person you used to mock for making too many comments during class. You'll never return to your dorm room again--and you're glad for this. But it also means that you'll never again see your old roommate goofing off. And you kind of miss her. You can't base your self-worth on grades anymore. In adult life, Naked Juice costs about a hundred dollars--not four points at the Grab and Go. That hope you had? The possibilities for life? They graduated. And now they are you. This is the saddest of all. 

5. Your siblings are actually pretty cool. They're also the only ones who know exactly how weird your parents are. Or who still hurt with you when you think about the night your dog got hit by a car. But don't worry, they still have the ability to occasionally annoy the crap out of you. 

6. Decorating is expensive and you have no talent for it. You want a nice house. You want it to feel homey. But band posters--even from bands that are still cool--can no longer adorn your living room walls. So at this point you have the choice between buying REAL art (which is much too expensive) or crap decor from Bed Bath and Beyond (also too expensive, considering you're buying crap). If you're Mormon, you'll probably settle on printing 10,000 wedding pictures, framing the family proc, and getting woodblock letters that say "Believe" or "All because two people fell in love." Don't deny it. Own it.

7. Your college or university will start begging for more money the instant you stop paying tuition. It doesn't matter if you're underemployed, still looking for a job, or truly despise your school. Every. Single. Year. Sometimes even twice a year if it's some special event requiring even more money than usual. What is especially charming is that the student on the other line will say he's a student calling from, say, BYU Law. So you ask the student if he's a 1L--"Oh, I'm calling on BEHALF of BYU Law. I'm not a law student. I am A student and I just happen to be calling you FOR BYU Law." 

And you say, "Cool. Tell you what, I'll donate when your cooky student body which supposedly wrote the honor code lets men wear beards." 

'The student will say, "Seriously." 

And you say, "Seriously. Make a note in your system to not call me until that happens." He, of course, won't.  And you'll get another call in 6 months for the extra special "We Need$ MOAR MoneyS" event. 

8. Your performing arts talents are no longer impressive. So you had a good voice in high school. You were in a garage band. You had a great time in the annual Shakespeare. Great! What a wonderful formative experience for you. But guess what? In order to get cool points for being in a garage band, your band actually has to have talent. And it doesn't. Trust me. 

9. There actually is a limit to your earning potential. And you're likely 90% of the way to the limit already. This will just barely keep up with inflation. So the idea that someday you're going to have money to spend frivolously? A fantasy. A beautiful lie. 

10. Kids see you as old even as you see yourself as 19. The characters in Ferris Buler's Day off are younger than you are now. By quite a bit. When you go to the movies and see college-aged peers, they see you as a middle-aged couple (even if you're not). And even though you think you'll always be able to identify as 19 years old, you don't listen to their music, they can't remember what the world was like before 9-11 made us have naked searches at the airport, and they don't even know who Kurt Cobain is. They're lame, and you know it. But there's a part of your brain that thinks your still them.

What else did I miss?