For many of us, holidays can be a difficult, triggering, emotional, time. So as we enter this landmind of a season, I would like to send you all a very important adulting PSA.

This is true always, but there is something particularly sinister about the holidays that can make us forget that fact. Traditions, expectations, old patterns, family dynamics can make for a real boundary busting experience. But here are a few of the things that you, as an adult, DO NOT HAVE TO DO.

You don’t have to:

• Go somewhere you don’t want to go
• Stay somewhere you don’t want to stay
• Kiss, hug, touch someone you don’t want to
• Eat something you don’t want to
• Talk to someone you don’t want to
• Engage in a topic you don’t want to discuss
• Hide who you are
• Pretend to be someone else
• Take on any expectations from people around you
• Fit in
• Be “on”
• Spend money you don’t have
• Feel guilty for not doing the things you don’t want to do

That might not be what you’ve been taught but it is the truth. It is your adulting truth. You deserve to have boundaries and to take care of yourself.

Of course, you’ll notice that “be nice” wasn’t on the list. You can have boundaries without being a jerk. You can excuse yourself, disengage, decline without being aggressive, mean spirited or angry. Others might not respond in kind – people hate it when you set boundaries – but guess what? You don’t have to put up with it. Hooray for being an adult!

Ok, here we go and Happy Thanksgiving from the U.S.!

I’ve decided to start making a list of the top Adulting Survival Tips that I have picked up. The “Millenial 10 Commandments” if you will.

“Ughhhhhhhhhhh.” This is me last week, talking with a friend about the state of our country. “What we need is a revolution,”

“There’s one happening right now!” he said.

He’s right. I was going to write about blowdryers. But there is a revolution happening and I want to talk about it, so blowdryers will just have to wait.

This period we’re in is simultaneously beautiful and horrifying. For a potentially brief moment, victims have a voice and sexual predators are being brought to light. It’s a momentous, revolutionary time. But…

Yeah. Don’t get comfortable just yet. There’s a few things I really want us to think about.

Today’s post is inspired by the ENDLESS row of soupy, mucky, cloudy days we’ve been having and DGGYST’s post encouraging us all to get our shit together and prepare for winter.

The days have been getting shorter and shorter and then, because we’re one of the states still functioning like a farming society, we set our clocks back an hour. So now I truly feel like I am living in darkness. And since then, I’ve just been feeling like this:

Not just physically but mentally. I am flat out of steam and I feel like everything around me is just…heavy.

It’s interesting, because this gif was titled “Lazy Polar Bear.” I hate that word – lazy. Yes, some people are lazy. But depression is often mislabled as laziness. 

If you’ve started to feel “lazy” as the days are getting shorter, then maybe you’re experiencing Seasonal Affective Disorder.

Over the last 48 hours, I was starting to feel a little tickle in my throat here, a little sniffle there. Then Best Friend: Partner In Crime broke up with her boyfriend of 4+ years and we ended up drinking for about 6 hours, and I think what little chance my immune system had was quashed by the waves of whatever it was we kept enjoying and enthusiastically ordering “one more!”

So, you win, cold.