Playing grown-ups

I completed my first week in a 'proper' job. A job what a grown-up might have. That, in itself, is kind of freaking me out. See, every other role I've ever been paid to perform has been expressly for slackers and/or man-children only. Not for people that have obligations and career goals. IBM was a bit 'hey you! Come work for us, you dynamic young go-getter you! We're, like, totally for professionals and that!' but that was all bluster used to draw us in before we actually started. In reality, as an 'industrial trainee' I was basically the 'general dogsbody'. I may have been an appreciated dogsbody but a dogsbody nonetheless and so that doesn't really count as being a grown-up. Before that, I worked part-time in a school art department where I was mostly cutting A3 pieces of sugar paper into A4 pieces of sugar paper. It was, as I'm sure you can imagine, fairly demanding. Occasionally I'd have to deal with kids being sassy and 15-year-old boys getting crushes on me (sometimes simultaneously) but that was pretty much as tough as it got. Even if I did it with the idea of 'gaining experience for my C.V.' for the vague plan I had of becoming an Educational Psychologist, it wasn't like there were any illusions of grandeur accompanying the role itself. Not unless you count faffing around with clay particularly 'high-powered'. (For the record, I don't). I also managed to reach the heady heights of 'trainee keyholder' at MVC after my mini-breakdown upon breaking up with the love of my life and dropping out of art school (although, who hasn't dealt with depression by entering the world of low-level retail management? It's pretty standard really), but that certainly wasn't a particularly ambitious role. The only thing that changed from when I had been a mere 'sales assisstant' previously, was that I was allowed to cash up at the end of the day. That was freaking awesome. Counting money, getting paperwork in order, making column A tally up with what column B says column A should have in it (although I hate maths my control freakery dictates I will love anything where you get to make things perfectly balance). However, even then, my manager at the time made me feel like I was a kid who'd been allowed to stay up later than usual, not that I was actually worthy of any extra responsibilities.

However, this job I somehow (and LORD knows how) have now, IS kind of respectable, it IS imbued with a certain degree of responsibility. It was bizarre to look at the organisation chart for our department and see that my allocated pay-grade level is the same as the team leader, and just one notch below what my manager is getting. I'm probably not earning anything like what they get as they've been there longer, have more experience, and are of course 'grown-ups' (and grown-ups get paid well. It's science. And I am not a grown-up ergo they MUST be better paid than I). (Although, let me just make this clear, I doubt anyone there, least of all me, is going home and lighting up cigars with £50 notes, or diving into mounds and mounds of big dollar-bucks ala Scrooge McDuck. I'm working for the muthafugging council, not some hedge fund institution).

But there it is, me: approaching some approximation of adulthood. That's me, someone who has an innate fear of grown-ups. I don't mean anyone over the age of 18, age may have a general correlation with 'grown-upness' but is by no means a guarantee of it's existence. I'm talking about those people that have it all generally worked out (even if 'having it worked out' just means they've just accepted their fate). Those people with mortgages and steady relationships, who take weekend breaks in the Lake District and don't get called 'baby noodle' by their mother. Those sorts who know where their next few paychecks are coming from and that's enough for them to be content, them what usually (but not always) have children and can discuss the merits and failings of the local schools (more to the point, they know where all the local schools are). They probably don't while away hours on facebook playing trivia games for their latest televisual obsession, or come home from the pub on Friday nights, smoke up, watch three episodes of Futurama and then get gently awoken at 3.30am by their friend Nick only to realise they've drooled a little on their pillow. That's just not how I imagine grown-ups live. Yet here I am, twenty-five years old and ostensibly a grown-up now. It won't last of course but, right now, in the present, I'm a grown-up doing a grown-ups job. Is this a situation I can expect to get used to? Even if it is, do I really want to?