You Can’t Transition-Proof Your Life

I’m beginning to learn more and more each day that life is about transitions, and how I deal with the transitions is what shapes me as a person… as a functioning adult in today’s world. I still think that it’s strange to refer to myself as an adult. I know I am of that age group and actively functioning as one, but part of me still feels fresh out of college barely prepared for the responsibility handed to me. At what point does someone transition from a “punk college kid” to a “makin’ it in the world adult”? Does the Mary Tyler Moore theme suddenly erupt as you’re walking in to your office one Monday morning? Does it become really truly adulthood when you buy your first new car? Make your first mortgage payment? When you have your first child?

Like a lot of things being an adult is a state of mind, one that needs to be transitioned in to. Here in the U.S. you can drive at 16, help decide who runs our government and be sent to war at 18, and drink legally at 21. The rates on car insurance go down at 25 and you can join AARP at 55, retire and collect social security at 65 and then what?

In the past two weeks the reality of the working during a recession hit my company, and for the first time I experienced companywide layoffs, gracefully masked as a “reorganizing”. Fortunately for me I was spared the pink slip but returned to the office missing the 15 people that had been let go. Talking to one of my coworkers who works at another office in Arizona that lost 27 people, a large majority of their office staff, he compared it to grieving the loss of someone to death. Suddenly they’re gone and the reminders of them are everywhere but you have to pick up the pieces and move on. It is a horrible thing, but you learn from it and hopefully your company is better for it, and you all transition together to making it work.

Driving Me Crazy

Since starting my newest assignment a little over a month and a half ago in downtown Portland I have experienced a new joy: our light rail system, lovingly called MAX (Merto Area Transit).

At 7 in the morning I leave my house, still encased in the morning darkness of early fall, I have an easy drive with nice light traffic. The opposite is usually the case once I get on the train. The start of the week is normally fuller than the end, but by the time I get on there is little chance of me getting a seat let alone finding an open wall to lean against while I read. It pleases me from an ecological sense that so many people take advantage of this form of transportation rather than driving to downtown.

My choice to take the MAX every day instead of driving was both ecological as well as economical. I'll be honest, it's more so the latter if one takes the following into consideration. Gas is now at $2.95/gallon and the drive is 10 miles each way, parking downtown can be a little stressful to find first of all and can cost upwards of $10 a day, taking all of that into consideration driving myself downtown could get expensive really quickly and I would like to keep more of my paycheck. At $2.05 per ride (less if a monthly pass is purchased and you ride the MAX more than 37 times in a month), and for me a three mile drive to the station, the exchange is well worth it.