I don’t get lost very often. I imagine this fact will be surprising to my parents for the rest of our lives, but it’s true.

When I was a kid (…and a tween, and a teenager), it was their general belief that I had the worlds’ worst sense of direction. And this wasn’t false, exactly, because it was true that I didn’t know how to get… anywhere. But it wasn’t an inate lack of a sense of north and south and the relative locations of point A and point B. No, it had a lot more to do with the fact that I never went in a car without my face stuck in a book (with an extra book [or two] just in case I finished the first).

“Jenna, look at the trees!” “Jenna, look at the scenery!” “The skyline!” “That deer/horse/alligator!” “JENNA PUT YOUR BOOK DOWN.” Nope. Sorry. I’m happy in here.

But then I started driving places. And then I went to college and had to walk everywhere (oh the horror). What my parents didn’t understand is that it’s really hard for this relatively ADD child to want to pay attention to the landmarks and streets and terribly boring intersections when she simply did not have to.

And that it’s really hard to know how to get somewhere when you’ve never technically seen the route.

Once I became responsible for making the turns and not missing the right streets, things picked up. I discovered to wonder of all wonders that I’m not actually terrible at direction. I discovered, hell, I know how to get places! This was cooler than it should have been.

So then you put me in a city like Chicago, where the whole thing is this big wonderful grid, and I’m in really good shape. Add a smart phone? And my Dad’s advice becomes obsolete: “You aren’t lost until you don’t know what state you’re in.” …and have no Internet connection.

If I’m in the city, and I have my phone, I’m set. If I’m in the city, and don’t have my phone, I’m (probably) still set. I’m a local here, and that’s bizarre to me. I’m an adult, and this is where I live. It might not be where I live five years from now, but if I move, it will have been my own decision.

I have moments when I’m not sure how I got here. When being independant and, gasp, an adult, feels like a dream.

Or, sometimes, a nightmare.But most of the time, I love it. I love living in a studio. I could go for having a roommate again in the future, but right now, I enjoy living alone. I like being (ehem, mostly) financially independant. And, I guess, I like being an adult, even if knowing my way around my own city where I live on my own is one of the few adulting things I’ve got down pat.

Now if I could stop missing my bus stop because I forgot to look up from my novel? That would be great.

This is the first post in my Newly-Minted Adult series, and you could easily misinterpret this as a rather silly topic. But details are important, and this is one of mine, no matter how meandering they happen to be this time.

I began buying myself flowers sometime around the start of my senior year of college. I don’t remember exactly when I figured it out, but I realized that it was a bit ridiculous to associate fresh flowers solely with a beau to present them.

So I would buy myself fresh flowers for my dorm room. I loved it; and the girls I was close to on the floor knew it. When a girl wanted to give me some kind as a thank you for frequently borrowing my Greek text, someone or other rightly told me that a $4 dollar bouquet of flowers would be just as happily accepted as $4 of chocolate.

And then I graduated and moved into my own place, and, for a while, kept on with it. Even when I frequently left the bouquets still cellophane wrapped and  stuck hastily in a vase for a day, they still made me happy—especially when I eventually arranged them.

But after I moved into my studio in Lincoln Park, I noticed I hadn’t been buying myself flowers anymore.

Maybe I realized my penchant for leaving them unarranged was really silly, and why bother? Or there was a level of discontent with my small, crowded space that made flowers less likely to make a difference. Or I finally accepted that I don’t make very much money.

But I think I’ve also come away from the reasons I started doing it in the first place.

School was stressful: a degree of stressful that, while post-grad life achieves it on occasion, was unique to school in that is was so damned consistent. With plenty of things I needed to be doing at any given moment for my job, my education, or maintaining relationships, flowers were just for me. Some people turn to chocolate, and, while I’ll rarely turn down chocolate, flowers were my thing.

I also found myself needing a way to compensate for being 22 and still in a dorm. I wanted a home, so I hung framed things in my single room and arranged carnations in vases. I suppose I could have had plants, but that chances I would have watered them? Slim.

And then, in my first apartment with Rachael, I was struggling to even feel remotely like an adult. At the very least, I could decorate with flowers.

So, now? Do I feel like an adult?

No. Not really.

But I DO have my own place with no roommate. I occasionally clean it too. And all the decorations are mine, and I pay bills. So maybe I’m sort of an adult.

(At the very least, I’m adulting when it is absolutely necessary to adult.)

But I’m not sure any of those are actually good reasons to quit buying flowers. Ever since I realized I had stopped, I realized I missed them a little bit, and have been starting to buy them again—even just cheap carnations from Walmart.

So right now, I’ve got some pom-pommy unnamed yellow pretty things on my desk. And I like it.