Will I ever be as cool as my parents?

Sometimes I worry that at 23 I'll never be as cool as my parents were. People don't usually think of their parents as cool, but mine definitely were. They never tried to kid us into thinking they were angels, reflecting on their decisions and hoping to impart at least some of their wisdom on us. But my parents were the people who DID things. They were slightly rebellious, outgoing, adventurous people. Sometimes I worry that my goody-two-shoes life means that I've let all my opportunities for acceptable rebellious adventures pass me by. It's almost time for... REAL LIFE. Ugh. How depressing does that sound? I'm jealous of my brother who has always bucked the conventional trends and is pursuing a career in culinary arts. (Plus, that will DEFINITELY benefit me later on!) And my little sister, who is applying to schools near Tahoe so that she can snowboard all the time. She's also debating deferring for a year and literally just working retail or waitressing while spending all her spare time with her boyfriend on their boards on the mountain. I am JEALOUS.

But then I remind myself that there's no need to have accomplished everything by age 23. In fact, by this time in my mother's life she was already pregnant with me and their lives were settling down. This year my mother will have been married more of her life than she was single. It's a bizzare concept when I really think about it.

I think what it comes down to is that I've always focused so much on pleasing my parents by focusing on the things you're supposed to that I gave up free time for the wild, crazy things I wanted to do. Don't get me wrong, I am thrilled to be graduating Northeastern magna cum laude with my bachelor's in journalism and sociology. I just... feel like I haven't quite reached my full potential yet. As soon as classes/finals are over, I'm going to go back to making more me time. And in that me time I want to work on my lists of goals that I've created (To Do Before 30 and Life Overall). I'm totally inspired too by the blogs My 99 Problems and Boston in 60. Maybe I'll work on a format like that for 2009?