Some days, adulting is too much.
A few years ago, I sat across from one of my best friends at a Habit Burger. He was eating healthy. I had a double burger, fries, and a shake.
My friend’s only a few years younger than my dad, but he’s also one of my closest friends. He’s been a mentor to me for more than 15 years. We’ve logged thousands of miles together on early morning runs. We’ve stewed together over work dilemmas, fatherhood, faith, aging joints, and everything in between. He has a perfect way of helping me see the world more clearly. Fewer words and deeper truth. And always well-timed dry humor.
That day at Habit, I was sliding. I felt like a failure at home. I was stretched too thin at work. I was frustrated with pretty much everything, but especially with myself.
He was the one who recognized that I didn’t need to be alone with my thoughts that day, so he came to my house and picked me up for lunch.
We ordered our food, sat down, and I started talking. I don’t think he touched his food while he listened. He just sat there. Attentive. It’s funny how someone just being there can remind you that not everything in life is a hot mess.
I wasn’t a train wreck. He helped me see that there were a lot of things that were still good, whole, and mine.
There’s been a lot of in my life in the last six months. I’ve spent a lot of time standing in the middle of a canyon trying to decide which way is up — which things are worth reaching for and which ones need to be left at the bottom. As much as it hurts, I know there are people and patterns that I need to leave behind.
But then there are people and patterns that are the quiet, immovable parts of my life that don’t need to be fixed. In fact, what I need to do is notice them more.
There was a journal entry I wrote a few days before that lunch with my friend that detailed one of those days when work and family collided in a series of bad timing and unmet expectations. My youngest son had a birthday party to attend. My older kids were scattered in other directions. My wife and I disagreed on how to handle the situation. There was a yappy dog involved. It didn’t go well.
The entry was titled simply: Done Adulting.
I wrote that entry five years ago, and frankly, I was a bit shocked when I read it at how much of who I am today was already in that journal entry. There are a lot of things I’m offloading today — or trying to anyway — that were present back then. The stress. The guilt. The frustration that feels aimless but still intense. The sense that I should be doing better — as a husband, dad, provider, business partner, and friend. It was all there, down to the part where I tried to pretend I wasn’t upset, which of course only made everything worse.
There was no figurative dumpster fire. Nobody got hurt. Nothing fell apart completely. It was just one of those days where the emotional weight outpaced the actual events. You know how that goes. Honestly, I’m having one of those days today.
When I got to the end of that day, I wrote that all I wanted to do was go to bed and try again tomorrow.
There have been several of those days when my friend has been there, mostly when our feet are hitting the pavement together. Most of the time, there were no pep talks or real solutions. Just steadiness. Miles on our legs together. Sometimes there’s a burger involved.
Most of the time, the kind of support we need isn’t about getting the best advice or finding the perfect solution to the problem.
I’m reminded of a story from many years ago when an elderly man and his son went to visit a dying friend. The father went and sat at the bedside of his friend and held his hand. Hardly a word was spoken.
After a while, the father walked back to where his son was waiting and commented, “That was a good visit.”
Nothing the elderly man could say would change the fact that his friend was dying. He was just there to be with him.
The reminder I get from my friend, interestingly, is that I’m still here. Even when the days aren’t great and the problems seem unsolvable, there are still a lot of good things going on.
It’s important to remember, when it feels like things are completely falling apart, that there are still constants — things that don’t need to change — even when everything else does.
In the past seven months, I’ve quit my job, gained a bunch of weight, stopped running, been depressed, let go of plans, and had long, hard conversations with myself and people I love. I’ve been trying (often failing, but still trying) to build a better life — not one that looks impressive from the outside, but one that feels sustainable from the inside.
In the process, I’ve had to question almost everything. My habits. My ambitions. How I define success, identity, and progress. I’ve held all of it up to the light, wondering what should stay and what has to go.
But not everything is up for discussion.
Some things are constant. Life’s anchors. They don’t demand attention, but they hold firm when everything else shifts. A spouse who leans into the hard moments with you. A friend who texts back without judgment about the third donut picture you posted that day. A morning run that quiets the noise. A kid’s laugh. A shared memory. A familiar road. A prayer that doesn’t need to be fancy, just real.
These are the real footholds in the canyon wall. They’re the ones that let you climb when the rest of the terrain isn’t stable. Sometimes, they make the climb easier. Sometimes they just make it possible.
In these past weeks of reflection, writing, and remembering, I’ve come back to this over and over: even when you change everything else, some things will still be there. Always waiting. Always true.
Sometimes what you need isn’t a reinvention. Just a reminder.
That you’re still here.
That some of the best things in your life don’t need to be better.
They just need to be seen.
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