Nevermind the destination, just sit back and enjoy the ride

There's nothing sexy about turning 24.
I've already turned 21, therefore there's Nothing to Look Forward To in the landmark birthday department, ever again, except being 80 or 90 and not cacking over dead. The only thing turning 24 has going is that it's the last birthday before I turn 25, and then 30, and 40, and 50 ...
But somehow, being halfway to 48 is slightly less scary than being halfway to 46. Maybe that's why god made the ability to see gray areas something that improves with age.
When I was about 9, I conflated the term "adult" with "grown-up." I thought that I would wake up on my 18th birthday a grown-up.
When I was 18, I thought going to college would make me a grown-up. Then I realized that college (at least for the first couple of years) was like summer camp, but with more reading and fewer rules. Around that time, I said screw this grown-up stuff. I figured that I would graduate, enter the world of grown-ups, and become Old and Boring.
And then I came here.
Which was a jarring experience. One day I was eating generic macaroni and cheese, pulling all-nighters, driving a car my dad owned while my mom still made my doctor appointments. A few weeks later I was sitting in MY apartment — just mine, no one else's — working a full-time job and drinking responsibly. And buying my own health insurance.
Maybe I'm biased because I've never been anything resembling a grown-up back at home. But here it just seems a lot easier to be a fully functional adult — as opposed to a post-college student who isn't sure how to proceed — without becoming Old and Boring.
Most of the people I hang out with are older than me. As one of them puts it, I see people out until 4 in the morning who are old enough to be my grandparents. And they're having more fun than I am.
The biggest fear I've ever had is that someday I'll look back and realize that I spent so much time trying to grow up and focus on what I'm supposed to do that I haven't really done anything, and then I'll look forward and realize that, barring random life-changing events that tend to crop up when you least expect them, all the uncertainty is gone. It's not that I don't have any direction, but I've always thought of life more as a series of crazy-ass stories to write — anecdotes, even — than a series of goals to achieve.
Which is the joy of living here — so many random people and places and movements and ideas all in one place, I don't get the urge to dash across the country/world every time I get existentially stir-crazy. I can just go outside.