Now, I think this “suck it up” policy is pretty easy to follow when you’re living at home in high school. Your mom and dad are there to remind you (like my dad!) to suck it up. You can put off that twenty page paper only so long before you have to reluctantly suck it up and stay up all night to perfect it before tomorrow’s due date.

But when you’re living on your own, guess who’s deciding whether or not you have to suck it up? There’s no parent nagging you about your laundry. It’s you, all you.

It’s so easy to let things slide. It’s remarkably freeing even to be like, “yep, I don’t have to do that!” And the truth is, you don’t have to do everything… but most of the time you should.

Adulthood is more or less about choices. And really, the stakes are higher although the choices feel a bit more mundane on an everyday basis. Make the choice to suck it up and do the thing that you don’t really want to do… but need to do. The laundry, the budget, the meeting. The doctor’s appointment you keep pushing to next month, the tough conversation you’ve been meaning to have with a friend.

I find that it’s the hardest part to just decide to suck it up. Once you make up your mind to do it, it almost always ends up being not as bad as you could have imagined. And you may have to suck it up and go to the hardware store to get a new piece for the toilet seat that randomly broke (woo, adulthood)… but then you can skip your vegetables and opt for binge-watching Parks and Recreation on Netflix while eating pizza.