We're All Just Winging It!

Have you ever looked around and wondered how everyone else seems to have adulthood figured out? 

Bills get paid. Responsibilities get handled. People show up to work, raise families, and keep moving forward. 

But behind the scenes, many of us are still learning as we go. 

In this episode of First Messy Draft, Erica reflects on a simple moment that sparked a bigger realization about adulthood—and why so many of us are quietly winging it.

In process, Erica

Transcript

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Now listen, when we were younger, a lot of us believed that adults had everything figured out. We thought there would come a time where life would just make sense. Where you'd know exactly what you were doing, where you were going and how everything was supposed to just work out. But the older I get, the more I realize something. Then most of us are just winging it. Welcome to First Messy Draft, where becoming is messy, but growth is real. I'm Erica, and this is a space where we slow down and reflect on life while we're still in the middle of becoming. Somewhere along the way, we started believing that everyone else has life figured out except us. We see people with their careers, their families, businesses, living in their houses, and it can look like they have a clear plan. But when you start having honest conversations with people, you realize something interesting. A lot of us are figuring things out in real time. And I remember something from years ago that made me think about this. Probably I was around my late 20s, early thirties, while driving down the interstate or just the road in general. I would see random cars driving down the street. These cars were it went through everything, you know, missing headlights, dents all over, cracked windshields, um bumpers bent in, back window, had garbage bags in it to keep it from raining inside. And maybe a door handle gone. I mean, it was just crazy. It was like I would see these type of vehicles often. And for some reason, I would see them, and I used to joke and say, okay, look at that vehicle. By any means necessary. That was my mantra every time. I mean, I pointed out. I even did it so much that my husband and he started to say it, and we like jokingly laugh. And one day it hit me. That's really what life looks like for a lot of us. Things might not be perfect. Some plans might not have worked out the way we expected. Some things might feel dented or cracked. But we're still trying to move forward. There's a line in a song by Killer Mike called Slummer. It always stuck with me. And you'll know from this podcast, I will reference songs, maybe movies, movie lines. I do love all types of music. This is the sidebar. I do love all types of music. Rap, trap, gospel, neo soul, jazz, anything. Okay, getting back to my point. So this song by Killer Mike is called Slimmer. And this one particular line stuck with me. He says they call it adolescence because we learn adult lessons. Now later I learned learned that the song itself actually was about the emotional burden that young men face dealing with teenage pregnancy. That's my research brain went into overdrive as I was when I first heard the song. I went and researched and heard um one of his interviews about the song. But when I first heard that line, it made me think about something different. It made me think about adulthood. Just because we become adults doesn't mean we suddenly become masters of life. The term adult does not equate mastery in no way, shape, form, or fashion. We are all still learning. Still adjusting, still figuring things out. The truth is none of us were handed a manual on how to live this life. Now some people will say the Bible is our manual, and in many ways it does guide us. This is true. But I'm speaking in terms of everyday life experiences. We're all learning this in real time as we go. And we learn through our mistakes, through growth, or through those situations that we never saw coming. And the way that you navigate life might not look the way that I do. But that doesn't make either one of us wrong. It just means that we are doing the best that we can with what we know at the time. Every single person on this planet is going through something. And if you say you're not, you are a lie. And I don't believe you. Because you might be up today, and tomorrow life could look completely different. So maybe instead of assuming everyone else has everything figured out, we give ourselves and each other a little more grace. Because the truth is most of us are still figuring it out. We are still learning adult lessons as we go. And maybe just maybe that's okay. This is first messy draft where becoming is messy. But growth is real.