If You’re An Adult, You Deserve Gold Stars For These 25 Tiny Victories

You know, the kind that pays bills, deals with soul-crushing debt, and crumbles under the weight of disdain for all mankind on a semi-regular basis.

If you’re reading this, then probably. I just wanted to hop in and tell you that you’re a damn star. I mean, think about it. All we do is get up way too early, go to work, make enough money to take care of ourselves, and repeat. Fun!

But we keep on keepin’ on so we can feed ourselves, our kids, and our pets (and so we don’t get in trouble with the IRS or whatever). In honor of adulthood’s many wonders, here are a few things you pull off every day that deserve gold stars.

1. Putting on pants.

2. Getting talked to like a third grader by your boss and not strapping yourself with assault charges.

3. Logging onto Facebook every day without spontaneously combusting.

4. Listening to your significant other tell the same story for the 50th time.

5. Thinking about your crushing student debt and only crying a little bit.

6. Realizing that you will be riding the same putrid subway train from now until the end of days and just stuffing it down.

7. Paying rent and watching your dreams go right out the window once a month.

8. Remembering to floss, like, ever.

9. Sitting there and smiling while your ungrateful children make faces at their meals.

10. Only watching Netflix for six hours instead of always.

11. Remembering to feed yourself.

12. Forgetting to put a mug under the Keurig spout but vowing to get ’em next time.

13. Not sobbing when you check your credit score but really wanting to.

14. Reading news from an actual newspaper.

15. Seeing the light of day at least once on the weekend.

16. Wearing socks that match.

17. Telling a joke people actually laugh at (and not just to be nice, maybe).

18. Lying to your manager when you say you can do something you definitely, 100 percent cannot do.

19. Watching the news without blowing this town and leaving it all behind.

20. Going to Target and only buying things you need.

21. Putting something on a to-do list and actually doing it.

22. Not having a mental breakdown when your phone just decides it’s too tired to work today.

23. Actually letting the oven preheat.

24. Sitting in traffic every…damn…day.

25. Continuing to get out of bed.

Adulthood is all about celebrating those small victories, friends. We have to, or else we’d all go insane.