[I wrote this at the end of July, but couldn’t post it until now, for fear of giving too much away and sharing news that I wasn’t supposed to share just yet. But the sentiments expressed still hold true. Even more so.]

It’s been hot in Boston for three weeks and counting. Humid and sticky and hot. For those of you who live in the South or the Midwest, three weeks is nothing. Three weeks is a walk in the park, a breeze, a we-wish scenario.

But up here in the Northeast, we’re not accustomed to it. Typically, our heat wave, if we have one, comes later—in August. And it lasts for about two weeks, tops. So we’re not prepared for this, not equipped. Boston’s buildings are old; central air is a foreign concept, a new-fangled technology that we’ve stubbornly resisted.

During Week One, people grumbled and groaned. As a city, we were lethargic and agitated. Everyone was tired. In a bad mood. People snapped at one another on the train. Bosses yelled at their employees. Children threw more tantrums in the supermarket.

As we entered Week Two, we complained. We wondered when the heat would let up, because surely it had to end soon, right? We made comments about global warming and saw a lot of movies to stay cool.

By Week Three, we had stopped our bitching and moaning. We resigned ourselves to the weather, to the high energy bills we’d pay as we overworked our AC window units. We took cold showers and sat in front of fans. The heat, it seemed, was here to stay. So we adapted. We hoped for a break, for a burst of low temperatures, but we expected heat. It had seeped into our lives, and we had no choice but to make the best of it.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I stepped out of my apartment this morning at 5:45 a.m. in a T-shirt and shorts, something I’ve done almost every day for the last two weeks, and felt cool air on my skin. I stood on the porch for a second or two, trying to decide whether or not I needed a sweatshirt. A sweatshirt.

I was dumbfounded. I got into my car and rolled down my window for the first time in three weeks, maybe more. I couldn’t believe my good fortune. I wanted to kiss the air.

This year has been a tough one, for many reasons, for many of my loved ones and for me. It’s been the kind of year that makes you want to give up, to let go of whatever it is you’re hoping for; the kind of year that kicks you when you’re down, then kicks you one more time, for good measure.

Though I’ve always been the type of person who braces herself for bad things to happen, falling into a pit of depression and despair when they do, this year has been different. I’ve felt different. I haven’t had time for despair, haven’t had the luxury of sitting on my couch for days or weeks, eating boxes of Fudgesicles while watching Friends re-runs to ease my anxiety and numb my pain. Too many scary things have happened, and too many scary things might happen. The stakes are higher, and I’ve had no choice but to keep moving. To adapt. To hope for good things, but to expect the bad.

What I’m trying to say is: you get used to it, the heat, the way things currently are. And at some point, you stop thinking that they’ll be any different, any better. It isn’t hopelessness, or acceptance. It’s survival.

So when something does change—big or small—when something remarkable happens, when what you’re used to is turned on its head, and you’re presented with something you’ve wanted and hoped for, something you had started to think you’d never get, it’s terror-inducing. The fear is real and big and overwhelming, but so, too, is the joy.

I’m not sure if I believe in a higher power. I know that many people turn to faith or God or whomever in times of great need and sorrow, that they find comfort there. I don’t. I can count the number of times I’ve prayed—out of abject desperation—on two hands; some of my prayers have been answered, some haven’t.

Odd as it may be, it’s when good things, remarkable things happen—the heat wave breaks, the losing streak ends, the year of just getting by takes an unexpected turn—that I wish I was a true believer. I wish I believed because then I would have someone to thank. Today, my gratitude is immense, and if I believed, I would get down on my knees and say thank you. I would say it all day and all night, all week or all month; I would say it over and over again and wouldn’t stop until I believed it—until I believed my good fortune.

And then I’d say it one more time, for good measure.

I recently broke up with someone. The break-up had nothing to do with our feelings, per se, and everything to do with timing. Or rather, our age difference: He’s 32. I’m 30.

I know. That sounds ridiculous. But among the single, never-been-married, over-30 crowd, a few years can mean the difference between wanting to grow up and, well, not. Translation: I was ready for a more serious commitment, and he just wanted to “hang out and have fun.”

The signs, of course, were there. Sure, on our first date he showed me a photo of his friend’s kid, and on our third he mentioned that he wished he had someone to bring home with him for the holidays. But his friends were a dead giveaway. Friends whom he was “embarrassed” to introduce me to. So they’re a little obnoxious, I thought. Maybe they make fart jokes. No big deal.

They did that and more—on our third meeting, his roommate announced that he had to poop and proceeded to talk to us through the bathroom door—but their lack of social graces wasn’t the issue. Rather, the issue was this: After a night of drinking (on a school night, no less)—this crew pretty much drank every night—I woke at 4:00 a.m. with a full bladder. I threw on some clothes and tiptoed out to the hall. Not only was the bathroom occupied, but there was also someone waiting to use it. (I should mention here that though my not-boyfriend only had one roommate, about two or three other people stayed at his place regularly, kind of like stray dogs. Only drunk, stoned stray dogs that vomit in your living room.) I stormed back into the bedroom and barked at my mostly asleep not-boyfriend: Are you fucking kidding me with this? Are we in goddamned college?

And therein lay the root of our problems. Aside from his job, the 32-year-old man that I was dating was living the life of a 22-year-old. I, on the other hand, was living the life of someone in her 30s: I have my own apartment. I have friends who have real jobs, friends who get up and go to work each day in order to pay the bills. Some of my friends are married. A few even have kids and a house.

When I was dating my not-BF, however, I worried about this. Was I old beyond my years? Were my days of fun and drinking over? Why hadn’t the cops shown up at one of my parties recently? While I don’t want to live like a college student, I also don’t want to move out to the suburbs and join the PTA.

I tried (and failed) to explain this to the NBF. There could be a middle ground, I told him. Marriage doesn’t have to mean the end of sex and life as you know it. Children don’t have to hinder your glass-of-wine-a-night habit. Growing up does not have to mean becoming your parents. It does, however, mean relinquishing your adolescence. And, frankly, that’s not necessarily a bad thing.

Granted, there’s no line at my bathroom door in the middle of the night. And my friends aren’t smoking up and setting off illegal fireworks in the middle of the street on a Wednesday night. The cheap thrills are fewer. But I’ve been there and I’ve done that. For about ten years, in my 20s. (For my friends, it was tequila and a piñata filled with sex toys and lube.) And, lord knows, I did it up right.

But there’s so much that I haven’t done. And, as any older, wiser person will tell you, it’s the experiences you have as an adult that’s the true stuff of life. Falling in love, real love, based on more than just hormones and lust. Committing your life to someone. Having really good sex. Holding your child (or a friend’s child, for that matter) for the first time. Watching your children grow and learn and develop. Putting someone else’s happiness before your own. Finally landing that dream job. Or publishing that book. And it’s all the little steps you take along the way that matter most, the quiet, ordinary moments that occur naturally, without the assistance of booze or drugs or someone’s dumbass roommate.

While a prolonged adolescence may be fun, free of encumbrance and responsibilities, at the end of the day, what do you have other than an expensive beer tab? What gives your life meaning? Perhaps, though, living a meaningful life is only something that those of us who’ve taken the leap into adulthood worry about.

As my old pal Joni Mitchell once sang, something’s lost, but something’s gained, in living every day. Rather than trying to hold onto what you’ve lost, growing up means embracing the gains, in whatever form they take. And, god, there are just so many of them. I look forward to each and every one.

Earlier this week I attended a conference for work, where I learned a lot about marketing. Brand. Key messages. Identity. Campaign. I’ve got a little street cred now and am down with the marketing lingo. I could even tell you what a ROI is without having to google it.

I joke, but learning how to market is essentially learning how to change the way you think. Or rather, marketing forces you to think about things in a different way. For me, this is both a good and a bad thing. On the one hand, my brain is expanding—I can feel it stretching, and I have to say, it feels damn good. On the other hand, who the fuck wants to think like a salesperson? I can’t help but feel a little dirty when I get excited about a well-executed brand.

But, hey, it’s a dirty world and a girl’s gotta pay the rent.

In any case, at one of the sessions I attended, the speaker explained that in order to “defeat the competitors for your donors,” you have to earn the trust of your audience. (Really? In order to get people to give me money, they have to trust me? You’re fucking kidding me. [I should mention here that most of marketing is telling people what they already know, but packaging it as something new.])

To illustrate what he meant by “trust,” the speaker pulled out the following equation:

                             Trust   =   credibility x intimacy
                                             _______________________

                                                          risk

If the risk is greater, he explained, credibility and intimacy have to be greater, too.

Though I never liked math all that much, according to my best friend Lizzi, I am a quantifier. I don’t always know what she means by this, but when I saw the equation and immediately started applying it not to my job, but to my life—more specifically, my love life—I got it. How wonderful would it be, I thought, tuning out the rest of the lecture, if trust was as simple as an equation?

It’s a known fact, within certain circles, that I’m always getting in my own way. I create problems where there are no problems. I complain about life being hard, and sometimes it is, but most of the time I’m simply making it harder for myself. After three years of therapy and a lifetime of self-analysis, I’ve concluded that, aside from my parents, the majority of my issues revolve around one word. Any guesses? Yep, trust. As in, I can’t do it. I can’t completely trust others, and I sure as hell can’t always trust myself.

So I quantify. And seek out equations to quell the anxiety of never trusting.

If a = b and b = c, then a = c translates into: If he used to call me twice a day and now only calls me once a day, then he no longer likes me and thinks I’m ugly. When x is negative, y is positive translates into: The more I like him, the less he will like me. And so on.

I love my equations. They simplify the loud spinning mess inside my head. They allow me to justify my assumptions. He doesn’t like me! It’s mathematically proven! They make me feel like I’m in control of my life and my feelings. They give me answers when there are no answers. They are black and white and not even a little bit gray.

Of course, life is not business, even if we are bombarded with 5,000 marketing messages a day. Unfortunately, to get to trust you have to leap. For me, at least, trust = faith. You do it because you feel it. Because you allow yourself the room to get there. Because at some point you let go of the equations and believe, really believe, that no matter what happens, despite your worst fears slinking their way into reality, you’ll be okay.

When a man I’m seeing for the first time finds out that I’m a writer, he usually apologizes. “Sorry for my terrible e-mails,” he’ll say. “I’m so bad at grammar.” On the subject of books, he’ll add, “You probably know way more about this book than I do…”

I find these comments both sweet and mildly annoying. On the one hand, I appreciate the attempt to legitimize and give weight to what I do. He is saying that he admires my skills, skills he does not possess. He is giving my knowledge and intelligence the benefit of the doubt. On the other hand, I’m not crazy about the assumption that I’m a grammar Nazi; or, rather, that I judge a man by his writing skills. Or his literary tastes.

In her New York Times essay, ”It’s Not You, It’s Your Books,” Rachel Donadio explores the notion of book taste as deal-breaker. She writes, “Anyone who cares about books has at some point confronted the Pushkin problem: when a missed—or misguided—literary reference makes it chillingly clear that a romance is going nowhere fast.” Various writers and editors weigh in on the issue: for some, a high-brow appreciation of books is essential in a partner; for others, not so much.

I lean more toward the latter category. So your favorite book is The Da Vinci Code—so what? Are you intelligent? Can I have an interesting conversation with you? Are you passionate about your field of work, whatever that may be?

Here’s the thing about being a writer: Your get tired of talking about books. If you’re an editor, and you fix people’s horrible sentences for a living, you just get tired. Also? Writers have writer friends, and together we obsess about what we do, and say pretentious things like, Well, I thought The Story of Edgar Sawtelle was highly overrated, but did you read Ann Beattie’s latest story in The New Yorker?

Many writers, too, like myself, grew up in a literary family of some kind. My grandfather was an English professor, my mom an English teacher. Before she had children, my grandmother worked in publishing. My aunt is a librarian. My dad works in development at a library. My childhood home is about 50 percent book. My mom once dreamt that we were all walking, talking books. In another dream, she was drowning in them.

Because of this, all of this, I don’t need a man who’s well read. Nor one who’s mastered the art of good grammar. There’s something to be said for differences and balance in a relationship. Though I may draw the line at someone who uses too many LOLs or BRBs. Oh, and “you” is a word, not a letter. And don’t even get me started on “its” versus “it’s.”

Okay, so a girl’s gotta have some standards.