If you haven’t been following my life (and why would you be?) I recently relocated to Chicago. After four years of running around and documenting my mayhem in Philadelphia, I’m moving on to something new. 

Before moving to Chicago, I was working in New York City. And if New York taught me anything it’s that there is truly an art to styling your life, home and clothes in a way that distracts the rest of the world from seeing what you truly are: a complete & utter mess.

Which is why your 20’s are your “beauty days” and not your thriving ones. When people say that they would love to be in their 20’s again, what they really mean is that they would love to look like they are in their 20’s again. Nobody actually wants to be unemployed and consistently confused with shitty towels. What they mean is they would love to keep their job, their wisdom and their Ralph Lauren Towels but look like they could still fit into a pair of Hollister jeans if they wanted to.

So I’m embracing my beauty days. In between job searching, scraping quarters together to afford drinks at my local bar and throwing away every self-help book that tells me I just need to “wash my face more” and “believe in my self,” I’ve been revamping my space.

Home decor has become a therapeutic metaphor for my life that sometimes you need to fake it until you make it and keep going. Or at least that’s what I think I read in one of those self-help books that I’m throwing away. Surrounding my space with inspirational people, colors and art has helped remind me of who I am and where I hope to be.

So here is your inside look into my first “adult” apartment. I am equally excited and terrified to be building a new chapter in a city that I am head over heels for. I’m eager for all the firsts this apartment inevitably has in store for me. In fact, I think this apartment is already teaching me a valuable lesson about life.

Look how adult it all looks: look at my stain-free couch, my booze and my vintage art. It all looks very adult, doesn’t it? And yet, much like college, I still have plenty of nights where I’m screaming into my pillow, begging people through email at 1 am to accept my resume and doing as little laundry as I can get away with.

I just have nicer looking towels now. And maybe that’s all adulthood really is?

-TheameliaBurns