One side effect of reading all these YA books is that it has got me thinking about how we have "permission", and indeed are enouraged, to think abut personal relations and your own personal development as a person in high school:

Who do you want to be and who do you want to be that with?

And how its taken for granted that high school students want to hang out with others (cliques) that are the same and like the same things.

So at this point you're probably going, "Kirsten, this is not any kind of revelation or new news."

And you're right. I was walking along the bike paths in my neighborhood alone this morning. (Usually I walk with a friend or my mother. But in this past week I've been feeling pensive and thoughtful and impatient to be by myself.) And as I was walking, I was thinking about my mommy friends and my writer friends, etc. etc.

And I realized that it felt to me like after you graduate from high school (or college) that this overt focus on working through personal relation issues becomes something adults only need to do when there's a problem.

Like just by the virtue of our age and a few years of book learning we have figured out once and for all who we are and who we want to be with, and how to best be with people.

But its not that way, is it? I mean, I don't know about you, but I am STILL putting tons and tons of energy into how I present myself to different people and wondering if they like me, but at the same time I also have to worry now about NOT SHOWING any of this because I'm an adult and supposed to have it all figured out now.

I wonder what would happen if we could all, as adults, just be open about the fact that we are still jostling for social position and worrying about who we are when we're with different people: whether they're people you work with or hang out with or just play pick-up basketball with.

Anyway, all this YA is making me want to write a YA girl novel.

(says sternly to oneself "Must. Finish. Current. Project. First.")