When I graduated from college I firmly believed, like so many 21-year-olds before me, that I had everything figured out and knew exactly what I was doing. A year later, I’d proven that I was woefully unready to be a grown-up; my post-graduate life was in ruins. I’d lost my job, sabotaged my relationship, and racked up $14,000 in credit card debt. I moved back into my parents’ house, where I promptly fell into a pitch-black abyss of soul-crushing depression.

A few months later, I was on a Greyhound bus, headed toward my new home—a dude ranch in Idaho, where I would be a housekeeper and server. People don’t move to Idaho to clean toilets if they’re happy where they are, so I quickly learned I was not the only one seeking escape. My boss was a Jewish born-again Christian and recovering meth addict from Texas. Housekeeping was headquartered in a windowless basement; we were chain-smoking, foul-mouthed misfits. I was supposed to be there for five months; I stayed for a year and a half.

After my first guest season, I was promoted to head of housekeeping and allowed to hire my own staff. I handpicked a scrappy team of juvenile delinquents as stubborn and difficult as I was. They were hilarious and maddening and impossible to control; it didn’t help that I drank Jagermeister and went skinny-dipping with them, compromising any authority I might have had. The ranch was surrounded by national forest; every morning I went hiking in woods that felt as vast as an ocean.

Gradually, the sting of my post-college failures faded, and New York City beckoned once again. For our final outing together, my housekeepers and I got tattoos. I wore a vintage ball gown to my homecoming party, which I threw at a dive bar in Alphabet City. One of my friends handed out t-shirts he had made for the occasion, a picture of Idaho in a red circle with a line drawn through it.

It’s not that I didn’t make any more mistakes; I made plenty. But it turned out the damage wasn’t irreparable, and I was equally adept at fixing whatever I had broken. I got a job, an apartment, and a therapist; I paid off my debt and went to grad school; I wrote a novel and the novel was published. The appeal of Jagermeister faded. Being a grown-up wasn’t so bad after all.