My age says I’m an adult but sometimes I think other people know more about being an adult than me.
I’ve always felt like a kid and told myself I wouldn’t grow up.
Still the same. I think having a somewhat traumatized childhood also makes you want to live as a child freely again.
Also not having kids helps. I can do anything I want and make my own schedule.
I never understood boring old people. Ill be doing projects and having adventures until im 80.
most people don’t want or need projects and adventures. they want to relax and do nothing in their spare time.
I want to sit on my ass and be unproductive
Yep. At least partially. Never been able to achieve any of the milestones of adulthood. Marriage, home ownership, kids, etc. Could never afford anything.
I don’t feel any different than I did in high school. Mentally or physically.
Fake it til you make it
Just hit the big 40 recently and I still feel just as immature as I did in my twenties. Just with a bunch of new and exotic pain.
I feel like adding a positive experience to contrast the more negative comments (including my own). The summer I graduated high school was perhaps one of the best times in my life. I really, truly felt that I had my whole life ahead of me.
I spent all of June training with my first guide dog. The clearest memory I have of realizing I was finally an adult was when we were flying home after training. I was sitting at the gate, my new dog lying quietly under my chair, my feet resting slightly forward into the walkway to accommodate her, my head filled with future plans and possibilities. I thought about how I would provide a loving home for this carefully bred, meticulously vetted, and rigorously trained canine that this organization had entrusted me with. I imagined our first semester of college together. I hadn’t gotten into my first choice school or major but that was OK; I had a backup plan and was looking forward to it. A kid ran past me, pulling me out of my thoughts, then I heard his mother say “Watch out for that man’s foot.” That’s it. I was a “man” not a “boy” or a “kid” or a “child”. The world saw me as an adult. The future may not have turned out how I thought, but in that moment, I was exactly who I wanted to be, doing exactly what I wanted to do, exactly where I was supposed to be, and man it felt good.
feeling you are responsible for something other than yourself is a huge motivator that a lot of young people lack these days, and probably a huge disconnect why so many people are unhappy and anxious.
but then again when you propose people get involved in a deeper way with something outside themselves, like volunteering, they tell you to f off they don’t have the time. and yet they whine about how all they do is sit at home.
you can’t have the rewards without the responsibilities. I’ve always wanted children because i know that would be a lot of work/responsibility, but it would also make my life more than about my own personal goals and achievements. sadly i have never found a partner who felt the same way, mostly just people who thought children would detract from their own personal hedonistic fulfillment. which made we realize we were not compatible, because my life is and never was about personal hedonistic fulfillment.
Adult is just being 18+ years old. What you may be looking for is how to mature as an adult. That’s done by trying, failing, and learning over and over again. You’ll always have some fear of new things, but you eventually learn how to bounce back from failure to reduce the fear. As you get older, you’ll lose the support of family because they die. As that happens, you’ll learn to fend for yourself. You will not mature if your are doing the same old stuff because it’s comfortable.
yeah. trying new things and failing and getting better at them… has been really great. i recently was taking language and writing classes, and it’s been really interesting experience. it’s forcing me to interact with people outside of my bubble and it’s rewarding when i study and make an effort and punishing when i fail to do that.
My body reminds me I’m an adult every day.
Well I mean, we’re all just mostly LARPing this whole adult thing, right?
I’m in my 50s and actually still LARPing, and playing TTRPGs, and MMORPGs. No need to grow up for anyone else’s sake as long as you’re not harming others.
When I was little, I thought I would grow out of playing video games, as in I have a very specific memory of sitting in my 1st grade math class and just making that observation to myself. I was a 90s kid surrounded by baby boomer adults who largely were not gamers, so I just assumed one day I’d grow out of it.
On the positive side, I learned that you don’t have to give up your imagination when you grow up. I came up with elaborate make-believe worlds as kids are wont to do, and merely started adding lore and continuity and documentation when I got older. You don’t need to be writing a sci-fi novel or DMing a homebrew D&D campaign to do it, either. I worldbuild for the mere joy of pretending, or to dignify it with Tolkien’s words sub-creation.
I’ve been GMing “Tales from the Loop” lately and having an absolute blast with it! Everyone in the group is 40s-50s, but totally gets into it. Never stop “playing,” whatever that means to you.
Lightning bolt, lightning bolt!
I’m out of mana!
Pretty sure I was born LARPing being a kid too. I never made the very common presumption, when most(?) people are young, that adults (or my parents for that matter, religious indoctrination immunity) knew what they were doing. Perhaps I came across older than I was, and now the opposite is happening the more grey hair I get!
No. I’m not.
but i like and enjoy my life. i don’t regard it as a burden to escape from.
Neither am I, I just think I shouldn’t be allowed to but a house or rent a car or use a chainsaw or raise a child unsupervised. That’s something grown-ups do, not me (40yo).
that sounds like a massive lack of self-confidence.
none of those things are difficult. most people do them on auto pilot. you are thinking way too much.
you also falsely assume there is a ‘correct’ way to do these things and you will do it ‘wrong’. there isn’t.
i used to teach. biggest thing most people have to get over is their pre conception of a ‘right’ way to do things. there is only really what works for you, it only doesn’t work if you aren’t able to attain your goals.
like i meet people who think the only ‘correct’ way to have a child to make sure that child gets into Harvard… otherwise their child will be a failure at life. those people are idiots. the kid will be perfectly fine going to a state school, and maybe even not going to college at all…
Yeah but there’s also a massive subset of people making horrible children because they shouldn’t be parents in the first place. Its unfortunate but it happens.
“When do I start feeling like an adult?”
That’s the neat part! You don’t!
what does adult mean anyway?
like the traditional markers of adulthood as in home ownership, family, etc. ?
or just a self of responsibility?
If we strip the externally-imposed milestones and accomplishment domarisons, we’re left with basic stuff like the skills required to cope in a society with other individuals, make decisions and be responsible for those decisions, and manage (not achieve, but manage) basic needs.
It’s bullshit, but that’s close, right?
when I ask myself whether others - or me too - are achieving these intrinsic requirements, I’m not often impressed. But that’s a target to work toward, anyway.
No it’s not bullshit. I just don’t see those skills as adult. i had them at like six years old.
but i will admit most people probably didn’t have the level of self-determination i had from a very young age. and i meet people regularly in my 30s/40s now who still lack a lot of basic life-skills like understanding the consequences of their actions, and who seem to be eternally seeking some sort of parental figure to do their executive functioning for them. Whether it be a partner as a parent, or a self-help guru who has the ‘answers’.
Sounds like we’re all in the same boat here.
Adulting is an illusion.
Never really have. Around 8 or 9, I stopped wanting to get any older and since then I’ve always felt like I was pretending to be my age rather than being it.
I understand that a lot of other adults are also pretending, but I’ve all but ceased to be able to keep up the charade.
For example, I own a house, and even managed to look after things for a while, but that was a struggle and there’s no way current me is up to any of that.
I envy others’ strength and ability.
what if you were never pretending, and you simply are your age.
I feel like I came at this from another direction. In my twenties I cut my foot pretty bad on a rusty screw so I went to the hospital and got stitches. The doctor didn’t prescribe me an antibiotic and I foolishly thought “oh they’re a doctor, I must not need one!” I of course got a pretty bad infection within a few days that required me to be on IV antibiotics for several days. I’m lucky I didn’t need any debridement or worse. I learned through that experience that nobody knows what the fuck is going on and you cannot count on “adults” because we generally know fuck-all.
people make mistakes. doctors are imperfect.
Yeah, that was the point of my story…
I’m in my 40s and I still don’t get it. I keep asking myself when my life as an independent adult who has my own place to live and access to decent transportation will begin.
why don’t you have those things?
i’ve had those things since i was 18.
- I have a disability that prevents me from driving and makes it difficult to find employment without strong inside connections or outside of a few very specific niches.
- I live in a very large, pedestrian-hostile city.
- While my grandfather, who lacked a college education, could afford to buy a house and feed a stay-at-home wife and 8 children, I, who have no dependents and have two college degrees, cannot afford an apartment in a location that fits my needs.
sure. any city that would be friendly do you would be ultra expensive. i have a two bed condo that would get me mansion in some other cities. but i would never give up the walkability and public transit.
not sure what your grandfather has to do with it, but OK. COL will only continue to skyrocket the next couple of decades.
not sure what your grandfather has to do with it, but OK. COL will only continue to skyrocket the next couple of decades.
The cost of living is exactly why I brought up my grandfather.
We (millennials and younger) were sold a bill of goods by our baby boomer parents.
“Go to college,” they said, “and you’ll get a good job that will put a roof over your head and food on the table.” We looked at them, with their bachelor’s degrees and owned houses and car-filled garages and hope for the future, and we believed them because everything we experienced during the halcyon days of the 90s reinforced that idea. But just as we were getting ready to graduate, the great recession hit, pulling the rug out from under us.
Do I blame them? No. They said that because it worked for them and they honestly thought it would work for us. But that doesn’t make me feel any less bitter.
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ladies and gentlemen… “The problem”
When I turned 18 and my grandmother was in her 80s, she told me, “I still feel exactly like I did when I was your age.”
I asked if that meant she was frustrated by how slowly she moved (she used a rollator by that point), and she confirmed it did.
You’ll never really feel like an adult, but your body will keep on aging anyway. And you’ll never really get used to that, either.
