My age says I’m an adult but sometimes I think other people know more about being an adult than me.
Our parents were faking knowing what they were doing, just like we are.
This is a good and a bad thing.
There is no dividing line between when you’re young/middle aged/old. It doesn’t exist. I remember being 10. I remember being 20. I remember being 30. I remember being 40. I am still the same sentient entity I was at all those ages.
There is no reason to assign any “age group” to yourself. Be the age you feel inside.
Many of the traits of childhood are wonderful and you should cling to them. Sense of wonder and curiosity, goofiness, don’t take yourself too seriousky, adventure, physicality, etc.
I think I get what you’re saying, that sometimes one wonders if relative to some of your peers of you’re “achieving” enough. That’s a trickier question because some introspection from this is good.
- Are you truly content?
- Is your future somewhat secured? (forward-thinking with finances, career, health). Or are you doing the more reckless Yolo teenage thing? (this aspect of being a child, especially if one has kids, I’d say isn’t good lol).
I’m 30 and feel barely any different than I did as a teenager. Probably doesn’t help I still live with my parents. Although going to my childhood best friend’s funeral on Sunday might shake things up.
I don’t know what the word “adult” means. It’s just a made up term we tell kids so we can guide them more effectively towards not falling off a cliff and dying.
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.
And this is why i argue we cant have UBI, or most people wont do jack shit and the utilities will get shut down 😅
I have times where I want to be lazy. But it doesn’t last long and then im on to the next thing. And I consider myself low energy compared to the shit I see my friends getting done!
i think people’s need for social competition means UBI would be a wash really. as in it wouldn’t really change much.
I want to sit on my ass and be unproductive
doing that makes me depressed and suicidal.
The idea of “growing up” is bullshit and probably stunts a lot of kids growth and development.
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.
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.
Yep. At least partially. Never been able to achieve any of the milestones of adulthood. Marriage, home ownership, kids, etc. Could never afford anything.
Fake it til you make it
I don’t feel any different than I did in high school. Mentally or physically.
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.
according to who, you?
the thing about other people’s actions is you don’t get to police them. plenty of people probably think your actions are horrible, stupid, and wrong.
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.
“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’.
