Snap Your Fingers and Become an Adult!

[Taco-Calamitous]

So the other night, I was hanging out with one of my best friends on her porch. Often times we drink beers and talk about stuff when we're sitting out there-high school, college, friendships, her kids, etc. That night, she started the conversation off asking me if I felt like I thought I would at this age when I was a kid. I was like "no," and she asked what I thought I would feel like, and I said "an adult," heh. She said she didn't feel the way she thought she would at this age, either; she remembered looking at her aunts and uncles, and thinking, "these people have it together. They know what to do, and they're confident in doing it."

I pretty much said that, the more life I live, the more I realize no one else really knows what to do all the time, either, especially when I've talked to the people who have been much older than me that I worked with. Also, talking with my brother about things all the time; he has a lot of the same insecurities and anxieties that I do, and he's the one who's always been my hero. Every moment takes effort, and there's no point where you can just go on autopilot, like I used to think. She thought her aunts and uncles made it look easy, and I reasoned that that's because they were authority figures to her. They were the ones who took care of her back then, so everything they did probably seemed like the reasonable thing to do.

In fact, I remember thinking that about authority figures growing up, too. As I've gotten older and they say something, however, my propensity to think, "I'm not really sure I agree with that/that that seems reasonable to me..." has grown. My aunt, for example, posts a lot of extreme political stuff on facebook... I don't follow her anymore, lol (though I am still friends with her. She responds to some political things I post and is like "I think this!" And I don't respond; I'm just like, "that's cool, auntie.")

We also talked about how sometimes, we feel like we're still 10 years younger than we are, but then we hang around people who are actually ten years younger than us, and we're like, "...yeah, you're totally a kid. I'm totally not." I hear stuff people much younger than me think or say sometimes, and I'm like, "I remember thinking like that. I remember feeling passionately about that, like you obviously are right now," heh.

So yeah; it seems like a slow, gradual change that crept up on me, but I also don't feel like I thought an adult should feel; I just feel more world wary, patient, and maybe more self-confident than I did ten years ago. I also feel like, as I said above, there's no point that I can really just turn it off and be on autopilot, either; I gotta take this stuff seriously.

So, I guess the question I'd ask is, do you feel like an adult? Do you feel like you thought an adult should feel when you were a kid? Are you there yet, or are you still trying to get there?

[Spooniest]

The level of emotional investment in the world around me shrinks every day.

When you come of age, you begin to realize that the state of the world around you affects you, personally. Then you start trying to influence the state of the world. Then you start getting pushed back by those who do not agree with a state of the world that would be beneficial to you. So you either push back harder, and become an activist, or you retreat, and become an observer.

I am the latter; the more I observe the world around me, the more I am inclined to think that any opportunity to change the world at large is visited upon individuals by a chaotic dart-at-a-spinning-globe randomness. Mostly, you may alter the world around you only one word at a time, by inches, not miles.

So, as I have grown into an adult, I have cared less and less about the goings on and/or opinions of the world at large, and have instead focused my attention inward, to myself. What do I think of what I have done, and what I do? How do I feel about myself? These are the things that matter to me. My family has opinions of me; I take them into account, but mine is more important. If you aren't family or very very close with me, your opinion of what I should be is not taken into account at all.

Trying to assess the opinions of too many people at once is a road to insanity and narcissism. I have tried to keep myself off that road.

[loaf]

Adult is a shit term.

It's some shit term we created to represent bullshit.

Adult is stupid, mature or responsible is the better term to use if you want to represent what adulting is.

[Pete]

I think that it's relative. We "grow up" as quickly as we have to or choose to. Some of us have relatively easy lives where we can sit at home all day, playing games and doing nothing. Some of us are working three jobs to barely make rent.

I think becoming an adult is the understanding that life doesn't revolve around you, and that your decisions have consequences and can impact others. I think it's also gaining an appreciation and a greater understanding for things beyond ourselves.

Turning 18 or 21 doesn't make you an adult. I also think that while I have my shit together, I'll be equally clueless when it comes to marriage and kids.

But to get to the questions at hand, I feel like I'm an adult, even though I don't necessarily have what I thought I would, or be where I am at 20. Shit, I thought an English degree from my school guaranteed me 100k being a schmuck at some corporate job. Talk about being ****ing delusional. I'm getting to where I want to be, but I'm not there yet. I'm still very much a kid in terms of my hobbies, I just like to have beers with them now. Plus, I'm starting to really enjoy golf. It's so peaceful

[Clint]

Being an adult is a mindset. It doesn't come with age. You can be of legal adult age and still be an immature self-centered dick. To be an adult, you have to be empathetic, understanding, patient, and kind. As your amount of responsibilities grow, your state of mind should become less ego-based and more nurturing.

I have three dogs, a cat, a conure, and a uromastyx lizard. I have a wife. I have more than one life depending on me now. That's important. The things I used to do, I used to do for me. Now I do them for everything else in my life.

Overall, I feel like an adult, although I'm still attracted to the same type of women. Interestingly, it's generally frowned upon when you're 27 and still attracted to 9 year olds. Go figure.

[Unknown Entity]

I do not feel like an adult. I still call people older than me for help, purely because they're older than me lol.

It's scary when I look at who I am now. Twenty-four years old and running a store. My mother has been working for the same people for just under thirty years, and only just now got a manager status in the building. Sometimes I feel like a turtle on a post with work, and have moments of brilliance which is balanced out with all my **** ups and down days. Am I where I thought I'd be five years ago though? Not at all. I was nineteen, and the very idea of cash handling felt like a big responsibility, and I'm talkin' just running a game through the till. I think of all the things I used to be frightened about at work, and I laugh because now because they are tiny compared to the little things I can actually get sacked for now.

I had a pregnancy scare early last year that turned out to be just stress related. I was like three weeks late, and the day I woke up to buy a test, the ****ing mother of all floods came. I have never called in sick due to a visit from Aunt Flo, but I left work early because of how unwell I was because of it. After that first week or two though, I managed to convince myself that I'd seriously ****ed up and that if I'm going to bring a kid into this world, I can't be working in a dumbass retail job and that I need to get real with my life and move the **** out and buy my own cutlery and coffee tables, and I'm going to have to sell everything that is worth anything in my room to buy nappies, and... well, it was like reality slapped me in the face and made me wonder what the hell I was doing with my life. Decided to knuckle down more at work, and eventually bounced back from being put on the back burner for my own store and got deputy just before Christmas last year. Still in retail, but nine months manager experience counts for something. Situational things can snap you back into reality I suppose.

Also, I just got engaged two weeks ago. If anything, I just feel even more childish because of the excite. Like whaaat? That's what adults do, and that's like...wait.

[Alpha]

Today I clipped my beard with scissors and a comb for the first time. A few weeks ago I turned 26. 16 still feels like last week most of the time.

[Pete]

I'm turning 30 tomorrow. I don't particularly feel older, but I know I'm a different person than I was at 20. I don't consider myself wiser but I've seen things and have been through enough to appreciate things more. I feel myself less angry about stupid things and more concerned with things that I feel matter now, that probably won't at 40.

That's all I really have to say. Maybe I'll get more introspective after a few beers tonight and a blog post

[Taco-Calamitous]

Beers always bring the introspective out. Or maybe just the incoherent ramblings; depends on how much you drink.

Someone was saying that it's interesting how we can reflect on whether or not we are adults, when the Greatest Generation was drafted into the army to go land on the French coast on D-Day. Something about prolonged adolescence. I dunno.

I used to be really concerned about whether I was an adult yet or not, but now I don't really care; I'm more concerned with whether or not I am achieving my goals, which I don't associate with a certain age anymore. This was a fun topic to see what people had to say, though.

[Pete]

It usually starts out as introspective, and after a few more trips to the fridge, becomes more rambing.

I also agree that I'm not finding myself correlating age with goals like I used to. There are things that I want to achieve, and I'm working on them. That's the end of it. I can't be bothered with keeping up with or caring about everyone else's status, because not everyone has the same circumstances.

I heard a quote once about something similar. "The only reason to look at your neighbors plate is to make sure they have enough to eat."

[Rowan]

aging is a funny thing. Looking back makes us melancholy, despite our current state of mind. It seems like age is associated with some kind of depression. I turned 26 not too long ago and realized im at an age where im supposed to be more responsible now, yet I dont feel different. The only thing I feel is anxiety because I never felt like i had one of these 'snap' moments where I realized I was an adult with responsbilities, it just kind of happened. I think perhaps maybe part of being an adult too is realizing that you can still get along with people despite having differences of opinion. Kind of a specific example, but I get that feeling here sometimes.

[Clint]

People getting introspective about aging when everybody who uses this forum is still really young. And this is coming from somebody who used to pretend to be an 86 year old man. When you reach the age I used to pretend to be, then you can get introspective.