My age says I’m an adult but sometimes I think other people know more about being an adult than me.
As someone pushing 40, this thread is full of people who sound like fun.
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I don’t know how to be an adult, but I know how to be a person.
idk, i do a lot of joking around, but i pay all my bills on time
you’re doing better than like 60% of other adults then.
I’m about to hit 49. We’re just older kids, that’s all.
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I know when I first hit my 30’s it dawned on me in a panicked rush that people expect me to be a mature knowledgeable adult. I have accepted that truth but also know that I am still just as “adult” as I’ve ever been
My body reminds me I’m an adult every day.
No, I still feel like an adult. I just feel like I’m still 24 (I’m 50)
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 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.
It’s right around the time that you realize your parents were just doing the best they could and didn’t know how to “adult” either that you start to understand that you’re destined to do the same thing. We’re all just making it up as we go and hoping to do better than the previous generation. Generation after generation built upon the knowledge of iteration.
So yeah, mentally, I don’t feel significantly different than I have at any other time in the past twenty years, aside from knowledge and experience, but I also realize that I’m viewed significantly different by others, so you kind of have to act the part and fake it till you make it.
the difference between my parents and my siblings and I is that we learn from our mistakes. we try different things, we defer to experts to gain more knowledge and guidance.
my parents didn’t. a lot of people actively don’t and refuse to do so and live with the assumption their their assumptions and instincts are ‘correct’ and others are not.
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).
What if you’re just staggering through because life won’t stop shitting on your family? Every time we get above water something else catastrophic happens. Couldn’t even get our kitchen and bathrooms fixed from water damage with the paltry insurance payment we got and then the basement ceiling and imsulation got soaked from external water. No way can we report that to insuramce because they will drop us and we’ll be fucked into a higher rate. Don’t use State Farm. Cunts.
Oh yeah, and the floors we paid to have redone 3 years ago? Already buckling and peeling. Warranty replacement has been in process for over a month now but at least there’s a glimmer of hope we’ll get something from it.
I’ve started making claim email chains with the state ombudsman cc’d in the first email. Saves so much time.
Will that help with not getting dropped should we file a nee claim?
I started feeling like an adult at about age 30. But 20 years later I still don’t feel that different than I did in my 20s.
Last night I ate two bowls of knock-off cinnamon crunch at 23 o’clock, simply because I hadn’t had cereal in a while. My parents would have sure been like “why? Just wait for breakfast.”
I’m 40.
