No Stupid Questions

I'm 42. I have blue hair, watch cartoons, play board games, wear novelty shirts, no I am not an adult. Until I have to be.

Yes. I'm 43, married to my college sweetheart, we have three boys, a house in the suburbs, own a business, take care of my family, and am responsible for everything. Becoming completely independent of any outside help is part of it. Having others that depend on you to handle anything that comes along is the next part. Becoming an adult isn't a switch, it's a gradient. Having kids definitely catapults you along, though. I don't know how grown up I would be right now if I were unmarried and childless, but I'm guessing less so. Above all else, becoming responsible for an entire family is the thing that did it for me, and even that was a gradient.

Imposter syndrome

Same. I sometimes really feel like I'm faking it.

Sure. I mean, I am a adult. I never thought adults had things figured out when I was a kid either, seemed pretty obvious they were just trying their best with what they had to work with.

This question is what an adult feels like.

@[email protected] it is always like this https://i.pinimg.com/originals/38/cb/57/38cb5784e54f1217cf168c64689b1133.gif

Of course not. No one on earth is really an adult. We do not do things correctly here to foster adulthood, being in the service of "corporations" rather than other actual people. Money - dependence upon money - is the reason.

Here's an example. I brought my car in for service today. In the car service game, they have broken the concept of "service" into itemizable, chargeable subtasks. This is not adult, natural human behaviour, this is marketing. The person you speak to is paid to upsell you on items which should be included in the concept of "getting your car serviced" - wheel alignment, fluids etc. The suggestion this makes is that if you do not pay two or three times for the same job, they will do the work improperly or not at all. We have accepted this behaviour as normal, because it's common and we can't do anything about it, but it's still fundamentally wrong and our lives are absolutely full of insulting, greedy, corporate-mandated childish shit like this. This is done not because the business isn't taking in enough money to be viable, but just to enrich the parasite whom is the head of the organization, and to be able to fund third party parasites like lawyers and the marketing department, out of your pocket.

The falseness, the fakeness that is part of every interaction, is the childishness. The reason for that childishness is money. Money is a child's toy, greed is a childish trait, and "Western" culture which has now taken over the world does everything in its power to hamper the development of grown-up personality.

To the haters, no, I make six figures, I'm not poor, but you are being childish again.

I had to borrow money from the bank this year to buy a car. That made me feel too adult and kind of drove me into a crisis.

Yeah. Life is almost exclusively chores and dealing with bureaucracy. Can't get much more adult than that.

Every time I have to confiscate the book my kid is reading after lights out I feel like an adult.

The rest of the time... fuck no.

(They get it back in the morning -- I'm not a monster!)

There are tasks and chores my parents used to do on my behalf that I now do myself, like making money, paying taxes, handling health insurance, etc. I guess those make me feel like an adult.

But then there are milestones I thought I would have hit by now that I have not, mainly concerning family life. No kids, no partner, nobody to take care of but myself. If I wanna go out and party, or stay in and play video games all weekend, there's not really much to stop me. That makes me feel immature.

Yeah kinda. To me being a kid is all about the feeling of things not being up to you, you don't make the real decisions and the ones you do get to make are inconsequential. The past doesn't weigh on you and the future is a wide open mystery. Doesn't feel like that anymore.

I started feeling like an adult when I was 28. Throughout my 20s the thought came up every so often but I distinctly remember the first time it happened and I really did feel like an adult was when I was 28.

Yes but it is not get a job or have a kid: it is because i have sustained previously unimaginable loss yet keep going. that is the feeling of adult to me.

Only when I land slightly wrong or too hard and think my knees are about to explode

Oh, and the forced grunt every time I stand up

I feel like an actual adult when I achieve milestones of my own character.

Any kid can be dragged through the external milestones of an adult life. But a kid cannot experience the milestones of adult character development, because those are the things that define adulthood.

For example yesterday toward the end of my work day, I had the opportunity to just coast through the last hour. It’s a skill I’ve developed, so I know I can do it. But instead I pushed myself to get more done and keep what promises I could to my customers, despite not feeling like it. That is the kind of thing that makes me feel like an adult. No amount of having experienced relationships, earning, owning, or exposure to death and suffering does it to me. But pushing myself to fulfill my duty despite not feeling like it, makes me feel like an actual adult.

I make okay money in my forties, was able to put a large some down on a reasonable new car to keep monthly payments low. Also my back hurts if I sit too long. So, yes.

The feeling that you have no idea what you're doing and just winging it is the most adult thing ever.

Yeah, I do. I got bills to pay, mouths to feed, a job to go to, joints that hurt…yep. I event grunt when I get up.

I guess I was never under the impression that any adult actually knew what they were doing, even when I was younger, so I wasn’t surprised that I am still constantly improvising. This is the natural state of living. You’re either learning and improving, or you’re becoming obsolete and decaying. This is true whether or not you’re an adult.

Nope.

Still just feel like a kid, with extra responsibilities, while raising my own kids. Guess sometime around 50 or so i'll start feeling like an "adult"

Although, at least I call myself a dumbass, after doing something stupid, or wasting money on crap.

People who act like adults are merely pretending.

If I think about it, yeah. I have a good career, a wife, a cat, a house. It just happened so gradually that I didn't notice it while it was happening.

I feel like I'm pretending to know what I'm doing.

I guess that explains the observation. As kids, we're fooled by the pretenders. So we grow up with this expectation.

All, the, fucking, time.

Yeah, but only because my joints hurt if I do anything remotely exertion related. It's less that I feel like an adult, more like I feel old.

I'm in my 40s and married with a kid and I'll be the first to admit that I'm winging it. We're all just that same little kid we were but in an adult body trying to figure out the world. I did get called sir by a younger co-worker and I made them swear to never say it again. Just call me dude or something lol

I stopped getting older after graduating college.

Depends on the point of view I'd say.

• I pay bills
• I deal with requirements and assumptions the society puts on me as a grown-up citizen who brings better tomorrow closer through hard work
• I deal with hardships of my life through thinking, writing about them, cooperation, diplomacy, listening and discussing even difficult topics - also within my relationships
• I embrace the consequences that my actions may bring
• I try to rationalize my thoughts of the world
• i try to be a decent example to kids and other folks

.

• I'm goofy, playful and childlike (you should see my behavior with my girlfriend)!
• I enjoy small, "nonsense" things and they cheer me easily up
• I'm generally relaxed of life
• I get easily (over-)excited
• I am an energetic person
• People assume I'm younger via my habitus

.

So I guess I am and am not, in certain ways.

I don’t feel like I know what I’m doing but I do feel like an adult. The two are a bit separate in my head.