My age says I’m an adult but sometimes I think other people know more about being an adult than me.
Fake it til you make it
I don’t know how to be an adult, but I know how to be a person.
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.
Just pretend you know what you’re doing. Eventually you’ll forget you’re pretending.
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…
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.
I’m almost 30 and just starting to feel like a kid.
I’ve had to be an adult since I was 10 but getting sober and having my first kid really brought me back to life. We play with a hotwheels track that we call car thing, we wrestle everyday, we have jam sessions where we switch instruments so for half of it I’m playing a tiny piano. When I buy clothes I let him help me pick stuff out and most of it’s from thrift stores so my outfits have gotten very funky.
He also makes doing adult things more fun, we do everything together so he helps me with house work. There’s the shark vacuum, the carpet cleaner turns the floor into lava, laundry basketball, we cook dinner together. My favorite is making pizza dough with him, it takes longer to clean up than it does to make the pizza but it’s a blast.
I often think of this SMBC comic. It left a deep mark for me and it came out over 13 years ago.
https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-06-24
We are all faking it, we don’t have a clue what we are doing. Some are aware of it, some are not.
For me it was after both of my parents had passed away. There’s something about losing the people who could still see and treat you as their child, no matter how old you had become, that changes things. I do still feel like I’m waiting to be a grow up sometimes. My great grandfather lived to 101, and still often felt that way. But once the “adults” who raised you are gone, you find yourself out in the open and may have to admit that you’re the adult now.
There are two types of adults; old teenagers and grown-ups. I’m definitely an old teenager.
I just realized the other day that one sure fire mark of adulthood is buying a vacuum. Nobody makes you buy a vacuum and you’re not going to die without one. Nobody really wants to buy a vacuum. It’s just something you have to do at some point. It’s a willful decision to spend your hard earned money on something that’s essentially a chore. Because that’s what a responsible adult does.
damnit I’ve bought exactly one vacuum (well, not counting wet/dry vacs and battery handheld vacs) in my life. and I don’t even have it anymore, I traded it for a different vacuum
other than that, I’ve been using (and still do!) a crappy one that my grandpa gave me over a decade ago
I remember the Dyson my mom gifted me as a housewarming present died (sheetrock dust is deadly to vacuums motors, it’s finer particles than I realized. ) And I went researching vacuums and found what the vacuum repair guys on Reddit thought about best vacuums. I felt so savvy buying the one I chose in the end. Yay adulting!
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.
ladies and gentlemen… “The problem”
You’re fine, some days I barely feel human let alone adult. I imagine the overwhelming majority are faking it till they make it. It’s one of those clichés that’s cliché for a reason.
“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’.
Nobody knows how to be an adult. Everyone is posing.
