No, not at all. I’ve always been of the opinion that being old is a state of mind (maybe I’m not addressing the OP the right way).
Actually, I feel more “me”, more young, at 33 than I ever have before. I told a co-worker that I was getting my belly button pierced at ChiDope and she asked me if I was having a mid-life crisis! Nope, not at all. It’s just that I no longer give a flying fig what people think of me and can finally do things because I want to do them or because I think they’re cool.
Now that I think of it, maybe that’s the a sign of being grown-up?!
I’m 30 years old the place I live in looks like the ultimate bachelor pad. My roommate and I behave like 2 kids who haven’t had their parents around for a looooong time. Mind you we are kids who drink beer, but still kids. Kids with good jobs who have extra money to spend on TV’s, Stereos, Video games and mindless things On Sunday mornings I usually get a box of choclate chip cookies, milk and the newspaper, after my yummy breakfast (usually around noon-ish) I realize I have the whole day to better myself in a mature manner, so I grab a beer fire up the Dreamcast and blow away aliens for a bit, scratch myself, then I might go to the bar around the corner grab a beer and a burger and shoot pool. Once I’m done with that I will still have lots of time to kill before the Simpsons are on. Mind you most of my friends act the same way so I usually have company. Cripes I don’t know what I’ll do when when I become as mature as a teenager. My best memory of about 4 years ago was when a bunch of us went ot the circus, I see all these little kids asking there parents for this and that, I just run up and grab a whole bunch of circus stuff, pay for it smile at the kids and then take off running.
I don’t feel like a grownup at all. I am 34 now, with a house, a husband, a child, a dog, the whole deal, and I still feel 19.
I asked my mom when she started to feel like a grownup (or if she even did), and she said it happened when she had kids, by default. Well, I’m still waiting.
I’m 33, and sometime in the last year or so, being grown up sort of snuck up on me when I wasn’t paying attention. I’m not totally grown up, but now I don’t feel like one of the grown-ups is going to come into the room (especially at work) and catch me pretending.
Mind you, some people don’t ever grow up. My parents are both in their sixties, and I have a photo of them from last Xmas. My dad is wearing a cake box (empty) on his head, and is trying to strangle my mother, who is defending herself with a 4 pint carton of milk(open). Trust me, it was messy.
And the excuse for all of this? According to my father, “Well she started it!”.
Sometimes I don’t think it’s such a bad thing to turn into your parents!
No, I don’t. I’m married, own a house, have a salaried job, and I still feel like I’m 20 or so, in a way. I mean, I don’t do the same things I did then, but I don’t feel like an adult.
Take financial stuff. I assumed at some point I would find out about that sort of thing, but I just don’t care. I know enough to keep money in my checking account and have a savings and that’s it. I don’t care about the prime interest rate and points and stuff like that. I couldn’t care less.
I see other people in the workplace who are very into workplace gossip and who know the pecking order of every employee in the company. I can’t imagine caring about that stuff. I do my job and then go home. I’ll probably never be some high powered big cheese but that doesn’t bother me at all. We have employees that commute three hours to get here and stay in apartments in town three days a week. Who in their right mind would do something like that? They’re here twelve hours a day. Why? I just can’t fathom it. My job serves the purpose of allowing me to eat and pay rent and buy stuff and that’s it. Apparently, though, that’s not a grown-up attitude.
Also, and not to ride a hobby horse I know has been ridden on these forums many times, but I don’t want kids. I have nothing against other people having kids, but my wife and I don’t want them. That’s a hard decision to make (and yes, it was a decision) and feel grown-up in our society, because if you say you odn’t want kids you are labeled selfish and immature and your decision is treated as soemthing you’ll eventually grow out of.
So no, i don’t feel grown-up. Sometimes I wish I did.
I own one car outright, and I’m steadily paying off a second. I have a nice apartment, a quick internet connection, a steady job, and friends I go drinking and hiking with approximately weekly. I have a 401k that’s getting fat. I have plans in the works to save up a big down payment for a house.
Most days I still feel like a 17 year old fumbling his way through life. I think I had this pre- or mis- conception that when you were an adult everything was easy and the solutions to all problems were clear-cut.
I should have known better. The playing field changes, but the game is eternal.
-Ben
An addendum to my entry, and maybe a topic for another thread, but part of my problem is that I’ve never had a “calling”. I know many people who are in jobs they decided on back in high school or college. Some knew all their lives what they wanted to do. Some drifted into a job they discovered they were good at and excelled in it.
Me, I’ve never felt such a thing. My whole life so far I’ve bounced from job to job and never found a career. Part of this is because I really don’t like to work. If I didn’t have to work for money, I wouldn’t. I’m not lazy, I just don’t see much reason for it beyond money, when there’s other things I could be doing, none of which anyone would pay me for.
I associate adults with careers, which is sad. I’m not my job and don’t want to be defined as such, but the truth of the matter is, when you’re a gorwn-up, and you’re introduced to another grown-up, sooner or later someone is going to ask what your job is. They won’t ask your favorite band or your pet peeves or your sexual preference even, but they’ll ask what you do for a living. And if you don’t have a good, career-like answer for that, you’re not much of a grown-up. I’ve never had an answer to “What do you do for a living” (until recently) that I was proud of.
At age 20 I kinda do and I kinda don’t. I know I’m in the prime of my life here at college and I should enjoy the hell out of it but I just can’t. I work all week, go to class, worry about bills, clean my house, do dishes, and laundry and shit along those lines. But I still feel like a little kid at heart. I’m constantly thinking about how wonderful everything is and how great it is to be here at college. I don’t know I’d say I’m at a crossroads between teenager and grown up.
HA! Not even close! I actually feel like I blew it at being a grown up when I got divorced. Here I am, 34. I have a job, make good money, am responsible, pay my bills, etc…And yet whenever I feel like it I can pop down to the pub for a pint and a round of pool. I don’t keep “normal” hours( I don’t have to at my job ), I don’t really have anyone other than myself to take care of. I think that’s the key. I am planning on buying a house fairly soon, and yet…I think it has to do with the fact that I have no kids. I don’t know yet, of course, but I suspect when there is a little weirdling dependent on me I might feel more adult. 'Course, I am mortally sure that I will still do things like get in a milk fight with a cake box on my head, so maybe I’m hopeless. I do have a great deal of fun, tho, that’s something not a lot of people can say.
I’m only 18 and I already feel like a grownup sometimes. It doesn’t help that I’ve never considered myself as part of my own generation - I’ve never felt like I had that much in common with my peers. When I was getting ready to move to college, I was spending my evenings looking up cable rates, average rent, power and phone company rates, prices on furniture, grocery bills etc. online in preparation for living on my own… and then I realized I was moving to a dorm, and don’t need to grow up yet. And somehow that annoyed me. I feel like I’m supposed to be at least 25 by now.
Hell & Double Damn NO I ain’t grown up, and I ain’t never gonna do it neither.
But I do put up a good front. It just amazes me how my staff doesn’t see through me past the serious, strict boss to the silly, giggly child I truly am and exult in being.
A lot of times I do wonder where I am and what I’m doing. I have to think real hard about just how old I am. Ooh, my brain hurts doing all that calculating of ages and stuff.
I’m closing on a house at the end of this month but I have no concept of how to be an adult. I’m only 20 but I have a great job in the telecom industry and I’m about to be the sole owner of a house! (something that I’m still having a hard time dealing with. It scares me to no end) Of course it dosn’t help that I’m still a Junior in college and most of the people I work with are 20-25 years older than me, but what can ya do?
Finding my self more sure of myself and my decisions, not feeling it necessaary to consult with my family and friends over things, being able to look back on my experiences remembering some fondly and be glad I am past others and liking myself more than I did not so long ago…these are the things that make me feel more grown up.
Meanwhile, being able to spend an entire day with a bunch of kids doing kid stuff and not feeling out of place, buying toys just for me and just having fun in whatever I am doing keeps me feeling like a kid.
Would I ever go back?? No.
Am I where I thought I’d be? Not exactly, but the twists and turns to where I am now have made me who I am and I wouldn’t trade that for the world.
I was so happy to find out I wasn’t the only so called ‘adult’ that feels this way that I had to join just to say thanks! I’ve never felt ready for anything I’ve ever done, be it moving from elementary to middle school, graduating, buying a house (or two), etc. It’s like it’s just happening, and somebody is dragging me along for the ride. Every now and then, I stop and think, “What do I want to be when I grow up?” and then it hits me: I already am! (Oh, horror of horrors!)
When my friends come over, we’ll sit on the floor to play a game. I don’t think I’ve ever seen my Mom sit on the floor in my life.
When I go to pick up a rental car, I always feel like I’m getting away with something. When they give me the car, I snigger as if I have pulled something over on them. I also feel like this whenever I use my credit card. I have a flash of nerves every time a bartender asks for ID. It’s humiliating, really, because mostly they’re doing it to be nice.
I work at the same school where I went to college, which is sort of a mind trip. I have gone to meetings in my former dorm room, for goodness sake.
If I had one wish, I would wish for an end to all human suffering. If I had two wishes, my next wish would be to spend all week wherever it is that they make Legos, and have all the different Legos from all the different sets available to work with.
Last year, I was going to a football game, and of course realized at 10 am Sunday morning that you can’t buy alcohol on Sundays. So I went to my Mom’s house, and emptied her cabinet of all the bottles of weird liquor that she has received for Christmas over the past few years. Naturally, I took the bottles out of their holiday decorative boxes, and put the boxes back in the cabinet. This took some time, because I frequently found empty boxes left over from previous raids. I have a picture that I keep meaning to submit for the People Pages of me at the game, drinking Schnapps out of a bottle shaped like the Nutcracker. Now that is pathetic.
At 29, I find myself flipping back and forth. I decided a while ago that I would be a grown up when I could remember to buy toilet paper before I run out, and remember to do the laundry before I run out of underwear. It hasn’t happened yet.
I felt grown up a couple of weeks ago when my grandmother died and I had to deal with getting my dad from the airport in San Francisco to the service in Los Angeles and back. Nothing can make you feel mature than taking care of your parents.
I had to quote the whole thing becasue it so totally sums up my feelings!
I am at a loss, thank you for explaining my own head for me!
Maybe I feel like this because I never really wanted to DO anything, I was in sales because it came easy and paid ok. I feel like nothing mow that I am starting over. I REALLY wish I could stay home with the kids forever, I really love it, but alas, it doesnt pay.
I just keep waiting for the time when I dont need my brother to upgrade my computer, my father to fix my car, etc etc.
Having kids didnt make me feel complete, or like a grown up. I take pride in their balanced diet, the good lunches I pack for them, I take them to all the movies I can afford, and to hell with what others deem appropriate! My almost 6 yr old LOVED Planet of the Apes! I try to be a good mother, but I dont feel like I am a grown up, more like a babysitter.
Its so good to see so many of you feel un-grown-up too.
I am NOT alone!
I am right there with you. I just found out today that my bid on a house was accepted. Within the next month and a half, I will be living in my very own home. I start the paperwork and money moving tomorrow. Yes, of course I am feeling excited, nervous, etc…but I do have a vague feeling of not truly being connected to all of this. It doesn’t seem REAL. (I’m 32 too, BTW)
I have a full time job that requires a lot of know how.
I go to school, when I can afford to.
I own my car.
I pay insurance.
I do my taxes.
But…do I feel like an adult? Nope.
Am I what I thought I would be? Nope.
Do I feel like I am where I am supposed to be? Nope. But I’m working on it.
On Sunday mornings I usually get a box of choclate chip cookies, milk and the newspaper, after my yummy breakfast (usually around noon-ish) I realize I have the whole day to better myself in a mature manner, so I grab a beer fire up the Dreamcast and blow away aliens for a bit, scratch myself, then I might go to the bar around the corner grab a beer and a burger and shoot pool. Once I’m done with that I will still have lots of time to kill before the Simpsons are on. Mind you most of my friends act the same way so I usually have company. Cripes I don’t know what I’ll do when when I become as mature as a teenager. My best memory of about 4 years ago was when a bunch of us went ot the circus, I see all these little kids asking there parents for this and that, I just run up and grab a whole bunch of circus stuff, pay for it smile at the kids and then take off running.