I’ll be 43 years old next month. I’m married. No kids but we have a dog. I own a home, just bought a new car. I’ve worked for the same company for well over a decade. Recently took a temporary assignment overseas. I have retirement accounts.
But… I still feel like a kid. Or, at least, I definitely don’t feel “grown up,” whatever that means. Are there “life milestones” that are more likely to make you feel like an adult? Or does pretty much everyone still feel the same on the inside as they did 10, 20, 30 years ago?
Raising children can make you feel more like an adult, because you have to be the “the adult” all the time.
Since you have someone else’s life in your hands, it bumps up your internal responsibility metric a bunch (or at least it should). At the same time, you are witnessing their child-like way of thinking on a minute by minute basis (e.g. extremely self centered, literally doesn’t think more than 10 min ahead). The contrast diminishes your self image as a child.
However, that doesn’t make you feel like you have it all together or that you know what you are doing. For the most part, that doesn’t really ever happen.
The problem is that people equate “knowing what they are doing” with being an adult, and the two have nothing to do with each other. This false idea forms when we are children and we see our parents as having it all together. When we grow older we realize how much of an illusion that was.
I’m like the OP - 39, homeowner, no kids but dogs, retirement account, been at the same company since I was 19.
I still feel like a child all the time. My house is looking more like Pee Wee’s Playhouse every year, as as I’ve found I have zero interest in traditional decorating and much interest in hanging up concert posters, Super Mario decals and baseball pennants.
For a while I resisted and was kind of *ashamed *of my kid-ness (it goes beyond the home decor) but I guess now I’m OLD enough that I don’t give a fuck anymore. I am what I am
But otherwise, yeah - it’s curious how little changes about our internal dialogue as we age. It is one of those dirty little secrets nobody seems to tell kids. Though I should have realized the truth that time we teenagers introduced my father to the original Legend of Zelda, which he then played obsessively all through the night :D.
Oh yes, definitely, but my mindset is much more pathetic.
I always feel like I’m younger than I already am because I feel like I’m so behind in life that I am living the life of a mid-twentysomething, but I’m in my early thirties. I’ll be trucking around life all fine and dandy, then I’ll realize that I’m not as young as I think I am and it causes a mild panic attack.
Granted, that’s more of a me thing than anything else, but I do feel younger than I am.
About to turn 57 and have to remind myself that other people don’t just see me as an adult, but an older adult. Strangers might assume based on my hair and face that I like to bake cookies for my grandchildren. They would be very wrong. (More beer, fewer cookies, no kids.) I’m looking at retirement and don’t feel like a grown up yet.
I don’t like the health decline of age, that part sucks, but other than that getting older is fairly nice.
I’m wiser, more experienced, more emotionally stable, have more coping skills, relationships are better, finances are better. I know what I want more and I know more about how to get it. I care less about social stigma. My flaws don’t bother me as much and I have a better idea of how to use my strengths productively.
I am middle aged and feel middle aged. I just wish I had the body and physical health I did at 24.
43, mortgage, wife, kids, own a business. I still feel like a kid, even with two kids under my control. I look back at my own childhood and think about how my dad seemed so mature and “grown up,” while I just…don’t. From wearing t-shirts most days (my dad wore a tie most days, to work anyway) and baseball hats (my dad never did/does); watching things like Star Wars, cartoons, Marvel movies, etc (my dad didn’t); introducing my kids to music from the 60s through today’s stuff, from rock to R&B to rap and pop (my dad had one era of music he introduced me to: early 60s rock and roll, “oldies.”); I’m never clean shaven (my dad never wasn’t). I just feel like my dad was Don Draper-like, and most days I still feel like a clueless college-age dude.
Indeed, I have never felt older than I did taking a stroll through a college campus recently. I shudder to think I was once like them. Something about that newfound, unbridled freedom makes people that age seem like they’re from a different planet.
But generally, I do have some mental attitudes that as a kid I thought I’d grow out of. And I still try to play sports when a lot of people my age (late thirties) have given up on them. So there are ways I feel like a kid.
I’m still in the “not sure what I want to do when I grow up” phase, even though I’m almost 58.
I work out with a lot of younger people, and that makes me think I’m not completely decrepit. It’s nice when a guy in his 30’s finds me and wants to train with me.
But, my back and shoulder ache, so that serves as a reminder that I’m not as young as I’d like to think I am.
When I was a little kid I remember Bob Dylan sing “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” I remember wondering what the hell that was supposed to mean (I was like 7 and had no clue what the rest of the song was about). I totally get it now.
In fact, the absolute control and legitimate authority I’d always felt Grown-Ups possessed is so notably absent from my experience, that I’m beginning to wonder if I’m not going to get the Dying part right either. I’ll just end up in some carnal limbo freaking out about how I never could do anything right.
I turned 50 last year. I don’t feel 50 at all. It’s surreal… it’s like I was 30 years old just yesterday, and this morning I woke up and discovered I was 50 years old.
For better or worse, I sometimes try to “pretend” I am still in my 20s… I sometimes party 'till midnight, drink lotsa beer, etc. I can still keep up with most people much younger the me, but the hangovers are a lot worse than they used to be.
I don’t think my personality has changed much over the past 30 years. I think I still talk like I did when I was 20. But perhaps my personality has changed, but it has changed so slowly that I simply haven’t noticed it.
Knock-on-wood, but I am actually in much better shape (physically) than I was in my 20s. Not to boast, but I weigh less than I did back then, don’t have any health problems, and don’t take any meds.
I’m over 60 and am actually in better physical condition than when I was about 20. Well, there’s a number of minor things that I didn’t have then, but for general strength and endurance, I’m in better shape. When I got out of high school, I was in good shape from running track, but let myself get somewhat out of shape in college. But in my 40s, I started cycling and now do it almost every day.
