Do people ever get their sh*t together?
May 31, 2021 3:03 AM Subscribe
I'm the same child who likes eating ice-cream for breakfast, but now I'm 25 and I have bills, and taxes, and responsibilities.
I'm not sure if it's the oft-referenced millennial anxiety, or the fact that I don't feel like a grown-up (which, honestly, could be a symptom of the aforementioned anxiety). I still feel like a child. I don't know what I'm doing!
I graduated from university last May, and I've really lucked out with regards to employment. My first job straight out of uni was at a research center. It closed down after six months due to COVID-related funding issues, but that job launched me into a traineeship from hell. It was a horrible time but it was good for my resume and I've since started work at a boutique agency that is much better with regards to leadership and structure.
So, I have a great job down. But I don't feel like a grown person. I get off from work and sit down with a cocktail and play video games. I binge-watch true crime documentaries. I get too invested in critical theory and sometimes feel a welling depression after reading Baudrillard. I have sobering conversations with friends about the dystopian nature of our current late-stage capitalist society. We discuss the futility of rebelling against the system. Sometimes we get drunk.
I watch the people I went to school with buy houses (I live in an expensive city - not in the cards for me now), have children (my boyfriend is 11,000km away), build investment portfolios (I just got in touch with a broker, no idea what I'm doing there), and I feel like a three kids in a trench coat.
OK, I'm managing everything relatively well. I can pay back my student loans in a few years, if my career stays on track. I am looking into relocating to where my partner is so that we can build our own family of cats and taxidermy animals. I have savings and fun money, but I spend my fun money on things like video games, perfumes, and miniature houses.
WHEN exactly will I feel like an Adult? Is it when I finally stop eating ice-cream for breakfast and gummy bears for dessert (I have normal meals most of the time)? Is it possible to be an Adult who likes cartoons and graphic novels and smutty vampire novels, and spends an embarrassing amount of money on video games and perfumes and dollhouses? Is my development arrested?
I am floundering. I'd like to hear personal stories that are on a similar tangent, please.
I'm not sure if it's the oft-referenced millennial anxiety, or the fact that I don't feel like a grown-up (which, honestly, could be a symptom of the aforementioned anxiety). I still feel like a child. I don't know what I'm doing!
I graduated from university last May, and I've really lucked out with regards to employment. My first job straight out of uni was at a research center. It closed down after six months due to COVID-related funding issues, but that job launched me into a traineeship from hell. It was a horrible time but it was good for my resume and I've since started work at a boutique agency that is much better with regards to leadership and structure.
So, I have a great job down. But I don't feel like a grown person. I get off from work and sit down with a cocktail and play video games. I binge-watch true crime documentaries. I get too invested in critical theory and sometimes feel a welling depression after reading Baudrillard. I have sobering conversations with friends about the dystopian nature of our current late-stage capitalist society. We discuss the futility of rebelling against the system. Sometimes we get drunk.
I watch the people I went to school with buy houses (I live in an expensive city - not in the cards for me now), have children (my boyfriend is 11,000km away), build investment portfolios (I just got in touch with a broker, no idea what I'm doing there), and I feel like a three kids in a trench coat.
OK, I'm managing everything relatively well. I can pay back my student loans in a few years, if my career stays on track. I am looking into relocating to where my partner is so that we can build our own family of cats and taxidermy animals. I have savings and fun money, but I spend my fun money on things like video games, perfumes, and miniature houses.
WHEN exactly will I feel like an Adult? Is it when I finally stop eating ice-cream for breakfast and gummy bears for dessert (I have normal meals most of the time)? Is it possible to be an Adult who likes cartoons and graphic novels and smutty vampire novels, and spends an embarrassing amount of money on video games and perfumes and dollhouses? Is my development arrested?
I am floundering. I'd like to hear personal stories that are on a similar tangent, please.
I'm in my 30s, own a house, have a kid, have a pretty great job, and I still don't feel like an adult a lot of the time.
I'm pretty sure we're doing just fine and we just need to reframe it. Being an adult means getting to choose to eat ice cream for breakfast and gummy bears for dessert. Other people might judge us, but they can't stop us!
posted by kinddieserzeit at 3:54 AM on May 31, 2021 [10 favorites]
I'm pretty sure we're doing just fine and we just need to reframe it. Being an adult means getting to choose to eat ice cream for breakfast and gummy bears for dessert. Other people might judge us, but they can't stop us!
posted by kinddieserzeit at 3:54 AM on May 31, 2021 [10 favorites]
You'll feel like an adult when the self consciousness wears off, and when you have been driven to pursue your goals enough to become deft at handling contingencies.
As long as you feel unsure of yourself and what goals you should be pursuing and how you ought to pursue them you won't feel like you are adulting properly. Typically when you get a bunch of responsibilities dumped on you and end up so short of time you don't hesitate over doing things, you'll stop feeling like you are not yet there. Often this happens when you get stuck handling important things, such as running a business, or handling someone's complex medical care or being responsible for children or other dependents.
Women frequently used to complain that men are just over grown boys and they never grow up. The classic joke in past decades was the woman wrangling a group of kids, complaining that the man with her was one of the kids. The oldest version of this off hand that I recall was from the late nineteen-thirties. Feeling like you haven't grown up is normal, and seems to have been common in the past too.
This is one reason why we have rites of passage, such as the wedding and the bar and bat mitzvah, and graduations. We don't have as many of them any more and the ones that we do have are more celebrations than transitions. Most of us do not have community responsibilities which help give us a sense that we are fully participating and contributing members of our society.
Your feelings are a type of anomie I think.
If you ask all your friends and various people who old they feel you will find the answers interesting. Very often people feel considerably younger than they are.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:00 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
As long as you feel unsure of yourself and what goals you should be pursuing and how you ought to pursue them you won't feel like you are adulting properly. Typically when you get a bunch of responsibilities dumped on you and end up so short of time you don't hesitate over doing things, you'll stop feeling like you are not yet there. Often this happens when you get stuck handling important things, such as running a business, or handling someone's complex medical care or being responsible for children or other dependents.
Women frequently used to complain that men are just over grown boys and they never grow up. The classic joke in past decades was the woman wrangling a group of kids, complaining that the man with her was one of the kids. The oldest version of this off hand that I recall was from the late nineteen-thirties. Feeling like you haven't grown up is normal, and seems to have been common in the past too.
This is one reason why we have rites of passage, such as the wedding and the bar and bat mitzvah, and graduations. We don't have as many of them any more and the ones that we do have are more celebrations than transitions. Most of us do not have community responsibilities which help give us a sense that we are fully participating and contributing members of our society.
Your feelings are a type of anomie I think.
If you ask all your friends and various people who old they feel you will find the answers interesting. Very often people feel considerably younger than they are.
posted by Jane the Brown at 4:00 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
Darlin', we're all faking it. Honestly.
From what you've listed above, it sounds like you do have your shit together - you have a job, you are managing your finances well enough to be able to save instead of spending it all, you have an actual budget, you're making choices that work for you in terms of your future. The fact that your choices are different from others has nothing to do with whether you are "an adult" or not - when it counts, you are figuring out the life that works for you and you are doing it successfully (more successfully than most).
There is no one magic moment which makes a person "officially an adult", and that has a lot of people caught up because they're kind of expecting that. We glom on to "buying a house" or "getting married" as those signifiers, partly because they got way more weight in the past and partly because there kind of isn't anything else. But if you think about it, you would start to see that they don't necessarily mean "adulthood". For example: if you met me for the first time, you'd see a middle-aged woman, and you'd describe me as "an adult". But - I've never owned a home, I've never been married, never had kids. And yet you would still think of me as "an adult" if you met me the first time. So whether you are doing the conventional things has nothing to do with it - it's more about whether you have the brains and self-understanding to be able to make choices that will suit your own self best, and - dude, it sounds like you do.
Because there is an xkcd for everything - here's another perspective, which is that when you are grown up, that means that now you get to be able to decide what being a grown-up means. And if for you, "being a grownup" means that you spend your fun money budget on video games and vampire graphic novels and going to Comic-Con, that's 100% valid. The "adult" element is that you have made sure that you are able to afford doing that after taking care of things like rent and food and bills, which is really, really smart.
You're doing fine. In fact, you're doing better than you think you are.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 AM on May 31, 2021 [40 favorites]
From what you've listed above, it sounds like you do have your shit together - you have a job, you are managing your finances well enough to be able to save instead of spending it all, you have an actual budget, you're making choices that work for you in terms of your future. The fact that your choices are different from others has nothing to do with whether you are "an adult" or not - when it counts, you are figuring out the life that works for you and you are doing it successfully (more successfully than most).
There is no one magic moment which makes a person "officially an adult", and that has a lot of people caught up because they're kind of expecting that. We glom on to "buying a house" or "getting married" as those signifiers, partly because they got way more weight in the past and partly because there kind of isn't anything else. But if you think about it, you would start to see that they don't necessarily mean "adulthood". For example: if you met me for the first time, you'd see a middle-aged woman, and you'd describe me as "an adult". But - I've never owned a home, I've never been married, never had kids. And yet you would still think of me as "an adult" if you met me the first time. So whether you are doing the conventional things has nothing to do with it - it's more about whether you have the brains and self-understanding to be able to make choices that will suit your own self best, and - dude, it sounds like you do.
Because there is an xkcd for everything - here's another perspective, which is that when you are grown up, that means that now you get to be able to decide what being a grown-up means. And if for you, "being a grownup" means that you spend your fun money budget on video games and vampire graphic novels and going to Comic-Con, that's 100% valid. The "adult" element is that you have made sure that you are able to afford doing that after taking care of things like rent and food and bills, which is really, really smart.
You're doing fine. In fact, you're doing better than you think you are.
posted by EmpressCallipygos at 4:15 AM on May 31, 2021 [40 favorites]
I’m 42 and am still learning how. To quote calvins dad, we’re all just making it up. For me, feeling like an adult means being responsible for myself, and doing what needs to be done. All the rest is just different ways of trying to be happy.
I think that real life was always overwhelming, but now it’s particularly bad (too much choice, too much information, too many ways of hiding from the world). I think, personally, that it can really help to focus on improving one or two things at a time, and letting the rest go on autopilot.
Getting my financial shit in order has always been one of the big ones for me. Sounds like your budgeting is pretty well sorted, and who gives a fuck what you spend your fun money on (though occasionally it’s worth looking around and checking that what you’ve bought is not making you miserable once the shopping high has passed). I personally think that it’s a good idea to pay off debt before worrying about investing, which math-pedants will argue against, but I’ve found that reducing stressors is a huge happiness boost, whilst adding responsibilities (brokerage accounts, mortgages, for example) is no fun. Also one single medium term goal is more interesting than seven long term ones. Debt, then retirement, then house. Approximately.
Life logistics is a massive one too. Having food in the house and clean clothes and going to the dentist on time are hard to do all at once. I’m only just getting the hang of this. Dana K White’s blog/books were probably the most helpful, as well as getting things done (which was overwhelming as a whole, but had some real nuggets of helpfulness). I’ve also needed to prioritise maintaining an accurate calendar, and adding reminders onto my to do list (I just forget stuff. It’s who I am. But when my phone reminds me that I the gas bill will be coming in the next few days, I feel like a goddamn champ. Routines can also be helpful, but I find I can’t expect too much of them, as they can disappear suddenly for no reason.
Reducing procrastination also helps me feel like a adult too. Doing one small terrifying or irritating thing before I disappear into a book or tv show can really help (tonight I read a scary email and replied with “yes, I agree”, so now I’m going to drink tea and watch a kdrama). It takes me months to do my taxes, because I do one tiny bit at a time, but they get done now, instead of piling up for a couple of years causing stress.
Finding out what works for me (as opposed to “most people”) has also been very helpful. Humans are diverse, and what works for one person doesn’t work for others. There’s also certain types of personality that like to give advice, so all the “expert advice” is going to be skewed towards what works for those types of people.
Excuse the brain dump, hope that helps in some small way.
posted by kjs4 at 4:39 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
I think that real life was always overwhelming, but now it’s particularly bad (too much choice, too much information, too many ways of hiding from the world). I think, personally, that it can really help to focus on improving one or two things at a time, and letting the rest go on autopilot.
Getting my financial shit in order has always been one of the big ones for me. Sounds like your budgeting is pretty well sorted, and who gives a fuck what you spend your fun money on (though occasionally it’s worth looking around and checking that what you’ve bought is not making you miserable once the shopping high has passed). I personally think that it’s a good idea to pay off debt before worrying about investing, which math-pedants will argue against, but I’ve found that reducing stressors is a huge happiness boost, whilst adding responsibilities (brokerage accounts, mortgages, for example) is no fun. Also one single medium term goal is more interesting than seven long term ones. Debt, then retirement, then house. Approximately.
Life logistics is a massive one too. Having food in the house and clean clothes and going to the dentist on time are hard to do all at once. I’m only just getting the hang of this. Dana K White’s blog/books were probably the most helpful, as well as getting things done (which was overwhelming as a whole, but had some real nuggets of helpfulness). I’ve also needed to prioritise maintaining an accurate calendar, and adding reminders onto my to do list (I just forget stuff. It’s who I am. But when my phone reminds me that I the gas bill will be coming in the next few days, I feel like a goddamn champ. Routines can also be helpful, but I find I can’t expect too much of them, as they can disappear suddenly for no reason.
Reducing procrastination also helps me feel like a adult too. Doing one small terrifying or irritating thing before I disappear into a book or tv show can really help (tonight I read a scary email and replied with “yes, I agree”, so now I’m going to drink tea and watch a kdrama). It takes me months to do my taxes, because I do one tiny bit at a time, but they get done now, instead of piling up for a couple of years causing stress.
Finding out what works for me (as opposed to “most people”) has also been very helpful. Humans are diverse, and what works for one person doesn’t work for others. There’s also certain types of personality that like to give advice, so all the “expert advice” is going to be skewed towards what works for those types of people.
Excuse the brain dump, hope that helps in some small way.
posted by kjs4 at 4:39 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
Is it possible to be an Adult who likes cartoons and graphic novels and smutty vampire novels, and spends an embarrassing amount of money on video games and perfumes and dollhouses?
If not, than me and everyone I know are 35+ year old children with functional lives, mortgages, etc, and and that's fine. But really, the categorization of interests as "for kids" is something a lot more teenagers do than older people. Being an adult is about taking responsibility, having boundaries, etc, not giving up fun things and replacing them with... what? Boomer-stereotype pastimes? Why?
You're fine. Welcome to adulthood; we're all mad here.
posted by restless_nomad at 4:41 AM on May 31, 2021 [26 favorites]
If not, than me and everyone I know are 35+ year old children with functional lives, mortgages, etc, and and that's fine. But really, the categorization of interests as "for kids" is something a lot more teenagers do than older people. Being an adult is about taking responsibility, having boundaries, etc, not giving up fun things and replacing them with... what? Boomer-stereotype pastimes? Why?
You're fine. Welcome to adulthood; we're all mad here.
posted by restless_nomad at 4:41 AM on May 31, 2021 [26 favorites]
Oh, and I never doubted that my grandpa was the adultiest type of adult, and he built as extension on his house primarily for his model trains.
posted by kjs4 at 4:50 AM on May 31, 2021 [28 favorites]
posted by kjs4 at 4:50 AM on May 31, 2021 [28 favorites]
I'm 60 and I love video games and graphic novels and discussing dystopia.
You're fine. Sounds like you're able to handle adult things like jobs, bills, and relationships. That's it, that's all being an adult requires.
posted by zompist at 4:57 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
You're fine. Sounds like you're able to handle adult things like jobs, bills, and relationships. That's it, that's all being an adult requires.
posted by zompist at 4:57 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
The short answer is no, people don't ever get their shit together, they just learn to be okay with that. Getting your shit together, like so many other things, is a lie that's centered in the desire to be in control. But you're not in control, and you never will be, and that's okay.
What Are You Doing With Your Life? The Tail End
posted by Awfki at 5:11 AM on May 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
What Are You Doing With Your Life? The Tail End
posted by Awfki at 5:11 AM on May 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
I rented a room from someone who was a professor, had been married and divorced, owned a home, was over 50--all things that would flag someone as "adult" to many people--but who was utterly unable to understand some aspects of sharing space that I tried to calmly discuss with her (i.e. I understand it was innocent and you were looking for your missing cat but no it was not OK to open my bedroom door after midnight looking for her, please don't do that in the future.)
In contrast, all of the people I know who enjoy the occasional or regular ice cream breakfast would be pretty fast to understand something like that, and to me that's the important kind of having shit together. Having the breakfast or leisure choices of three kids in a trench coat is a-ok; having the emotional capability...less so.
posted by needs more cowbell at 5:12 AM on May 31, 2021 [8 favorites]
In contrast, all of the people I know who enjoy the occasional or regular ice cream breakfast would be pretty fast to understand something like that, and to me that's the important kind of having shit together. Having the breakfast or leisure choices of three kids in a trench coat is a-ok; having the emotional capability...less so.
posted by needs more cowbell at 5:12 AM on May 31, 2021 [8 favorites]
The writer Anne Lamott says:
It’s funny: I always imagined when I was a kid that adults had some kind of inner toolbox full of shiny tools: the saw of discernment, the hammer of wisdom, the sandpaper of patience. But then when I grew up I found that life handed you these rusty bent old tools – friendships, prayer, conscience, honesty – and said ‘do the best you can with these, they will have to do.’ And mostly, against all odds, they do.posted by tivalasvegas at 5:17 AM on May 31, 2021 [35 favorites]
This is a bit morbid, but you asked when you would feel like an adult:
I felt like an adult at age 27 when I had to make the decision to put my cat down. That was the hardest decision that I had ever had to make, and it was sad and awful, but I own it, and I know it was the right one.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 5:23 AM on May 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
I felt like an adult at age 27 when I had to make the decision to put my cat down. That was the hardest decision that I had ever had to make, and it was sad and awful, but I own it, and I know it was the right one.
posted by Ms Vegetable at 5:23 AM on May 31, 2021 [6 favorites]
I think you've gotten awesome answers, but a few things stand out in your question I wanted to touch on.
It seems like a few of the things you touched on are money related. First, the key part of gaining money is earning more than you spend. The more you can stretch that, the more adult you'll feel. I have a friend that lives incredibly cheap, earns a modest amount, but he is leagues ahead because he never eats out, lives far from town, drives used cars, has an older phone and cheaper plan, etc. He was able to buy a house a few years before me, because of his efficient use of what he had.
Second, I see you just reached out to an investment broker. I think that's a... good... step overall, but investment brokers have an agenda, and you can get 99% of the way there on your own. It'd actually pretty simple so I'll write the basic steps!
1. Save ~6 months emergency fund.
2. Pay off high interest debt >6%
3. Max out 401k match
4. Decide if you want to pay down low interest debt. (Probably not)
5. Max out HSA (and don't use it)
6. Max out your 401k (20k/year)
7. Max out IRA (6k/year)
8. Spend the rest on whatever you want.
One nuance/disclaimer that everyone should do if they haven't - usually 401ks have a bunch of plans with high fees, and a few plans with low fees that just track the S&P500/Dow. You need to log in to your 401k, and change where your money is sitting. In almost any scenario or life stage, you are statistically more likely to win with all of your money in the S&P500 or Dow than any other option.
posted by bbqturtle at 5:29 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
It seems like a few of the things you touched on are money related. First, the key part of gaining money is earning more than you spend. The more you can stretch that, the more adult you'll feel. I have a friend that lives incredibly cheap, earns a modest amount, but he is leagues ahead because he never eats out, lives far from town, drives used cars, has an older phone and cheaper plan, etc. He was able to buy a house a few years before me, because of his efficient use of what he had.
Second, I see you just reached out to an investment broker. I think that's a... good... step overall, but investment brokers have an agenda, and you can get 99% of the way there on your own. It'd actually pretty simple so I'll write the basic steps!
1. Save ~6 months emergency fund.
2. Pay off high interest debt >6%
3. Max out 401k match
4. Decide if you want to pay down low interest debt. (Probably not)
5. Max out HSA (and don't use it)
6. Max out your 401k (20k/year)
7. Max out IRA (6k/year)
8. Spend the rest on whatever you want.
One nuance/disclaimer that everyone should do if they haven't - usually 401ks have a bunch of plans with high fees, and a few plans with low fees that just track the S&P500/Dow. You need to log in to your 401k, and change where your money is sitting. In almost any scenario or life stage, you are statistically more likely to win with all of your money in the S&P500 or Dow than any other option.
posted by bbqturtle at 5:29 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
I'm 49 and I had an entire pint of ice cream for dinner on Friday. Not for dessert; for dinner. I love graphic novels and smutty vampires and stupid tiktoks. I spend my fun money on whatever I want because that's the definition of my fun money.
You are doing it right.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:31 AM on May 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
You are doing it right.
posted by DarlingBri at 5:31 AM on May 31, 2021 [12 favorites]
When I was 25, I used to feel chronically guilty about spending large chunks of my free time getting high and playing video games, because those weren't the kinds of activities that "real" adults were "supposed" to fill their time with. Now I'm 32 and I still spend large chunks of my free time getting high and playing video games, because I genuinely enjoy doing those things. The only thing that's shifted is that I try much harder not to feel guilty about it.
To approach from another angle, my parents were unimpeachably "real" adults. They got married because they were supposed to, had kids because they were supposed to, worked hard to stay financially afloat because the kids they were supposed to have required material support, etc. And they were miserable every second of that time, as far as I could tell. There was no joy in their work, in their kids, in their relationship, in their home life - all possible joy became subsumed by their compulsion to martyr themselves, in the way that they were "supposed" to, upon the altar of true adulthood.
Doing all of that for our benefit was no real benefit to us, because they were perpetually angry and cranky and unable to properly connect with us or tend to our emotional, social and spiritual needs because of all the hours they spent working and keeping a meticulously clean house in order to demonstrate the utter propriety of their adulthood. They were as real adults as any adults I've ever met and they were pretty much incapable of experiencing any pleasure or joy in that achievement.
If that's the price of adulthood? Screw that, I will stick to weed and video games. I don't find it easy to experience pleasure or joy either, after being raised by such a pair of hopeless puritans whose behaviours were constantly influenced by their own unexamined trauma and related issues, but at least I know it's possible, and sometimes I get there. Equally, I don't find it easy to examine my own trauma and related issues, but, again, at least I know it's possible, at least I've tried a bit instead of not at all.
The decision to further their social acceptability by having children they did not enjoy strikes me as the crux of a lot of their adult misery, and this is one of the many reasons I no longer own a pair of fallopian tubes. That's not the right decision for everyone, but it frees me absolutely from the misery of having to pretend to be a real adult in order to raise children in accordance with society's demands and expectations. I am free to service my own needs and desires as I choose. And in a way, that strikes me as a more grown-up decision than my parents' choice ("real" adults as they may have been), which in retrospect makes them appear much more like children playing at being real grown-ups, then discovering to their horror all of the ways in which having kids was not like the dream (obedient trophies to reflect back the glory of the parent!). Cue the manifold inconveniences of my sister and I turning out to be actual people with complex needs that they were hopelessly ill-equipped to meet in spite of all of their trappings of adulthood; cue the misery of their adult lives.
At least I am living close enough to the ways that I want to, rather than in accordance with the constraints of the ways that I feel I ought to live.
posted by terretu at 5:44 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
To approach from another angle, my parents were unimpeachably "real" adults. They got married because they were supposed to, had kids because they were supposed to, worked hard to stay financially afloat because the kids they were supposed to have required material support, etc. And they were miserable every second of that time, as far as I could tell. There was no joy in their work, in their kids, in their relationship, in their home life - all possible joy became subsumed by their compulsion to martyr themselves, in the way that they were "supposed" to, upon the altar of true adulthood.
Doing all of that for our benefit was no real benefit to us, because they were perpetually angry and cranky and unable to properly connect with us or tend to our emotional, social and spiritual needs because of all the hours they spent working and keeping a meticulously clean house in order to demonstrate the utter propriety of their adulthood. They were as real adults as any adults I've ever met and they were pretty much incapable of experiencing any pleasure or joy in that achievement.
If that's the price of adulthood? Screw that, I will stick to weed and video games. I don't find it easy to experience pleasure or joy either, after being raised by such a pair of hopeless puritans whose behaviours were constantly influenced by their own unexamined trauma and related issues, but at least I know it's possible, and sometimes I get there. Equally, I don't find it easy to examine my own trauma and related issues, but, again, at least I know it's possible, at least I've tried a bit instead of not at all.
The decision to further their social acceptability by having children they did not enjoy strikes me as the crux of a lot of their adult misery, and this is one of the many reasons I no longer own a pair of fallopian tubes. That's not the right decision for everyone, but it frees me absolutely from the misery of having to pretend to be a real adult in order to raise children in accordance with society's demands and expectations. I am free to service my own needs and desires as I choose. And in a way, that strikes me as a more grown-up decision than my parents' choice ("real" adults as they may have been), which in retrospect makes them appear much more like children playing at being real grown-ups, then discovering to their horror all of the ways in which having kids was not like the dream (obedient trophies to reflect back the glory of the parent!). Cue the manifold inconveniences of my sister and I turning out to be actual people with complex needs that they were hopelessly ill-equipped to meet in spite of all of their trappings of adulthood; cue the misery of their adult lives.
At least I am living close enough to the ways that I want to, rather than in accordance with the constraints of the ways that I feel I ought to live.
posted by terretu at 5:44 AM on May 31, 2021 [17 favorites]
Maybe you're just an adult with imposter syndrome. People who consistently FEEL like an adult are just turned off and over-identified with their roles.
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:17 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:17 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Nth-ing the criticism of a society that obligates you to "grow up" but couldn't equip you with the tools suited to our contemporary times. I think it's part of a con or grift to make us feel bad about ourselves. I'll add that I divorced at 34 because I wasn't the same person at 28 when I married as at 23 when I felt obligated by society to find a long-term partner and to "settle."
I divorced because I said "enough" -- and while settling to accept whatever deal is in front of you looks similar to saying 'enough', they're as different as activity and passivity are. (I'll note that 'enough' is both satisfied by a just-right amount and stopping something from getting out of hand and becoming overwhelming. It enforces boundaries, unlike settling down to accept the boundaries set by others.)
The con of adulthood is society telling you to take on a role and feel established within its scope for that role -- but everybody is more and less than those roles and you can be content doing your own thing without it being grown-up. If I could add a graphic, I'd include the Hallmark card for "You've grown old but not grown up. Well done!"
posted by k3ninho at 6:18 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I divorced because I said "enough" -- and while settling to accept whatever deal is in front of you looks similar to saying 'enough', they're as different as activity and passivity are. (I'll note that 'enough' is both satisfied by a just-right amount and stopping something from getting out of hand and becoming overwhelming. It enforces boundaries, unlike settling down to accept the boundaries set by others.)
The con of adulthood is society telling you to take on a role and feel established within its scope for that role -- but everybody is more and less than those roles and you can be content doing your own thing without it being grown-up. If I could add a graphic, I'd include the Hallmark card for "You've grown old but not grown up. Well done!"
posted by k3ninho at 6:18 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
WHEN exactly will I feel like an Adult?
Maybe never. I'm 59 years old, retired after a lucrative IT career, married, own my home, raising kids, and I still don't. Inside this increasingly decrepit husk I still feel like a 16 year old who has been getting away with something for decades now.
So, don't sweat not feeling like an adult. Just do the best you can at adulting, which pretty much entirely consists of taking genuine responsibility for your own fuckups so that you're not putting the expectation of fixing them on anybody else.
Relevant Camus
Relevant xkcd
p.s. if you're going to get high I recommend doing so with well researched hallucinogens in the company of a small group of trusted friends, at least half of whom have previous experience with the substance of choice, in an uncrowded place of extreme natural beauty.
posted by flabdablet at 6:21 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
Maybe never. I'm 59 years old, retired after a lucrative IT career, married, own my home, raising kids, and I still don't. Inside this increasingly decrepit husk I still feel like a 16 year old who has been getting away with something for decades now.
So, don't sweat not feeling like an adult. Just do the best you can at adulting, which pretty much entirely consists of taking genuine responsibility for your own fuckups so that you're not putting the expectation of fixing them on anybody else.
Relevant Camus
Relevant xkcd
p.s. if you're going to get high I recommend doing so with well researched hallucinogens in the company of a small group of trusted friends, at least half of whom have previous experience with the substance of choice, in an uncrowded place of extreme natural beauty.
posted by flabdablet at 6:21 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
This thread from '19 may be helpful. A few years down the road, I stand by the comment I made there:
I think the real test of being an adult is not how you feel, but what happens when there are Serious Things To Do (take a bleeding child to the emergency room, intervene in an elderly parent's alcohol problem, stop a broken pipe from flooding your house) and there is NO ONE THERE TO DO THEM BUT YOU. It's less about how you feel than how you act.
I am almost 50 and regularly doing very serious adult things, but I'm still as into comic books, staying up way too late drinking beer and lying on the couch listening to records, and playing ridiculous monster-themed board games as when I was in my 20s. Possibly more so.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:28 AM on May 31, 2021 [32 favorites]
I think the real test of being an adult is not how you feel, but what happens when there are Serious Things To Do (take a bleeding child to the emergency room, intervene in an elderly parent's alcohol problem, stop a broken pipe from flooding your house) and there is NO ONE THERE TO DO THEM BUT YOU. It's less about how you feel than how you act.
I am almost 50 and regularly doing very serious adult things, but I'm still as into comic books, staying up way too late drinking beer and lying on the couch listening to records, and playing ridiculous monster-themed board games as when I was in my 20s. Possibly more so.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:28 AM on May 31, 2021 [32 favorites]
Aside from the many correct answers saying that you can enjoy all those things and still be an adult, I'd also say that 25 is, relatively speaking, very young - the very start of adulthood - and you should give yourself a break. If a significant number of your peers have got houses, kids and investment accounts (rather than just a few outliers) I'd say you've got an extremely unusual peer group. 25 is different from 35 is different from 45 and so on, it's not like a switch suddenly flips one day and you've gone from one side of the young/old binary to the other.
That said, I do think there was a tipping point at 40, when you suddenly realise that the future is not an unknowable timespan full of infinite possibility, it's extremely finite and if you haven't done the things you want to do already, you'll only get them done if you make a conscious effort towards them. So maybe 40? But it's not a particularly fun realisation, so don't go wishing it towards you already.
posted by penguin pie at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
That said, I do think there was a tipping point at 40, when you suddenly realise that the future is not an unknowable timespan full of infinite possibility, it's extremely finite and if you haven't done the things you want to do already, you'll only get them done if you make a conscious effort towards them. So maybe 40? But it's not a particularly fun realisation, so don't go wishing it towards you already.
posted by penguin pie at 6:29 AM on May 31, 2021 [9 favorites]
part of a con or grift to make us feel bad about ourselves
The name of that grift, by the way, is the advertising industry; and the reason it tries to make us feel bad about ourselves is to render us susceptible to being persuaded to buy stuff in order to try to feel better.
If you just commit to feeling whatever you feel whenever you feel it, and accepting that as part of the full richness of human experience, then the advertising industry will lose most of its hold over you. Happiness is not and should not be mandatory. It's lovely while it's there, but it's not what life is for.
posted by flabdablet at 6:35 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
The name of that grift, by the way, is the advertising industry; and the reason it tries to make us feel bad about ourselves is to render us susceptible to being persuaded to buy stuff in order to try to feel better.
If you just commit to feeling whatever you feel whenever you feel it, and accepting that as part of the full richness of human experience, then the advertising industry will lose most of its hold over you. Happiness is not and should not be mandatory. It's lovely while it's there, but it's not what life is for.
posted by flabdablet at 6:35 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
the future is not an unknowable timespan full of infinite possibility, it's extremely finite and if you haven't done the things you want to do already, you'll only get them done if you make a conscious effort towards them
Relevant Pink Floyd
Also what ryanshepard said.
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Relevant Pink Floyd
Also what ryanshepard said.
posted by flabdablet at 6:39 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I've been growing up for a quite while now (I'm in my late 50's) and it has turned out to be a much more gradual and long-lasting process than I thought it would be when I was your age. I just gradually felt more and more adult in more and more situations and eventually, probably somewhere around 40, I found that when I looked back at my 25-year-old self I saw that person as basically still a child. By now, I can look back at my 40-year-old self and see that person as less mature than my current self. If you have kids, that's something that encourages you to feel a lot more grown up fairly quickly. But you still sometimes pause to think how funny it is that to your kids you're 100% adult, while to yourself to a large extent you're just a big kid still figuring things out.
posted by Redstart at 6:41 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Redstart at 6:41 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
I'm 43, and when I was in my mid twenties, I bought lovely Polish crystal wine glasses from Crate and Barrel, partly because I found them beautiful but also because owning fancy wine glasses felt grown up. I have zero recollection of drinking wine back then, and when I did it was surely from the Two-Buck Chuck or similar category.
Looking back now, 15-20 years later, as a widowed homeowner with a salary 3-4x what I was making then and loads of money in the bank/401k/investment account, I wonder what I was thinking buying those wine glasses! Each one of them probably cost me the equivalent of an hour's pay at that time! I do still occasionally use those glasses (four of the original eight have survived, along with all of the gigantic matching martini glasses my mom bought me), but more often I just drink wine from a machine-washable Ikea juice glass.
I guess, though, that I was figuring out what I wanted, and who I wanted to be. I'm still figuring that out. Personally I found the career that's probably going to take me through the rest of my working life at age 35; I married for the first time at 39; bought a house for the first time at 40. But ultimately I'm not sure any of those events were any more significant indicators of "adulthood" than the fancy wine glasses.
posted by mskyle at 6:47 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
Looking back now, 15-20 years later, as a widowed homeowner with a salary 3-4x what I was making then and loads of money in the bank/401k/investment account, I wonder what I was thinking buying those wine glasses! Each one of them probably cost me the equivalent of an hour's pay at that time! I do still occasionally use those glasses (four of the original eight have survived, along with all of the gigantic matching martini glasses my mom bought me), but more often I just drink wine from a machine-washable Ikea juice glass.
I guess, though, that I was figuring out what I wanted, and who I wanted to be. I'm still figuring that out. Personally I found the career that's probably going to take me through the rest of my working life at age 35; I married for the first time at 39; bought a house for the first time at 40. But ultimately I'm not sure any of those events were any more significant indicators of "adulthood" than the fancy wine glasses.
posted by mskyle at 6:47 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
Too much emphasis on getting your shit together can lead to constipation.
Growing is what's important, not growing up.
posted by mareli at 6:50 AM on May 31, 2021 [11 favorites]
Growing is what's important, not growing up.
posted by mareli at 6:50 AM on May 31, 2021 [11 favorites]
The decision to further their social acceptability by having children they did not enjoy strikes me as the crux of a lot of their adult misery, and this is one of the many reasons I no longer own a pair of fallopian tubes. That's not the right decision for everyone, but it frees me absolutely from the misery of having to pretend to be a real adult in order to raise children in accordance with society's demands and expectations.
In a world that already has eight billion human beings in it, society's demands and expectations to make more can and should be invited to fuck right off.
There are always plenty of existing kids in dire need of stable and loving parenting if that's your jam, but if it's not then that's nobody else's fucking business. There are also always plenty of potential immigrants if your country's running short of younger people.
Signed: a non-owner of a working pair of vas deferens since 1990.
posted by flabdablet at 6:53 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
In a world that already has eight billion human beings in it, society's demands and expectations to make more can and should be invited to fuck right off.
There are always plenty of existing kids in dire need of stable and loving parenting if that's your jam, but if it's not then that's nobody else's fucking business. There are also always plenty of potential immigrants if your country's running short of younger people.
Signed: a non-owner of a working pair of vas deferens since 1990.
posted by flabdablet at 6:53 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
It's important not to equate financial security with adulthood. There are many broke and poor adults in this world whose finances reflect much more complicated things, both structural and personal, than their validity as adults.
One thing Freud said that isn't egregiously wrong yet: Love and work are the cornerstones of human life. I would modify that to describe what some -- not all -- adults aspire to achieve. You already have a solid romantic relationship and you love your work. These are really important. If one day you don't have these things, you'll be sad and try again. But it's really good to know you're capable of loving and working in your adult life.
As for the rest: everyone else has made the points well about choosing your fun. Dollhouses sound like a very cool adult hobby!
posted by nantucket at 6:57 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
One thing Freud said that isn't egregiously wrong yet: Love and work are the cornerstones of human life. I would modify that to describe what some -- not all -- adults aspire to achieve. You already have a solid romantic relationship and you love your work. These are really important. If one day you don't have these things, you'll be sad and try again. But it's really good to know you're capable of loving and working in your adult life.
As for the rest: everyone else has made the points well about choosing your fun. Dollhouses sound like a very cool adult hobby!
posted by nantucket at 6:57 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm 42. Have a townhouse, some investments, a smattering of furrkids, and a good job by most standards that will eventually kill my mental health if I don't do something. But my house is a complete disaster (like - college dorm room bad, if not worse) and I had chocolate covered raisins for breakfast. I know I'm an adult, but most days I don't feel like it.
However at some point in my late 20s I realized I had unknowingly made the transition to adulthood after noticing my friends and I were having rather animated discussions about home appliances and mortgage rates with increasing regularity.
posted by cgg at 7:02 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
However at some point in my late 20s I realized I had unknowingly made the transition to adulthood after noticing my friends and I were having rather animated discussions about home appliances and mortgage rates with increasing regularity.
posted by cgg at 7:02 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
My points that I remember starting to feel like an adult were:
1. When I stopped thinking of my parents as a safety net. For me this came around 24, although I struggled with it for a while from there. Around 27 I realized I really was never, ever going to 'move back home' and that was sort of the end of that slow transition. (This is not throwing shade on interdependent families, it's partly about my family dynamics specifically.)
2. It's hard to describe but in my mid-30s I took my mum to an event and coming back she was a bit unsure where to go, and I looked at her and I saw that I had become...perhaps not more capable but at least differently capable. (Okay, more capable at this point.)
I think both of those were kind of...feeling like I had the tools to navigate my own life. Not to make it perfect or a particular way but that I personally will deal with whatever gets dealt at me...because i have no choice! I can still ask for help, etc., but it's on me to decide whether I'm going to.
But I also want to mention that at 50, I actually think being your age is pretty hard but also pretty great. You might be tired of hearing it but - what's the rush to feel grown up? Be responsible, sure, but also enjoy your life!
posted by warriorqueen at 7:29 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
1. When I stopped thinking of my parents as a safety net. For me this came around 24, although I struggled with it for a while from there. Around 27 I realized I really was never, ever going to 'move back home' and that was sort of the end of that slow transition. (This is not throwing shade on interdependent families, it's partly about my family dynamics specifically.)
2. It's hard to describe but in my mid-30s I took my mum to an event and coming back she was a bit unsure where to go, and I looked at her and I saw that I had become...perhaps not more capable but at least differently capable. (Okay, more capable at this point.)
I think both of those were kind of...feeling like I had the tools to navigate my own life. Not to make it perfect or a particular way but that I personally will deal with whatever gets dealt at me...because i have no choice! I can still ask for help, etc., but it's on me to decide whether I'm going to.
But I also want to mention that at 50, I actually think being your age is pretty hard but also pretty great. You might be tired of hearing it but - what's the rush to feel grown up? Be responsible, sure, but also enjoy your life!
posted by warriorqueen at 7:29 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
I work with a lot of clients over the age of 65 and over the years many of them have stated that they feel like a teenager or twenty-something on the inside. My parents say the same.
I am closing in on 50 and I feel clueless in many aspects of "adult" life.
You may be equating conscientiousness with adulthood. Some people are inherently conscientiousness about daily chores, organization, responsible health choices, and the "adult" trappings of life such as homeownership, financial security, etc. Some people highly value what society deems "responsible". My very organized and conscientious coworker highly values financial independence, responsiblity, and marriage for her children. I am not as conscientious and value different things. She feels she was a successful parent because her kids are employed and financially independent. There is nothing wrong with this and most want this for their children, but what we place on the pecking order of importance differs. My view of successful parenting is if my kids are well-adjusted, "happy", kind, and contributing to society in more ways than being employed.
You're already a "responsible" adult according to society -- you have a roof over your head, employed, and have a good income and pay taxes. Soon enough, your body will rebel and with crave healthier meals. As you age your teeth and your stomach (and maybe your liver with the booze) will start communicating that it can no longer handle candy and ice cream for breakfast. If you want to be a "responsible adult" in the realm of the stereotype you could make "better choices" "delay gratification" and "practice discipline".
posted by loveandhappiness at 7:38 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
I am closing in on 50 and I feel clueless in many aspects of "adult" life.
You may be equating conscientiousness with adulthood. Some people are inherently conscientiousness about daily chores, organization, responsible health choices, and the "adult" trappings of life such as homeownership, financial security, etc. Some people highly value what society deems "responsible". My very organized and conscientious coworker highly values financial independence, responsiblity, and marriage for her children. I am not as conscientious and value different things. She feels she was a successful parent because her kids are employed and financially independent. There is nothing wrong with this and most want this for their children, but what we place on the pecking order of importance differs. My view of successful parenting is if my kids are well-adjusted, "happy", kind, and contributing to society in more ways than being employed.
You're already a "responsible" adult according to society -- you have a roof over your head, employed, and have a good income and pay taxes. Soon enough, your body will rebel and with crave healthier meals. As you age your teeth and your stomach (and maybe your liver with the booze) will start communicating that it can no longer handle candy and ice cream for breakfast. If you want to be a "responsible adult" in the realm of the stereotype you could make "better choices" "delay gratification" and "practice discipline".
posted by loveandhappiness at 7:38 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm an employed gen-x home-owner, and I don't feel adult enough to answer this question.
posted by pompomtom at 7:42 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
posted by pompomtom at 7:42 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
I'm in my 50s, and I'll say that "adulthood" is basically made up of accidental decisions based on what happens at whatever time you're required to make them. Sure, plans are great, but most of what happens to us is determined at birth (what century we're born in, what country, to what family, in what circumstances), a bunch more is determined before we're legally considered adults (schooling, health care, parents' treatment of us, etc.), and then when we're in our 20s-30s, we're supposed to know things and do things that adults know and do.
A lot of people are just flailing through it, but there's a sheen of respectability and understanding about it. I have known people my age who "made it" early in life, got started with tech companies in the 1980s that gave them many millions of dollars for just being there at the right time, and now have very little money left and no real skills because they were supposed to be set for life. I know people who look like they have a lot more money than they do, because they're in hock up to their eyeballs and just keep running on the debt treadmill, hoping to outrun it before it all catches up with them. I know people who seem to have no direction at all, and you'd think, "poor things, they just never got anywhere," who are happy and fulfilled and just don't have the trappings of what a lot of people in my circles think of as "success." It's all relative.
Eventually, you'll either have your shit together or not, and none of that is permanent. One major disaster can take it all away, and one stroke of luck could propel you into something amazing. Just try to be true to yourself, what and who you value, and know that everybody is doing their best.
posted by xingcat at 7:45 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
A lot of people are just flailing through it, but there's a sheen of respectability and understanding about it. I have known people my age who "made it" early in life, got started with tech companies in the 1980s that gave them many millions of dollars for just being there at the right time, and now have very little money left and no real skills because they were supposed to be set for life. I know people who look like they have a lot more money than they do, because they're in hock up to their eyeballs and just keep running on the debt treadmill, hoping to outrun it before it all catches up with them. I know people who seem to have no direction at all, and you'd think, "poor things, they just never got anywhere," who are happy and fulfilled and just don't have the trappings of what a lot of people in my circles think of as "success." It's all relative.
Eventually, you'll either have your shit together or not, and none of that is permanent. One major disaster can take it all away, and one stroke of luck could propel you into something amazing. Just try to be true to yourself, what and who you value, and know that everybody is doing their best.
posted by xingcat at 7:45 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
For me the whole POINT of being an adult is that I can decide what that looks like for me. I can eat ice cream for dinner or cold fish sticks at 2 a.m. or potato salad and frosted graham crackers for breakfast (true story.) I can spend my disposable income on art supplies, books and tarot cards instead of nice furniture if I want to, and did, until I decided I no longer wanted to as much. Nobody could force me to put my money in the bank (eff off, dad!) until I decided I personally felt better having some in there than not.
Might be a generational difference, but when I was a kid, grownups were the Party of No and I could not wait to get out from under my parents/grandparents roof so I could do whatever I wanted. I mean, sure, I’ve been constrained by the limits of my money and certain adult responsibilities over the years, but I have never one time wished I was “back in my blanket fort, coloring.” (But I do have my own blankets and the aforementioned art supplies, so I COULD if I wanted to and now there is no one to tell me to stop and go to bed.)
When do you actually feel like real adult? For me, it comes and goes. The first time I got a credit card in my name I felt super-grown up (hahahahaha… NO.) When I was 41 my daughter needed a tonsillectomy, and I remember sitting in the waiting room all alone while she was in surgery, and briefly thinking “shouldn’t there be an adult here in case something happens?” and it was sort of jarring to remember in the next second that I WAS the adult.
I still look around at my messy apartment and frivolous purchases and unconventional ways of doing things, and I don’t feel all that grown up most of the time. I'm 56, and I still laugh at toilet humor like a 6 year old and spend too much time watching Tik Tok and make silly noises at the cats and I’m still scared of lots of stuff and I wake up anxious most days that I won’t be able handle what needs to be done. But I’ve been handling my own life for years, with very little help from my family (except for my husband, who is as dubiously an adult as I am.) I’ve managed to keep myself employed and fed and clothed my entire life. I can do most of the basic things I need to do to take care of myself and be independent in the world. (Which is one way of defining adulthood, but of course not the only way. Adults who can’t be independent due to circumstances are adults, but may find it harder to feel like such and be treated as such.)
Obviously, you can definitely buckle down and do a lot more for yourself in life than I have done. Adulthood is going to look different for different people depending on their challenges & circumstances, plus there is always room to learn and grow if you want to (and also the conscious decision not to run yourself ragged to achieve your “full potential” if you are happier smelling the roses.)
But I realize there are a surprising number of people well into young adulthood these days who are challenged (and sometimes defeated by) the simplest of adult tasks, even with so much information about every conceivable topic available online. I spent a lot time in the library as a young adult, finding resources on how to do the various things I’d missed out on learning in my chaotic childhood, whereas these days you can sit at home in your pajamas and Google anything… literally… and pull up 16 articles and a how-to video that will walk you through it. And yet my daughter calls me for everything. Which is fine, if sort of baffling (but it does make me feel like an adultier adult!)
You sound like you’ve got a lot of the basics of responsible adulthood covered already, and you’ll add more as the opportunity and desire present themselves. Meanwhile enjoy being able to spend your money and your time on the things that bring you joy. The greatest thing about being an adult is being able to do things your way!
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 7:51 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
Might be a generational difference, but when I was a kid, grownups were the Party of No and I could not wait to get out from under my parents/grandparents roof so I could do whatever I wanted. I mean, sure, I’ve been constrained by the limits of my money and certain adult responsibilities over the years, but I have never one time wished I was “back in my blanket fort, coloring.” (But I do have my own blankets and the aforementioned art supplies, so I COULD if I wanted to and now there is no one to tell me to stop and go to bed.)
When do you actually feel like real adult? For me, it comes and goes. The first time I got a credit card in my name I felt super-grown up (hahahahaha… NO.) When I was 41 my daughter needed a tonsillectomy, and I remember sitting in the waiting room all alone while she was in surgery, and briefly thinking “shouldn’t there be an adult here in case something happens?” and it was sort of jarring to remember in the next second that I WAS the adult.
I still look around at my messy apartment and frivolous purchases and unconventional ways of doing things, and I don’t feel all that grown up most of the time. I'm 56, and I still laugh at toilet humor like a 6 year old and spend too much time watching Tik Tok and make silly noises at the cats and I’m still scared of lots of stuff and I wake up anxious most days that I won’t be able handle what needs to be done. But I’ve been handling my own life for years, with very little help from my family (except for my husband, who is as dubiously an adult as I am.) I’ve managed to keep myself employed and fed and clothed my entire life. I can do most of the basic things I need to do to take care of myself and be independent in the world. (Which is one way of defining adulthood, but of course not the only way. Adults who can’t be independent due to circumstances are adults, but may find it harder to feel like such and be treated as such.)
Obviously, you can definitely buckle down and do a lot more for yourself in life than I have done. Adulthood is going to look different for different people depending on their challenges & circumstances, plus there is always room to learn and grow if you want to (and also the conscious decision not to run yourself ragged to achieve your “full potential” if you are happier smelling the roses.)
But I realize there are a surprising number of people well into young adulthood these days who are challenged (and sometimes defeated by) the simplest of adult tasks, even with so much information about every conceivable topic available online. I spent a lot time in the library as a young adult, finding resources on how to do the various things I’d missed out on learning in my chaotic childhood, whereas these days you can sit at home in your pajamas and Google anything… literally… and pull up 16 articles and a how-to video that will walk you through it. And yet my daughter calls me for everything. Which is fine, if sort of baffling (but it does make me feel like an adultier adult!)
You sound like you’ve got a lot of the basics of responsible adulthood covered already, and you’ll add more as the opportunity and desire present themselves. Meanwhile enjoy being able to spend your money and your time on the things that bring you joy. The greatest thing about being an adult is being able to do things your way!
posted by Serene Empress Dork at 7:51 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
As someone rounding on 40 with no children, no partner, no land, but with financial stability and a very adult career? The only things that bring me joy in my life are the things that I already loved when I was young: playing outside, reading comic books, making art. I've been doing those things my whole life. I also don't feel like a child; I'm just a person trying to get by, like anyone. If adulthood means burying all the things that brought me joy as a kid that still bring me joy today, what is the point of that? Now, I did grow up disabled, so I never really got to be a true kid, but one other thing I've learned with age is that time is completely meaningless. Letting my inner kid eat ice cream for dinner and stay up too late in bed reading comics is, in some ways, the most adult and kind thing I can do for myself. I could have used a lot more of that as a child. I think most of us could have. Don't beat yourself up for being yourself.
posted by twelve cent archie at 7:58 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
posted by twelve cent archie at 7:58 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
I am 35 and I've felt like an adult for a long, long time. I think in a large part that's because I've known since I was young that my parents and I do not share the same values, and I cannot rely on them to be good stewards of my emotional health. So I just had to find my own worth and confidence independently and deal with my problems without their advice. I think still feeling like a kid in your 20s/30s/whatever is a sort of privilege in a way because to me it's a signifier that a person is able to find validation external to themselves. You may define adulthood differently but that's it for me.
FWIW I eat ice cream whenever I want and I have not one but three active packets of Haribo in my house, which I only purchased a year ago.
posted by phunniemee at 8:21 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
FWIW I eat ice cream whenever I want and I have not one but three active packets of Haribo in my house, which I only purchased a year ago.
posted by phunniemee at 8:21 AM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
So many good answers here!
I think one sign of "graduating" to adulthood is no longer being dependent on your own parents. For those who have retained a good relationship with their parents, there will (we hope) come a time when you can relate to them as friends with greater experience and wisdom instead of as authority figures.
Another sign of adulthood is knowing what to do with money so you can take care of yourself and those who depend on you, and hopefully still have some left for the games and graphic novels and the other things that give you joy. Adults too often forget about those kinds of things.
We are, indeed, mostly just muddling through. Most of the time you have to learn these things through experience. Just as there is no owner's manual for babies, there's no owner's manual for life. We have only the experiences, good and bad, we live through ourselves and of those who came before us. I think you've shown you're an adult by being concerned about your adulthood. You're fine.
posted by lhauser at 8:55 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I think one sign of "graduating" to adulthood is no longer being dependent on your own parents. For those who have retained a good relationship with their parents, there will (we hope) come a time when you can relate to them as friends with greater experience and wisdom instead of as authority figures.
Another sign of adulthood is knowing what to do with money so you can take care of yourself and those who depend on you, and hopefully still have some left for the games and graphic novels and the other things that give you joy. Adults too often forget about those kinds of things.
We are, indeed, mostly just muddling through. Most of the time you have to learn these things through experience. Just as there is no owner's manual for babies, there's no owner's manual for life. We have only the experiences, good and bad, we live through ourselves and of those who came before us. I think you've shown you're an adult by being concerned about your adulthood. You're fine.
posted by lhauser at 8:55 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm not sure if I entirely feel like an adult yet (mid 30s), though I do feel much closer than I was in my mid-20s. Some things that have pushed me in a more adult-feeling direction:
-moving out of parent's home (with zero chance of ever returning or any future help from them)
-getting my first job after grad school and working there a while
-paying off student loans and building an emergency fund
-starting to save for retirement
-raising and caring for a dog (but didn't happen with the earlier cat for some reason)
-moving in with a partner
-learning house maintenance things
-getting a drivers license (though I still don't drive)
-solo travel overseas
-deciding to stop doing certain "fun" things I don't actually enjoy (e.g. drinking hard alcohol, watching movies in cinemas, loud concerts)
-deciding that I was ready to have kids (obviously wouldn't apply to people who don't want them)
Definitely not on the list: giving up any hobbies or junk food.
Giving up things you enjoy to seem more adult is no fun and I'm not sure it would even "work" to make you feel more adult, unless by adult you mean miserable.
posted by randomnity at 8:55 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
-moving out of parent's home (with zero chance of ever returning or any future help from them)
-getting my first job after grad school and working there a while
-paying off student loans and building an emergency fund
-starting to save for retirement
-raising and caring for a dog (but didn't happen with the earlier cat for some reason)
-moving in with a partner
-learning house maintenance things
-getting a drivers license (though I still don't drive)
-solo travel overseas
-deciding to stop doing certain "fun" things I don't actually enjoy (e.g. drinking hard alcohol, watching movies in cinemas, loud concerts)
-deciding that I was ready to have kids (obviously wouldn't apply to people who don't want them)
Definitely not on the list: giving up any hobbies or junk food.
Giving up things you enjoy to seem more adult is no fun and I'm not sure it would even "work" to make you feel more adult, unless by adult you mean miserable.
posted by randomnity at 8:55 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Wait, you graduated from university a year ago and your classmates are buying houses in an expensive area? I know expensive is relative, but where I live, people often need $200,000 for a down payment. New college grads aren't buying houses unless their parents are the ones really doing it. I also didn't know anyone getting married or having kids straight out of college- that seems really unusual in 2021, but I'm in the U.S. For an American, you sound completely normal.
I do think it's good to start investing now (at least a 401k or whatever the equivalent is where you are). I disagree about eating ice cream for breakfast! Sure, people can choose to eat whatever they want. But I think taking care of your health is an important part of having a good life, so you can have a better chance of avoiding things like diabetes down the line.
posted by pinochiette at 9:09 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I do think it's good to start investing now (at least a 401k or whatever the equivalent is where you are). I disagree about eating ice cream for breakfast! Sure, people can choose to eat whatever they want. But I think taking care of your health is an important part of having a good life, so you can have a better chance of avoiding things like diabetes down the line.
posted by pinochiette at 9:09 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
you have expectations so far above those of everyone I know who is 10-20 years older than you that I don't think you can really attach your anxieties to typical "millennial" anything - I guess you are one, but just barely and on a technicality. 35 yr olds are all adults, and the more they say they don't feel it the more you know they do, and they hate it - but they mostly mope around their shitty apartments drinking cocktails too. you have a job and a partner and your own place (?), and you pay your own bills or they don't get paid. you maybe have been on your own just long enough that you forget what it felt like not to have those things, but having them does add up to a distinct feeling that is adulthood.
Or: You are an adult and have been for several years, but you will feel like an adult when you have to be responsible for someone else (friend, partner, cat, parent, even a child) and realize that their life is in your hands and nobody will step in to save them from you if you make the wrong decision.
Or you will feel like an adult when your parents are all dead. Or you will feel like an adult when you realize all the powerful people in your life are your own age or younger. Or for no reason. Any of these can happen at any time. As long as you behave like an adult, you can feel however you like, and your hobbies have no bearing on it.
when it feels more natural to answer questions like this with some bullshit & a sense of authority, because you know nobody else knows any better than you, than to ask them, that feels like adulthood. frankly it's nothing to write home about.
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:21 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Or: You are an adult and have been for several years, but you will feel like an adult when you have to be responsible for someone else (friend, partner, cat, parent, even a child) and realize that their life is in your hands and nobody will step in to save them from you if you make the wrong decision.
Or you will feel like an adult when your parents are all dead. Or you will feel like an adult when you realize all the powerful people in your life are your own age or younger. Or for no reason. Any of these can happen at any time. As long as you behave like an adult, you can feel however you like, and your hobbies have no bearing on it.
when it feels more natural to answer questions like this with some bullshit & a sense of authority, because you know nobody else knows any better than you, than to ask them, that feels like adulthood. frankly it's nothing to write home about.
posted by queenofbithynia at 9:21 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Someone (I sadly can't remember who) once said something like, "being grown up is not pretending that you didn't see the cat vomit on the floor." Which is good advice. If you clean up the cat vomit while wearing an anime costume and rocking out to music that's too cool me, it's all good.
As faculty at a fancy university who advises young people weekly, I have never once felt like an adult. Being an adult is like being a drag performer or puppeteer. It's a role. Not spending time doing things that make you feel sad afterward and don't hurt anyone else is a goal I wish most adults would follow. Including me. Sympathy and best wishes.
posted by eotvos at 9:39 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
As faculty at a fancy university who advises young people weekly, I have never once felt like an adult. Being an adult is like being a drag performer or puppeteer. It's a role. Not spending time doing things that make you feel sad afterward and don't hurt anyone else is a goal I wish most adults would follow. Including me. Sympathy and best wishes.
posted by eotvos at 9:39 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
Adulthood is sedimentary. Little bits of it wash into place over time. You become a mosaic of milestones. It’s always a work in progress, always.
For me, I was in the workforce by 18, married by 24, a homeowner by 25, but not even in college until my late 20s, and only back for grad school at 36. I lost a parent at 32, and realized with sadness I probably wouldn’t become one that same year. Each of those things gave me that feeling of “playing grown-up,” and then little by little the “playing” qualifier faded away as I continued to cope with them.
Sometimes the most sudden and dramatic “this is adulting” moments are in unexpected circumstances. My all-time most memorable was when, at 25, I learned to give insulin injections to a newly-diagnosed diabetic cat. Didn’t want to do it, prayed for a deus ex machina that would handle it for me...but I realized a life depended on me getting over my squeamishness. My veterinarian was calm but her patience had its limits. It took me two attempts.
Every time you travel alone, visit a new place, change jobs, buy a new car, move residence, or cope with a crisis on your own, you’re adding a new layer. Every time you learn new information and perspective changes, you’re a little more adult. Every time something makes you nervous and you suck it up and plunge in anyway, you’re growing up. The only way to fail is to stop growing, on the assumption that you’ve done all the growing you needed to do.
posted by armeowda at 9:44 AM on May 31, 2021 [10 favorites]
For me, I was in the workforce by 18, married by 24, a homeowner by 25, but not even in college until my late 20s, and only back for grad school at 36. I lost a parent at 32, and realized with sadness I probably wouldn’t become one that same year. Each of those things gave me that feeling of “playing grown-up,” and then little by little the “playing” qualifier faded away as I continued to cope with them.
Sometimes the most sudden and dramatic “this is adulting” moments are in unexpected circumstances. My all-time most memorable was when, at 25, I learned to give insulin injections to a newly-diagnosed diabetic cat. Didn’t want to do it, prayed for a deus ex machina that would handle it for me...but I realized a life depended on me getting over my squeamishness. My veterinarian was calm but her patience had its limits. It took me two attempts.
Every time you travel alone, visit a new place, change jobs, buy a new car, move residence, or cope with a crisis on your own, you’re adding a new layer. Every time you learn new information and perspective changes, you’re a little more adult. Every time something makes you nervous and you suck it up and plunge in anyway, you’re growing up. The only way to fail is to stop growing, on the assumption that you’ve done all the growing you needed to do.
posted by armeowda at 9:44 AM on May 31, 2021 [10 favorites]
I started feeling like an adult when I was able to genuinely find comfort in observations like, "Hunh, on average I've endured roughly one crushing life event of some kind or other about every seven years, and they were all rough, but I'll probably get through this one too" and also "Hunh, on average I've got maybe X years left, so I can start to bracket out pretty well what's really possible in domain Y of my life, focus on making good on that, and just stop worrying about Z" (since you're into philosophy, I'll mention this is a really straightforward way to read Heidegger's concept of finitude--defining who I am in terms of the possibilities I have, limited by my own death). There's really no rush in getting to that perspective--probably it's not how most people experience adulthood, I don't know--but if/when you do, it's a little liberating. Certainly I'm not judging myself (or others) for having fun along the way.
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:04 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
posted by Wobbuffet at 10:04 AM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
But it's not a particularly fun realisation, so don't go wishing it towards you already.
I dunno, if you’re the kind of person who feels overwhelmed by infinite possibilities it can be a pretty good time turning 40. I love that pretty much anything I do at this point is like a bonus because nobody expects a middle aged lady to do much, especially when she never got around to raising kids. It’s been liberating to know that I don’t have to do any of this forever.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:19 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
I dunno, if you’re the kind of person who feels overwhelmed by infinite possibilities it can be a pretty good time turning 40. I love that pretty much anything I do at this point is like a bonus because nobody expects a middle aged lady to do much, especially when she never got around to raising kids. It’s been liberating to know that I don’t have to do any of this forever.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 10:19 AM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
The only time I feel like a "real" adult is when my children are having a crisis and need a real adult. (Like, cracked your head open and we have to go to the ER? I am, in fact, the adult here.)
The rest of the time I mostly feel 16 on the inside. Sometimes 9. But mostly 16. At a certain point I realized, "Oh, holy shit, every single one of these people is faking it, I don't have to wait until I feel ready to be in charge of things, none of these people are a single bit more mature than I am, and none of them feel like adults."
In terms of media consumption, I also agree with others that it's children and teenagers who are very worried about whether something is "adult" enough to enjoy. I know I am an adult -- however much I don't feel like it on the inside -- and I feel totally free to unapologetically enjoy "kid stuff" that I enjoy. When I was 15 someone being like "omg, you still read $kiddie books?" would have eaten at my sense of self. But now I'm like, "Hell yeah I still read kiddie books! Let me tell you about my recent favorite ..." (And you become an incredibly useful person to your friends as they start having kids and one of those kids is very into graphic novels and their parents are not, and your friends will say, "Hey, what do you think he might like for his 10th birthday, graphic-novel wise?" or "He wants to read this particular Graphic Novel, is it age appropriate?" and you can recommend ones they might like, or tell the parents about the contents so they can make a good decision about age appropriateness. My dire, possibly immature, love of YA novels makes me a go-to resource when my friends are trying to choose books or make appropriateness decisions, because I've already read them all. They have to spend a lot less time pre-reading YA novels they're not into, and can go watch the anime they enjoy. And then I can ask them about anime when my kids take a shine to it and I know nothing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:23 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
The rest of the time I mostly feel 16 on the inside. Sometimes 9. But mostly 16. At a certain point I realized, "Oh, holy shit, every single one of these people is faking it, I don't have to wait until I feel ready to be in charge of things, none of these people are a single bit more mature than I am, and none of them feel like adults."
In terms of media consumption, I also agree with others that it's children and teenagers who are very worried about whether something is "adult" enough to enjoy. I know I am an adult -- however much I don't feel like it on the inside -- and I feel totally free to unapologetically enjoy "kid stuff" that I enjoy. When I was 15 someone being like "omg, you still read $kiddie books?" would have eaten at my sense of self. But now I'm like, "Hell yeah I still read kiddie books! Let me tell you about my recent favorite ..." (And you become an incredibly useful person to your friends as they start having kids and one of those kids is very into graphic novels and their parents are not, and your friends will say, "Hey, what do you think he might like for his 10th birthday, graphic-novel wise?" or "He wants to read this particular Graphic Novel, is it age appropriate?" and you can recommend ones they might like, or tell the parents about the contents so they can make a good decision about age appropriateness. My dire, possibly immature, love of YA novels makes me a go-to resource when my friends are trying to choose books or make appropriateness decisions, because I've already read them all. They have to spend a lot less time pre-reading YA novels they're not into, and can go watch the anime they enjoy. And then I can ask them about anime when my kids take a shine to it and I know nothing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:23 AM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
For me, growing up means to stop obsessing about metrics like ‚being an adult‘, what others think of you, what you ‚are‘, if you measure up to whatever milestones, if you‘re doing it ‚right‘, your identity, your ego.
It means focusing more outward towards the world, less on judging and measuring and trying to fix and get ahead.
posted by The Toad at 10:41 AM on May 31, 2021
It means focusing more outward towards the world, less on judging and measuring and trying to fix and get ahead.
posted by The Toad at 10:41 AM on May 31, 2021
Do people ever get their shit together?
The older I get, the more I think the answer is a resounding “No”. Or, at best, “Sort of. For a month or two. And then it all goes to shit again.”
For a while I found it depressing that all the Boomers (my parents’ generation) and Xers (mine) who I know well seem to be pretty messed up and holding on by a thread. But these days it feels kinda liberating. If no one else has their shit together than maybe I’m doing better than I think.
posted by lumpy at 11:28 AM on May 31, 2021
The older I get, the more I think the answer is a resounding “No”. Or, at best, “Sort of. For a month or two. And then it all goes to shit again.”
For a while I found it depressing that all the Boomers (my parents’ generation) and Xers (mine) who I know well seem to be pretty messed up and holding on by a thread. But these days it feels kinda liberating. If no one else has their shit together than maybe I’m doing better than I think.
posted by lumpy at 11:28 AM on May 31, 2021
Right now, a friend of mine is having marriage issues because their partner refuses to adult. They walk past the cat vomit on the floor, throws hissyfits if asked to do a chore, didn't tell their partner about an inheritance and spent all the money (despite having debt from infertility treatments) Essentially, Doesn't equally share in the partnership of life. So all the adult shit sits on my friend's shoulders, and is causing a huge amount of grief. And her response to it- therapy, talking, trying to make it work.
So my definition of adulthood "if not me, then who". If I don't do it, who will. As a child, we are reliant on others to live. As we get older, we become less reliant. And I think as we get to adulthood, we are completely self reliant, and aware of it. Single or partnered, shit needs to get done, and an adult figures that out.
posted by Ftsqg at 11:44 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
So my definition of adulthood "if not me, then who". If I don't do it, who will. As a child, we are reliant on others to live. As we get older, we become less reliant. And I think as we get to adulthood, we are completely self reliant, and aware of it. Single or partnered, shit needs to get done, and an adult figures that out.
posted by Ftsqg at 11:44 AM on May 31, 2021 [7 favorites]
Why are you concerned about hitting random arbitrary milestones that society sets up as "adulthood" instead of about figuring out what's important to you and working towards that?
In terms of responsibility for myself, I became an "adult" fairly early by Western standards because my parents just weren't able to give me that much care. But achieving mechanical conformity to some predetermined role in society was never something I invested in. It's not one of the big questions of life. Do you want to own a house? Do you want children? Do you want the job you're in? There are other useful definitions of adulthood that people are articulating here, but realizing that you are responsible for determining your own values and getting down to the task of doing so--that's a very important one.
posted by praemunire at 11:50 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
In terms of responsibility for myself, I became an "adult" fairly early by Western standards because my parents just weren't able to give me that much care. But achieving mechanical conformity to some predetermined role in society was never something I invested in. It's not one of the big questions of life. Do you want to own a house? Do you want children? Do you want the job you're in? There are other useful definitions of adulthood that people are articulating here, but realizing that you are responsible for determining your own values and getting down to the task of doing so--that's a very important one.
posted by praemunire at 11:50 AM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Almost no one grows up without a catalyst. You’ve got the work park taken care of, but you’re lacking the personal life side. Mortgages, kids, and other commitments will give you the opportunity, but it’s up to you if you “rise to the challenge”. No stimulus, no response.
posted by blue_beetle at 12:01 PM on May 31, 2021
posted by blue_beetle at 12:01 PM on May 31, 2021
If no one else has their shit together than maybe I’m doing better than I think.
It seems to me that the relentless barrage of everybody else's highlights reels that's become inescapable as social media has wormed its way into the must-participate bucket over the last decade or so has made it harder for younger people in particular to accept that their own bloopers are, in fact, reflective of universal normality.
posted by flabdablet at 12:14 PM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
It seems to me that the relentless barrage of everybody else's highlights reels that's become inescapable as social media has wormed its way into the must-participate bucket over the last decade or so has made it harder for younger people in particular to accept that their own bloopers are, in fact, reflective of universal normality.
posted by flabdablet at 12:14 PM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
You define a significant portion of your reality.
Much of the time, it's literally up to you to define adulthood and live into it.
Btw, I think most people would rather befriend someone who owns their life and would rather eat ice cream for breakfast, then someone who doesn't eat treats for breakfast and abandons everything else.
posted by firstdaffodils at 12:26 PM on May 31, 2021
Much of the time, it's literally up to you to define adulthood and live into it.
Btw, I think most people would rather befriend someone who owns their life and would rather eat ice cream for breakfast, then someone who doesn't eat treats for breakfast and abandons everything else.
posted by firstdaffodils at 12:26 PM on May 31, 2021
So, I have a great job down. But I don't feel like a grown person. I get off from work and sit down with a cocktail and play video games. I binge-watch true crime documentaries. I get too invested in critical theory and sometimes feel a welling depression after reading Baudrillard. I have sobering conversations with friends about the dystopian nature of our current late-stage capitalist society. We discuss the futility of rebelling against the system. Sometimes we get drunk.
I haven't read the rest of the thread but this is the most adult sounding shit I've ever heard. Kids don't do any of the things you're describing. You feel like "a kid" because you still feel the same way you did back then. But that's not "a kid", that's just "yourself". It feels like "a kid" because that was simply the first time you noticed it. But it's just being who you are. No one is capable of feeling anything else.
posted by bleep at 12:26 PM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
I haven't read the rest of the thread but this is the most adult sounding shit I've ever heard. Kids don't do any of the things you're describing. You feel like "a kid" because you still feel the same way you did back then. But that's not "a kid", that's just "yourself". It feels like "a kid" because that was simply the first time you noticed it. But it's just being who you are. No one is capable of feeling anything else.
posted by bleep at 12:26 PM on May 31, 2021 [5 favorites]
I am 50 and struggle with this, mainly about things other people want middle aged women to do that I don't want to do, like volunteer for scut work.
Anyway, what helped me when I felt like a fuckup was remembering how many billions of human beings live and have lived, so many different lives, meaning there can't possibly be one "right" way.
There's only right for *you.*. Of course probably you don't know what's right for you yet. And it will change, anyway. So the only way forward is to start choosing things and accepting that some choices will not work out. But some will! You just don't know which. It's very annoying. Often wrong choices do make hilarious stories though, so keep that in mind.
The only one thing I have sifted out of my life is that, when I make decisions out of fear or pessimism, I regret it. Every damn time. So I don't do that anymore. Mostly.
Adulthood is possibly the state of having made enough choices, good and bad, and lived through them, that you don't fret so much about them.
posted by emjaybee at 12:31 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Anyway, what helped me when I felt like a fuckup was remembering how many billions of human beings live and have lived, so many different lives, meaning there can't possibly be one "right" way.
There's only right for *you.*. Of course probably you don't know what's right for you yet. And it will change, anyway. So the only way forward is to start choosing things and accepting that some choices will not work out. But some will! You just don't know which. It's very annoying. Often wrong choices do make hilarious stories though, so keep that in mind.
The only one thing I have sifted out of my life is that, when I make decisions out of fear or pessimism, I regret it. Every damn time. So I don't do that anymore. Mostly.
Adulthood is possibly the state of having made enough choices, good and bad, and lived through them, that you don't fret so much about them.
posted by emjaybee at 12:31 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I'm 66 years old. I have a comfortable income that I earned over decades of investment.
I am devoted to a video game, Borderlands 3. It's quite fun. I've murdered my way across worlds. "Kill the Maliwan guys!"
But also, I enjoy my garden, nurturing life. I'm quite proud of my strawberries. So robust now that the weather is warming up.
I think that now, only in retirement, that I've become an adult. I actually care about things now, rather than rushing to get through them. A child's glance, the smile from a stranger, the figure of a pretty woman mean more to me now. It's humbling, to realize how shallow I was, and what I've missed.
Still, "Kill the Maliwan guys!" Because those guys are a-holes!
posted by SPrintF at 1:06 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
I am devoted to a video game, Borderlands 3. It's quite fun. I've murdered my way across worlds. "Kill the Maliwan guys!"
But also, I enjoy my garden, nurturing life. I'm quite proud of my strawberries. So robust now that the weather is warming up.
I think that now, only in retirement, that I've become an adult. I actually care about things now, rather than rushing to get through them. A child's glance, the smile from a stranger, the figure of a pretty woman mean more to me now. It's humbling, to realize how shallow I was, and what I've missed.
Still, "Kill the Maliwan guys!" Because those guys are a-holes!
posted by SPrintF at 1:06 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Ah, yes, the wiggling.
I’m a decade older than you, single, and I’m still only a handful of years into my career. I live with roommates in an expensive city, and will only ever buy (and not in this city) with help from my parents.
I had a mini-epiphany a while ago about how all behavior that’s not related to food and shelter are just a pile of cells wiggling. Things we do to try to put the best mix of chemicals into our brains. (Many people have caretaking duties, which may or may not be by choice, which don’t necessarily fit the food-shelter-wiggling matrix, but I don’t, and a lot of other millennials also don’t.) It’s let me lean back and more accurately gauge my participation in systems, whether or not I like how they work.
I recommend journaling, solo-hiking/walking/driving, and occasionally allowing yourself time to muse on whether you want your life to be about something (doesn’t have to!), and what that something might be right now.
But spending your evenings relaxing and consuming media is just fine! Artists would hate it if you didn’t do that.
posted by itesser at 1:13 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I’m a decade older than you, single, and I’m still only a handful of years into my career. I live with roommates in an expensive city, and will only ever buy (and not in this city) with help from my parents.
I had a mini-epiphany a while ago about how all behavior that’s not related to food and shelter are just a pile of cells wiggling. Things we do to try to put the best mix of chemicals into our brains. (Many people have caretaking duties, which may or may not be by choice, which don’t necessarily fit the food-shelter-wiggling matrix, but I don’t, and a lot of other millennials also don’t.) It’s let me lean back and more accurately gauge my participation in systems, whether or not I like how they work.
I recommend journaling, solo-hiking/walking/driving, and occasionally allowing yourself time to muse on whether you want your life to be about something (doesn’t have to!), and what that something might be right now.
But spending your evenings relaxing and consuming media is just fine! Artists would hate it if you didn’t do that.
posted by itesser at 1:13 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Failure to launch: Why so many American millennials feel adulthood is a lie (U.S. centric link, but its generalities cross counties).
Also, another thing to consider is that the images we see on social media are carefully curated to project a certain image. Similarly, we may not have the full story behind folks who recently became homeowners in their mid to late 20s. (Spoiler alert, a lot of them probably had help from family.)
posted by oceano at 1:22 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
Also, another thing to consider is that the images we see on social media are carefully curated to project a certain image. Similarly, we may not have the full story behind folks who recently became homeowners in their mid to late 20s. (Spoiler alert, a lot of them probably had help from family.)
posted by oceano at 1:22 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
This all feels standard 21st century to me.
I am 42 and do not want or have kids and never will thanks to a recent vasectomy, have rented all my life and can't afford to buy a house and wouldn't even if I could, have a decent job that uses my skills decently and pays decently, greatly enjoy getting drunk and playing video games, and sometimes remember to check how my superannuation is tracking but don't really give a shit about it as I plan to get euthanised in my 60s.
On weekends we sometimes drive around and eat lunch or dinner at fancy places and go for bushwalks and do household chores, we go to the gym 4-5 days a week, we cook dinner and eat mostly healthy but sometimes PIZZA, socialise with others when we can be bothered, we listen to music and watch movies, we have cats, I go and visit my dementia mum and hold her hand, pick up plastic rubbish from waterways, like...I'm not sure what more there is? Investing in stuff? Building a fence? Visiting Egypt? Organising play dates and hockey lessons? Clay? Doing something with clay? Spinning?
Life is just a series of tasks and events. There's nothing inherently "adult" in anything that happens. You just get through the morning, the afternoon, the evening, try not to go mad, try not to have too many calories, make sure others around you are taken care of, and don't actively go out of your way to fuck the environment. That's literally it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:25 PM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
I am 42 and do not want or have kids and never will thanks to a recent vasectomy, have rented all my life and can't afford to buy a house and wouldn't even if I could, have a decent job that uses my skills decently and pays decently, greatly enjoy getting drunk and playing video games, and sometimes remember to check how my superannuation is tracking but don't really give a shit about it as I plan to get euthanised in my 60s.
On weekends we sometimes drive around and eat lunch or dinner at fancy places and go for bushwalks and do household chores, we go to the gym 4-5 days a week, we cook dinner and eat mostly healthy but sometimes PIZZA, socialise with others when we can be bothered, we listen to music and watch movies, we have cats, I go and visit my dementia mum and hold her hand, pick up plastic rubbish from waterways, like...I'm not sure what more there is? Investing in stuff? Building a fence? Visiting Egypt? Organising play dates and hockey lessons? Clay? Doing something with clay? Spinning?
Life is just a series of tasks and events. There's nothing inherently "adult" in anything that happens. You just get through the morning, the afternoon, the evening, try not to go mad, try not to have too many calories, make sure others around you are taken care of, and don't actively go out of your way to fuck the environment. That's literally it.
posted by turbid dahlia at 3:25 PM on May 31, 2021 [3 favorites]
Not a ton to add, but I very much feel like an adult. It wasn't having a kid or getting married or having a mortgage or a retirement account that did it (though I have all those things).
I was realizing that neither my parents nor my in-laws are functionally adultier than I am. They are not more competent or responsible, or even wiser. They have areas of expertise, but, then, so do I. As they say, it's turtles all the way down. There are no adultier adults.
posted by DebetEsse at 3:30 PM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
I was realizing that neither my parents nor my in-laws are functionally adultier than I am. They are not more competent or responsible, or even wiser. They have areas of expertise, but, then, so do I. As they say, it's turtles all the way down. There are no adultier adults.
posted by DebetEsse at 3:30 PM on May 31, 2021 [4 favorites]
I'm ten years older than you, and my life (and the lives of most of my friends) looks functionally identical to yours, if that's any consolation. I do feel like an adult, though. For me some of that's just money: like, now that I feel okay ordering not-the-cheapest-entree on the menu, or now that I can treat people sometimes, or now that I can pay money to solve problems, I feel more like an adult. Sometimes I think back to how I "wasted" my twenties but like...I was making $12 an hour at three different jobs, what choice did I have?
During the pandemic time I thought a lot about rearranging my life to maximize happiness, and I've started to make changes in that direction (taking a job with a shorter commute and a better schedule, spending money to solve problems instead of just having problems, accepting people/relationships as they are instead of trying to "win" all the time (turns out you can't win a relationship!)). I think that's good. It might be nihilism? or at least as nihilism-adjacent as a religious person can get? but that seems kind of okay too. I kind of think light nihilism is key to successful adulting; people who insist on everything being imbued with meaning seem like their lives are pretty hard.
I really like DebetEsse's answer. "There are no adultier adults" is, I think, exactly where I'm at. Yeah there are people with different skill sets or responsibilities or challenges or whatever, but the other day I replaced the dryer timer so I'm doing pretty good. You sound like you are, too.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 4:17 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
During the pandemic time I thought a lot about rearranging my life to maximize happiness, and I've started to make changes in that direction (taking a job with a shorter commute and a better schedule, spending money to solve problems instead of just having problems, accepting people/relationships as they are instead of trying to "win" all the time (turns out you can't win a relationship!)). I think that's good. It might be nihilism? or at least as nihilism-adjacent as a religious person can get? but that seems kind of okay too. I kind of think light nihilism is key to successful adulting; people who insist on everything being imbued with meaning seem like their lives are pretty hard.
I really like DebetEsse's answer. "There are no adultier adults" is, I think, exactly where I'm at. Yeah there are people with different skill sets or responsibilities or challenges or whatever, but the other day I replaced the dryer timer so I'm doing pretty good. You sound like you are, too.
posted by goodbyewaffles at 4:17 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm 48. You sound like an adult to me. All of those interests and preferences you list, are, by definition, adult interests and preferences, since you are an adult who prefers and is interested in them. Becoming an adult is just something that happens to you by virtue of time and experience. Nobody who is an adult feels like an adult, because we still have all of our previous years in us as parts of our experience. We're all still children, and teenagers, and young adults, and whatever, inside. It's just..... time goes by, you solve problems and try different things, you accrue experience, and eventually you're the person people with less experience consult about how to do the things. You sound like adult life is going pretty well, all things considered!
posted by shadygrove at 5:52 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
posted by shadygrove at 5:52 PM on May 31, 2021 [2 favorites]
It took me 20 years of trying (on again, off again) to quit refined sugar. But I finally did it two years ago. Except, do you know what I lived off for the past month or so? Frozen blueberries and cream.
posted by aniola at 7:12 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
posted by aniola at 7:12 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
"To approach from another angle, my parents were unimpeachably "real" adults. They got married because they were supposed to, had kids because they were supposed to, worked hard to stay financially afloat because the kids they were supposed to have required material support, etc. And they were miserable every second of that time, as far as I could tell. There was no joy in their work, in their kids, in their relationship, in their home life - all possible joy became subsumed by their compulsion to martyr themselves, in the way that they were "supposed" to, upon the altar of true adulthood."
I admit that this is exactly my concept of adulthood too, with similarly miserable parents. I am not caregiving for anybody at the moment, which I suspect is The True Adulthood. I never had kids and never will, I'll never get into another relationship again (not what I wanted, but my life ain't going that way). I'm immature AF even according to my therapist, and a lot of people my age actually look sad and tired and meanwhile I look and act like a kid. I maintain a job and pay the rent and have health insurance and a car, so I manage that level of adulthood. But I don't feel like an adult because I'm not dragged down tired and exhausted from taking care of other people, which is what Real Adulthood is. Real Adulthood is nothing but chores, caregiving, and having a mortgage.
Obviously I'm not doing that one and never will. At least my life's more fun than that, right? Yeah, my job drags me down and I'll never do my dreams because of adult reality, but I have certainly done the ice cream dinner thing, I bought a ton of yarn this week and I spend a lot of time pondering costumes or well, whatever. Adulthood isn't as awful as I was expecting, in the end.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:22 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I admit that this is exactly my concept of adulthood too, with similarly miserable parents. I am not caregiving for anybody at the moment, which I suspect is The True Adulthood. I never had kids and never will, I'll never get into another relationship again (not what I wanted, but my life ain't going that way). I'm immature AF even according to my therapist, and a lot of people my age actually look sad and tired and meanwhile I look and act like a kid. I maintain a job and pay the rent and have health insurance and a car, so I manage that level of adulthood. But I don't feel like an adult because I'm not dragged down tired and exhausted from taking care of other people, which is what Real Adulthood is. Real Adulthood is nothing but chores, caregiving, and having a mortgage.
Obviously I'm not doing that one and never will. At least my life's more fun than that, right? Yeah, my job drags me down and I'll never do my dreams because of adult reality, but I have certainly done the ice cream dinner thing, I bought a ton of yarn this week and I spend a lot of time pondering costumes or well, whatever. Adulthood isn't as awful as I was expecting, in the end.
posted by jenfullmoon at 8:22 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
I'm an adult with my shit reasonably together and a good bit older than you. And what I learned is that my "shit together" doesn't and can't look like my parents' generation's "shit together" (even more so for queer people). Everyone my age has had to just figure it out as we went along. None of us had some magic secret spell, we all just did our thing and ended up where we ended up.
If you look back on it now you can say "oh this choice was good, that choice was not so good" but I really think in many cases we couldn't have known at the time.
Lots of us are cheerfully still enjoying music or pastimes from our teens and twenties. Until recently it was really normal that elderly people would still be walking about in fashions from their teens and twenties, which we would all think of as "old people clothes" but which at one time had been young people clothes.
posted by quacks like a duck at 10:33 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
If you look back on it now you can say "oh this choice was good, that choice was not so good" but I really think in many cases we couldn't have known at the time.
Lots of us are cheerfully still enjoying music or pastimes from our teens and twenties. Until recently it was really normal that elderly people would still be walking about in fashions from their teens and twenties, which we would all think of as "old people clothes" but which at one time had been young people clothes.
posted by quacks like a duck at 10:33 PM on May 31, 2021 [1 favorite]
Once when we were staying with my partner's 98 year old grandpa, I came downstairs in the morning to find him eating ice cream for breakfast. He looked guilty, I left the room. When I came back five minutes later he'd swapped the ice cream for a really sad looking bowl of oatmeal.
I'm 100% certain he eats ice cream for breakfast when his annoying adult grand kids are not around.
posted by EllaEm at 7:25 AM on June 1, 2021 [9 favorites]
I'm 100% certain he eats ice cream for breakfast when his annoying adult grand kids are not around.
posted by EllaEm at 7:25 AM on June 1, 2021 [9 favorites]
I have way less free time now (at 38) than I did at 25 due to family/job/home commitments, but I feel like that's about it. Maybe increased obligations to others are one sign of what people consider to be "adulthood," but it hasn't created a paradigm shift in what I enjoy doing or thinking about, at least not yet.
posted by AndrewInDC at 1:51 PM on June 1, 2021
posted by AndrewInDC at 1:51 PM on June 1, 2021
WHEN exactly will I feel like an Adult?
If you are doing funeral/memorial arrangements for other people, that has a way of making you feel like an adult. (At the same time you can also feel very small and helpless in the universe, but adulthood requires a certain amount of getting used to being two contradictory things at once)
I can't exactly say I recommend it though. Maybe try preplanning your own memorial arrangements? Write a will and work on your end of life medical paperwork while you are at it. Maybe it won't make you feel like an adult, but if you ever need someone else to make medical decisions for you or show a paper to visit you in the hospital, you'll have that taken care of already, so it's still a good thing to do.
posted by yohko at 2:28 PM on June 1, 2021
If you are doing funeral/memorial arrangements for other people, that has a way of making you feel like an adult. (At the same time you can also feel very small and helpless in the universe, but adulthood requires a certain amount of getting used to being two contradictory things at once)
I can't exactly say I recommend it though. Maybe try preplanning your own memorial arrangements? Write a will and work on your end of life medical paperwork while you are at it. Maybe it won't make you feel like an adult, but if you ever need someone else to make medical decisions for you or show a paper to visit you in the hospital, you'll have that taken care of already, so it's still a good thing to do.
posted by yohko at 2:28 PM on June 1, 2021
Have you heard the story about the priest who is asked what wisdom he has learned after many years of hearing confessions? The priest answered "Yes, there's no such thing as an adult."
I'm in my late 30's with kids, spouse, job, house, etc. and still feel like I'm totally faking it every day. For me, having kids sort of forces me into acting like an adult while they are looking, because that's what they need from me. What blows my mind is thinking that probably my mom was doing the same for me at that age. Like, my mental picture of an adult was formed by watching my parents, who were in some sense performing adulthood because they knew I was watching. Some days it feels like it's all a big scam, but I want to be a good mom so I just keep on doing what I need to do in the ways that seem important. It's kind of the same to a lesser extent with the other people I care about in my life. My husband needs me to be a functioning adult in some ways, so do my parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, coworkers.
You sound pretty dang grown up to me. This might be one of those things where what matters is how you act, more than how you feel inside. And it sounds like you have your shit together as much as you need to. Be who you want to be, you are enough.
posted by beandip at 3:18 PM on June 1, 2021
I'm in my late 30's with kids, spouse, job, house, etc. and still feel like I'm totally faking it every day. For me, having kids sort of forces me into acting like an adult while they are looking, because that's what they need from me. What blows my mind is thinking that probably my mom was doing the same for me at that age. Like, my mental picture of an adult was formed by watching my parents, who were in some sense performing adulthood because they knew I was watching. Some days it feels like it's all a big scam, but I want to be a good mom so I just keep on doing what I need to do in the ways that seem important. It's kind of the same to a lesser extent with the other people I care about in my life. My husband needs me to be a functioning adult in some ways, so do my parents, siblings, friends, neighbors, coworkers.
You sound pretty dang grown up to me. This might be one of those things where what matters is how you act, more than how you feel inside. And it sounds like you have your shit together as much as you need to. Be who you want to be, you are enough.
posted by beandip at 3:18 PM on June 1, 2021
Honestly the times I have felt most adult is when I have spent time working with teenagers. They believe you to be OLD no matter how young of an adult you are and aren’t afraid to let you know it both implicitly and explicitly. They’ll tell you what’s popular and you’ll have never heard of it or won’t know much about it. That and you leave interactions thinking “Man, I’m glad I’m not a teenager anymore...”
posted by donut_princess at 3:59 AM on June 2, 2021
posted by donut_princess at 3:59 AM on June 2, 2021
It sounds like you don't have any particular goals. I think you might be happier if you set some goals for yourself. Things like: Make my house nicer by decorating a room, Learn to make some Tasty Food Item, Learn a new Language, Read more books, Learn to play an Instrument, Learn to play Darts, Get involved in Climate Crisis, Visit Las Vegas. Goals can be big or small, but they should be yours; they can be Social Justice or Personal Fulfillment. Striving feels food, achieving even small goals feels good. You sound like you want to have more direction.
posted by theora55 at 6:48 PM on June 3, 2021
posted by theora55 at 6:48 PM on June 3, 2021
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Also, I think there is something very adult about making no apologies for the things you like, e.g. cartoons and graphic novels. When I was fresh out of uni, I pretended for many years to like cool music, just so that the cool people would approve of me... But I felt so liberated after that to be able to say, yeah I don't like or know or care about cool music; you will pry my bubblegum pop from my cold dead hands.
I'm nearly 40, but I struggle a lot with taking risks and managing anxiety. For me, growing up means leaning into things that I'm afraid won't work out. It's not easy for me. It's a challenge, sometimes a daily challenge, not to stick with the things that are easy and known. I wouldn't call myself an adult at all, but I think that trying for personal growth is an adult thing to do.
posted by unicorn chaser at 3:37 AM on May 31, 2021 [24 favorites]