Adulthood

I am one, but adulthood does not feel like how I imagined it would growing up. I have far less confidence, knowledge, and wisdom than I thought I would possess by this point in my life.

No matter how well I recognise my priorities and how honed my skills of independent living are, there'll always be a little boy inside of me.

I think that I am one. Naturally, adulthood is not what I thought it would be when I was a child. None of the surety or perfect confidence that I had expected when I was very young. I have more confidence, and more wisdom, but I have much more to learn.

Yes, although I probably wouldn't have answered so confidently four or five years ago. I'm finally old enough that I am rarely mistaken for being much younger.

White Dog, Book 1 - 12500
White Dog, Book 2 - 11000
White Dog, Book 3 - in progress
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Nope :)

I'm 20, almost 21, and I definitely do not consider myself to be an adult. Not a child either, but mostly I'm still stuck in teenage mode.

I'm 22, out of school, living away from my parents and paying my own rent, and still don't consider myself an adult. This comic explain my status as a non-adult perfectly.

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http://www.sushimustwrite.com

I don't think I'll ever seriously consider myself an adult. At least not until I'm finally paying my own bills and living in my own place.

I'm only 21. I'm still young and have a lot left in my young adulthood.

NaNo 2006: The Clearing of Lindsey (psychological thriller/drama/whatever)
NaNo 2007: ZOMBUNNIE! (satirical horror)
NaNo 2008: Sunny Side Up (romantic comedy drama thing)
NaNo 2009: Candy Land Dandily Dies (fantasy/adventure/kind of satirical)

That comic for me too. I do consider myself very good at acting like an adult, but I'm pretty sure I'm not actually one.

Last Novel: Raven Project
Current Novel: Looking Glass Saga: Return to Wonderland
Excerpt a day

Um, me too (and xkcd love!). At a week from 23, I do kind of consider myself an adult, but I don't want to be restricted by society's definitions of the word. I can take care of myself to a large extent - been living on my own for years - but in so many ways me and my behaviour don't fit the way that "adults" should do things. :D

And I am thinking about Batman at this very moment. Trufax.

´08: Dim Vanities of Dreams by Night [win]

'09: Tightrope Travellers

I am 27 and on my own - I live by myself, pay all my bills (student loans, car insurance, cell phone, credit cards, etc.), get up and go to work every day. But I do not consider myself an adult. I'm me. I just get older, but the general gist of who I am stays the same.

And I love this comic. I laughed out loud, right in the middle of a room full of people.

I'm 23, and I'm not sure. Society would say yes, because I have a job, and pay bills and rent and all that sort of stuff, as well as being independent of my parents. I'm also getting married in the summer.

I still feel quite rebellious in some ways, though I can't really put my finger on it. I suppose it's the feeling that this cycle of work / bills / responsibility isn't "it", and isn't all that there is, even if I don't know what the alternative is just yet.

My boyfriend and I are living together, we rent a house, I sort out the paying of rent, bills, I drive to and from my full time job every day and we look after ourselves, our belongings and our house.

But this evening, we went outside in the freezing cold, turned on our fairy lights in the back garden and played with sparklers.

I don't consider myself an adult. I have responsibilities, but I still feel like a child inside. When something goes wrong, my first instinct is to run to my mum (who lives 200 miles away.)

Imagination is the one weapon in the war against reality

I find it hilarious that I replied right after you, sushi!

NaNo 2006: The Clearing of Lindsey (psychological thriller/drama/whatever)
NaNo 2007: ZOMBUNNIE! (satirical horror)
NaNo 2008: Sunny Side Up (romantic comedy drama thing)
NaNo 2009: Candy Land Dandily Dies (fantasy/adventure/kind of satirical)

I'm 24 going on 9.

In other words, I may be an adult in body. Inside though, I'm all kid.

I'm 28. Am I an adult? Yes on all counts although I don't always feel like one. There are still times when I seek the advice of my parents. I don't earn very much, I am in my last semester of grad school and I work two jobs. Nobody has helped me pay the bills in years. I worry about money and the future but some days would rather lay around in my pajamas than get up and go to work. I certainly have a more active imagination than a lot of my friends. The teenagers I teach view me as an adult but if I walk around school in jeans and a t-shirt I'm occasionally mistaken for a student. I don't view myself as as much an adult as some of my friends who are married, parents and homeowners - those are concerns that haven't appeared on my radar yet.

That’s a great comic lol.

I’m 22 and I’m definitely not an adult. Yes, I am done with school, yes, I pay my own rent etc., but that doesn’t make me a grownup. I’m irresponsible. I like moonbounces. My friends and I got plastic swords and then hunted for dragons in my roommate's bedroom. The librarian at the local library saw me looking at teen books and offered me a snack. I play with squirt guns. I have Spongebob Squarepans posters in my room. I still go trick-or-treating, and I bring silly string just in case someone says I’m too old. So far no one has. I think some people my age are adults, but they’re the ones who have already had kids and stuff.

I have another question: Do you want to grow up? I don’t.

Adult? Me? Hah. I still buy action figures off eBay and have been known to spend entire paychecks on video games. Heck, I just bought myself a poster of one of my favorite old animated series (ReBoot!) to put in my room. Granted, I'm *only* 21, and I still live at home for now. I help pay bills and am saving up to eventually have the money to marry and move in with (in that order) my boyfriend, but I really don't feel anything like an adult. I'm pretty much just a teenager who's not in high school anymore, y'know? Which is just lame because I *liked* high school.

I'll be a lot more on-board with this whole "adult" thing once I'm married and have a kid, I think. I'll still always be a kid at heart myself, though!

Original Fiction/NaNo Journal | tiesuchaknot.livejournal.com

"Drama, instead of telling us the whole of a man's life, must place him in such a situation, tie such a knot, that when it is untied, the whole man is visible." ~Leo Tolstoy

Society would probably say so. I live thousands from miles from my family, support myself, been in the military for three years and am preparing for my first deployment downrange.

Then I looked around my room. There's a small Lego dragon on my dresser, D&D figures from a miniatures set on my windowsill, a stuffed yellow bear on the aforementioned dresser. The rest of the extensive Lego dragon collection is at home stored at my mother's place.

The best answer I can give - "I'm an adult when I have to be."

Like so many others, I think yes, but sort of only by default. I'm 26 - I have a fiancee, a flat, a job. I also have a bunch of Lord of the Rings action figures and a generally childish approach to a lot of things. I most definitely haven't got it all figured out yet.

Hmmm. I'm 24, University dropout, twice (don't ask) living at home, working for my dad, paying off my student loan and I've never been in a romantic relationship (significant or casual). So, quite frankly I don't even consider myself a human being much less an adult :(

Please feel free to add comment or suggestions to my Nano '09 project here - http://www.nanowrimo.org/eng/node/3307390

Adulthood is overrated.
My best friend and I still go to playgrounds to use the swings, balance on cut-down trees, I read children's books and watch children's movies, I still bring my little panda teddy when I'm travelling alone. If the space under my bed weren't completely filled with boxes, I'd probably still build "caves" under it.
I'm still living with my mother and brothers, still don't know how to cook, am only just learning to drive, just finished my apprenticeship, never had a real boyfriend (only one sort-of kind-of bf when I was, what, 16) so all this doesn't help with feeling like an adult.
The only thing that does make me feel like an adult is the contrast with many of the other apprentices at work, and my classmates at vocational school. They're still such kids. For them, instructors and teachers are still practically gods, while to me, they're people, plain and simple. They might have something to teach me, but that doesn't make them better than me. And so often, I'm the one to teach the younger apprentices something, to give them advice, to speak up for them if they're treated unfairly - just this week, one of them told me she supposes that among us girls, I'm the one with the most self-confidence. I wanted to laugh - me, selfconfident? But I suppose I have, at least, become good at pretending I'm self-confident.
And in contrast to them, I also see the things I have to learn/do not as something someone is forcing on me, but as something I want to know, because it will be important later in life. Whether that be how to recognize spider mites and thrips, or how to cook potatoes.

I honestly don't know what I'm trying to say here. I suppose that means I should finally go and work on my timeline.

Those who want to make dreams come true must dream deeper and be wider awake than others.
-Karl Foerster

I think it depends on a person's mentality - their intellectual age and their own feelings about where they are in life, and their feelings on what exactly makes an adult.

I consider myself an adult. At 25, I'm living on my own, pay my own bills (rent, car insurance, cell phone, etc.), I get myself to work and class, have my own hobbies, past times, interests. That's not to say that I don't have a lot of fun, because I do. Likewise, my best friend is 23, very happily married, working in her field, etc. I'd guess that she considers herself an adult even though she's a little younger than I am.

On the other hand, I would not consider my ex-husband an adult. He'll be 26 soon, and cannot hold a job, has no motivation to return to school, etc. He just wants to play, while not taking any adult responsibilities along with that. I'd say that he has the mentality of someone who's high school age, but that would be an insult to high school-aged kids. ;) I also don't think that he figured adulthood would be what it is, and so he's reverted.

My former roommate (25) is somewhere in between. She's engaged, living with her fiancee, working in her field (sort of - she's a teacher, so it starts off a bit slow), paying her bills, etc., but in many ways, she's still very young in a lot of ways. In her case, it's a good thing; she's a wonderful blend of adult and kid, and can be either when a situation calls for it. She also doesn't think of herself as an adult, and I think that's a big part of it.

I just reached 26 two days ago. I feel so old, I’m in a permanent quarter-life crisis. I feel old even at the fact that the people on this thread are mostly 20, 21. And I am deeply embittered that I’ll never be able to become a high-school student in a manga school now (never mind the fact that manga schools don’t exist in the first place).

I suppose I’m a real-deal full-blown adult cause I have two kids, work, pay them bills, got clinical depression, was fired, and lived plenty of other maturey drama of the kind that was in adult books I never cared about. From my point of view I was doing cool stuff such as playing videogames and reading comics, then I got into comp-sci to make videogames, then suddenly was working on boring jobs I never meant to. Then I keep trying to switch careers and become a humanities academic, which society tells me it’s an irresponsible, immature thing to do, and my answer is retreat into fiction for escapism. So I guess my coming-of-age is some ten years too late.

oh God no. For all that I'm almost 24, have been married more than a year, and am trying to buy a house.. heck no! I'm making it all up as I go along. And I've got to second/third/hundredth the xkcd reference.

I think I became an adult at 16, when I had to work full-time and go to school. My parents were divorced, and even though I lived with my mother, she was spending more time a few states away with her boyfriend than at home. It really forces you to grow up. And now that I'm 21, I feel positively ancient. :)

2004: A Memory Not Mine (55K)
2005: Double Edged (76K)
2008: Empire Farms (64K)
2009: No Asylum (goal: 100K)

I'm not an adult. No way, no how. For god's sake I still laugh at fart jokes!

And, due to leasing problems I am living at home. I still go to school. Adult? Forget about it!

Though I religiously set DirecTV to record ANTM on Saturdays, I buy videogames and junkfood, I don't balk at $40 for a game but won't pay more than $15 for a pair of jeans... I'm an adult.

I learned that the hard way. So there are times I let myself be a kid, and others where I need to face it all and grow up. Like when it comes to money.

I'm 21 and still feel like a kid, but I don't think it really has to do with my age. I could be 31 and still feel like a kid. Now, I'm not saying I am immature like a kid but more of that I don't take things seriously and more of go with the flow type of person. I don't have the cynicism that's connotative with adulthood and hope I never will. And I like to think I'll keep my childlike curiosity, espcially if I plan to continue writing.

Nickles
http://www.thewhowhatwhenwherewhy.blogspot.com

Legally, I'm an adult.

But right now I'm irresponsibly living off my inheritance and working part-time at a bookstore while trying to establish myself as a writer and a professional dancer. So ...... I have practically no income, could be said to be wasting a large sum of money better spent on investments or a mortgage, I have student loans to pay off, I'm pursuing two low-paying and highly competitive careers, and I have no health insurance. So I don't really feel like an adult.

FYI, I'm 25 and have a Master's degree in English literature.

www.allysonwhipple.com
My Lulu.com storefront

2005-2007: Epic fail!
2008: Winter White Lights (Winner!)
2009: Loveless Gospels

Adwin: I actually kind of sympathize with your ex-husband, especially the part about «can’t hold a job». And failing to anticipate what adulthood is.