feeling like an adult

[piranha]

ponderings set off by the beaqish one: this is one of those weird things that i wonder about now and again -- i don't think i've ever felt like an adult. i keep waiting for that feeling, for something significant to change, just for a moment.

maybe it's the feeling of being so-very-old that i get these days. though that seems more about being exhausted by life than about being responsible, but i am not sure. i oscillate much more now than i used to; for a couple of decades i felt pretty much in tune with my chronological age, but now i feel either way younger or way older. people on the net used to think me generally older than i was. that is no longer true (though that might also be affected by the greater youth of the online groups where i currently participate).

what i mostly think now is that it just happened to me too early, and i didn't realize that was "it" because i was basically still a child. i kept waiting for some magical feeling to come over me at 18/21/30/50 (magical ages, all, but only before actually getting to them; *wry grin*), and instead it happened probably around 12 when i began being responsible for the household because my mother started to go periodically totally around the bend, and by the time i was 15 i pretty much acted like the responsible adult in the house all the time.

i just noticed that i have no more magical age to reach (100 never seemed like a realistic one to me). i wonder whether that contributes to the feeling of exhaustion.

Comments

[beaq.livejournal.com]

I think 60 is semi-magical. Also, whatever you have for "retirement" age.

retirement

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

for me 60 means nothing special; it's just a marker on the path downhill. and i have no retirement age. i never actually dreamed of that because first i was a workoholic who couldn't imagine wanting to stop working, and then, after starting to work as a freelancer and later running my own company, that idea lost all meaning.

i guess i could pencil retirement in when my various pensions from bona fide employment come due, but considering how small those'll be, it'd probably just freak me out.

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

For me, 25 was empowering, and 40 was transformative, but in both cases it was the anticipation more than the arrival.

Nowadays, I'm getting a sense of having "caught up to myself", instead of always feeling like I'm too young for some of the things I do and too old for others. I'm no longer feeling in competition with the young guys at work, and I've stepped off the major scorekeeping race in my profession. Also, the big fork in women's lives, whether they raise kids or not, is now reuniting so that my female age-peers don't define themselves primarily as mothers and it doesn't matter which choices I made.

I do expect to have lots more adventures and changes in my life, both between now and 50 and after 50. Watching someone who is important to me turn 50 emphasized my belief that the half-century is another potentially powerful achievement.

anticipation

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

interesting, that anticipation has given you so much.

anticipation has generally been disappointing for me, so much so that i am actually reluctant to make long-term plans at all. while things i hadn't particularly planned, or even considered at all before the opportunity presented itself have turned out to be often interesting beyond my imagination, and at times transformative. none of which was tied to any particular age.

i used to worry whether my biological clock would start ticking loudly when it pretty much was too late (and against my will), but i am past that point now, and it never did. *whew*.

Re: anticipation

[hobbitbabe.livejournal.com]

Mine did. It didn't tick loud enough to push me to any decisions about other parts of my life. I regret not having had biological children. But I do not regret committing to the non-biological ones I acquired.

The anticipation was mostly like "what changes will I need to make in order to be happy with myself when I turn 25/30/40", and those were mostly things I was on the way towards anyway.

Re: anticipation

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

sorry about the regrets. :/ the non-biological ones sound quite happy with your commitment though; those always sounded like really healthy relationships to me.

i did make resolutions about things i needed to change, but i didn't tie them to specific milestones in time; that would have unduly pressured, scared and discouraged me. which makes measuring success a little harder, but it used to be sufficiently present that i thought i was doing ok. i changed some really major things, and worked off most of the toxicity from my childhood.

now resolutions about change seem worthless; i just don't stick with anything; i run out of steam long before i get there. i've tried setting a schedule, but as always, that remains counter-productive. it's probably mostly the depression, but i hesitate to blame everything that doesn't go well on that. i've always been driven largely by inner motivation, and i just don't feel even remotely as passionate about any of the changes i ought to make now as i felt about changes i wanted to make decades ago.

[swerved.livejournal.com]

I'm really quite looking forward to getting older. I don't care so much about reaching certain ages. 30/50/whatever doesn't scare me, but neither do I think of them as milestones. Life has only gotten better the older I've gotten, so the only thing I expect from growing older is that life will continue to get better.

That's possibly an unrealistic expectation, but I figure if I go with it and believe it, it'll come true. :)

older is better

[pir-anha.livejournal.com]

the power of positive suggestion is pretty strong in my life, so i'd say "go for it". :) i made huge changes in my life purely skating on "damnit, i CAN do it if i really want to". and my life is so vastly improved from the crappy cesspool it was in my childhood, so yeah.

except i didn't really expect the upward trend to last forever, and i was hoping i'd deal with it in a reasonably dignified manner when it reversed for a while. which i used to manage alright, but this time am not doing so well with. but hey, maybe better medication will do the trick. mind over matter does appear to have limits when one's brain chemistry gets fuxx0red.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I've been mentally more adult than most Americans since I was about 10, and the restrictions placed on me by society not because of what *I* was able to handle but just because of how many birthdays I'd had while I was a teenager left me distrustful of any special significance attached to being a particular age. I somewhat looked forward to being eligible to vote, and I was relieved of a certain dread once I got to be too old for the draft. Now the only thing I look forward to that is even partly tied to a specific age is being able to retire -- and that probably won't happen anyway; there's no way the American economy is going to make it another 25-ish years without major shakeups.

[huashan.livejournal.com]

Well, there's always the fun and excitement when they have to add that additional bit to the age field. And you've probably only got one more of those coming.