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Post by Ajax on Feb 17, 2014 18:15:10 GMT -5
When you stop doing new things.
At least, that's apparently what makes you think the days fly past according to some article I read a long time ago that I can't remember.
I also think your book choice can reflect how grown up you are in some respects. I've always loved reading, but I could never manage to get through Henry James or Thomas Hardy - they never seemed plot driven enough. But now I feel I appreciate the writing more. I remember the first time I reread a Thomas Hardy after struggling through it at sixteen and thinking: 'Wow, that's much better than I remember'.
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Post by M is for Morphine on Feb 17, 2014 22:22:19 GMT -5
My reading choices have changed dramatically as I've gotten older, but that has less to do with me becoming more 'adult' and more as a natural progression of my personal tastes and experience. I certainly wouldn't use it as a metric of how grown-up someone was. I know plenty of adults that read almost exclusively YA, and many teens who read some pretty highbrow, difficult material.
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Post by Nimras on Feb 17, 2014 23:18:23 GMT -5
If growing up means stopping doing new things, than I'm totally not a grown up yet. I think what happens in literature is that you've got more experience as you get older, so things that were boring due to not having the experience to "get" the tension/plot before become more interesting as it becomes more understandable/sympathetic.
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Post by Stal on Feb 17, 2014 23:40:59 GMT -5
You know, I keep staring at this thread, thinking I can come up with something smart and poignant. I'm rapidly approaching my 28th birthday. I'm the controller for an entire business segment of the company I work for and have enough personal clout with people that I'm destined for more. I live in a decent area, have a decent car, make my own schedule. Lately my actions have started changing and become much more "adult" than ever before. I'm buying things at Express Men because I care about how I look now. I'm doing small stupid things like getting wooden hangers because I hate what the wire ones do to my clothes. I'm watching what I eat more and making an effort to stay healthier. I think what people confuse with being a grown up, is as others have said, experience. But beyond that... wisdom. Wisdom is often associated with age. With learning from our mistakes. Of coming to understand things like your body literally cannot survive on mountain dew and cheetos and if you even try it as you get older, it lets you know. But there's really no good definitely for being "grown up." I mean I remember one time when I was about your age (seriously, I was 20ish at the time), I was pondering this same question. I even cited Nimras as an example of someone I considered an adult. Her response then I'll never forget: "Wait, I'm an adult? When did that happen?!" So I leave you with this: xkcd.com/150/
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Post by Huntress on Feb 18, 2014 6:50:56 GMT -5
Re: reading; my current bedside reading material is Shakespeare's Star Wars. POIGNANT.
(That one's Nimras' doing, she pointed the book out to me.)
I've found that as of recent, I've started reading more and more children's books. Reason being, good children's books have more layers than the superficial straightforward ones ye average kid can pick up, so reading them as an adult gets much more out of them.
Other than that, I'll just echo the much-quoted "do stuff what you need to do and ain't nobody's business what you like doing beyond that". The latter part actually seems to be the hard part: we grow up being told that what we like doing is wrong in some form (usually by well-meaning adults who are on some level terrified that if we indulge in the kiddy-stuff too much, we won't ever learn to do the things we need to do as adults, which is kinda the goal of childraising) and once we get the stuff that needs doing down pat, the hammered-in guilt is hard to shake.
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Post by Gav on Feb 19, 2014 5:48:43 GMT -5
I remember that as a kid, when people (usually my parents) said that cartoons were for children, my usual retort was, '...But adults made cartoons, didn't they?'
But personally you probably become an adult when you stop worrying about being one. Well, til you get kids and have that 'wow, holy crap, I'm going to be responsible for somebody else'. Then you feel extra old.
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Post by Fj0rd on Feb 19, 2014 11:39:37 GMT -5
For me, part of growing up is also becoming more aware of your...flaws? blindspots? and listening when people point them out and trying to work against those tendencies. Which is kind of an eternal process. Like, last weekend there was a problem in my apartment, and it would've been solved much more quickly if I hadn't made a bunch of assumptions based around the way my own brain works and projected them onto my roommates--and I was blaming them entirely for not having done what I would've done in that situation, until we all sat down a couple of days later and talked, and I realized that I'd exacerbated the issue. So hopefully next time something like that happens, I will stop and think and remember not to make those assumptions again.
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Post by Stephanie (swordlilly) on Feb 19, 2014 23:52:04 GMT -5
But personally you probably become an adult when you stop worrying about being one. Well, til you get kids and have that 'wow, holy crap, I'm going to be responsible for somebody else'. Then you feel extra old. Well, my dad teaches young adults and he says that being around young people so much of the time makes him feel young. Until he realizes his students are actually around his kids' age now. XD It still feels like a surprise every time he makes that realization, since he started off feeling just a little bit older than his students.
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