sholio | (no subject)

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Hmm, it's midnight.

Husband (college faculty! PhD!) is administering an exam in an advanced CS class at 8 a.m., and it's a 45-minute drive to campus (including time to park and walk from Middle o'Nowhere Parking to the building, etc). He's currently killing aliens in a video game, not sleeping like a normal adult would be when they have to get up in 6 hours.

I'm drinking wine, drawing fanart, and idly contemplating the plot of my Yuletide.

Sometimes, I find myself wondering when this whole "growing up" thing is going to happen. We're in our mid-30s, for pete's sake -- IT'S SUPPOSED TO HAVE HAPPENED BY NOW!

(ETA: Not that I actually think this is a bad thing, mind you. It's just kind of disconcerting to realize that when my mother was my age, she had three kids and was, well. MOM.)

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Never 'grow up!' Where's the fun in that? *g*

Hope you're having a good December, temperatures and snow notwithstanding. Though playing around in the snow would be more fun if we had a little more of it maybe... mmm... wine. Always makes Fairbanks winter nights better.

Cheers!

Never 'grow up!' Where's the fun in that?

Heh, yeah, I just ETA'd in something to that effect. *g*

Alcohol. It makes the winter bearable. *g*

(Edited to add: I've realized that I have had next to no alcohol the entire semester and just drank two glasses of red wine. I should probably be careful on the Internet tonight! Also, I cannot seem to spell "alcohol" correctly on the first try, which is probably a bad sign.)

Edited 2009-12-17 09:33 (UTC)

Alcohol definitely makes the winter more bearable. Though a dog team would help matters as well, in my book. Aww, I miss mushing.

And damn, I have no wine... Will maybe rectify that situation tomorrow. *g*

Yeah... as I'm about to turn (gulp) 40, I find myself wondering the same. Occasionally. I don't worry about it too much, though...

You're drawing fanart?

I love your icon. I just had to say that. Wow.

Thanks. :O) (The full version of this picture is here (http://astridv.livejournal.com/112678.html))

Yeah, it's for one of the sga_santa stories; there was a scene that was so adorable that I just had to do a cartoony little drawing of it. (I don't remember off the top of my head -- I blame the wine! -- whether you read McKay/Sheppard much at all, but if you do, The Sacrificial Mage is absolutely wonderful; it's sweet, funny and heart-wrenching with great AU world-building, an awesome heroic!Rodney, and lots of h/c too!)

Oh, great to know. I'm reading McShep upon recommendation and this one sounds good! *prints*

I know what you mean. I kind of freaked that we bought a sofa a few weeks ago. We bought furniture! So grown up! XD

Ha! We haven't gotten there yet. Too big a step for us. XD

Wasn't it a standard Heinlein line that there's no such thing as normal people? Dig a little, and everyone's weird?

ITA.

I'm all growed up, honest! Just because I'm going to a con in January to ~~squee~~ see David Hewlett doesn't mean I'm not growed up!! *vbg*

I'm going to be 40 next year... how did that happen?!! I still remember panicking over turning 30 and I'm sure that wasn't nearly 10 years ago!

Was there a time dilation that I didn't know about?!!

Anyway, to show how growed up I am, I'm going to go play with these sheep and then check whether it is Christmas yet! (And maybe see if there's an online Space Invaders game to play...!)

LOL. The Internet does not make it easy to grow up! Too many temptations! (And lucky you, going to the con!)

Oh, yeah, FWIW, where I work (DoD contractor, full of MIT PhDs) one of the divisions is its own WoW guild, lead by the head of the division. Or so I understand - my job wrt WoW is to nod and smile.

Hee ... I think computer and IT jobs tend to concentrate people who participate in non-grownup-approved activities. *g*

... which is all it is, really! There's absolutely no reason why WoW and Doom and D&D and fanfic should be "juvenile" pastimes while knitting, watching sports and reading are perfectly acceptable. Actually, I imagine the only reason why reading sci-fi (but not fanning on it, lord knows!) is a socially acceptable grownup activity is because there are so many older adults who grew up on it. I expect that in the '20s and '30s, it would have been just as juvenile as video games are seen as being now (but I imagine that will have changed in 50 years, too).

I've been trying to think of a decent definition of adulthood since yesterday, and the best I can come up with is, "Comes with committees." Except of course there are completely functional adults who aren't joiners; and kids who decide to spear-head things (though IME they do it differently than adults, for some value of 'differently' I can't define).

Then yesterday in the waiting room at gymnastics (adulthood also comes with waiting rooms one actually choses to be in?) several people behind me were talking about kids and adulthood and someone who must have been a grandfather opined, "Time just goes faster and faster, and at the end you realize it was all a joke." So, um.

I could write on and on around this - it's a topic of some personal angst, why I seem to have decided to care about the things I care about instead of Big Things like my career, or working for a safe and just world.

hmmm "growing up!".. isn't that the thing your supposed to do, according to popular media.... I dunno I have never done that myself. I am in my 30's I play far to much EVE-online and Rockband for my own good, watch way to much tv, dress up and go play LARP and collect ~~toys~~ die cast models of film/tv stuff:D...

We are living in the age of adult children:)..... it is more chic now for "us" to play games and have fun that it has ever been... move over younglings.. I have the game skills and experience!!!!:)

I don't see why we have to loose all the fun things in our lives just because "They" say we should be "acting our age".... in "Their" day they didn't have 24 hour online gaming and fan forums:D:D:D:D

To tell the truth I would rather be mentally young, active and social, than bored, locked away and anti social. which is what i would be without the various "games" I go play:)

Can't wait to see the pictures.

It's interesting to think about the reasons why ... I expect that it's got something to do with people staying single longer, and deferring having kids. I also think that "new" media -- video games, computer chat and such -- have been slotted into the social role of "kid" things because they were new when the current generation of young adults were kids. I wouldn't be surprised if 50 years in the future, video games have come to be seen as a more suitable adult activity -- maybe a little frivolous, but not too different from, say, watching sports or working on muscle cars.

I'm older than you, have a child, and am still waiting for the growing up part. I suppose I'm a reasonably responsible adult, but golly, I thought I'd know what I was doing by this time in my life. I think our parents mostly pretended better than we do. I thought my parents were self-assured and competent (except, of course, when I thought they were incompetent), and I'm finding out now that my mom was never so sure of herself as I thought. I think she wondered why everyone else was and she wasn't.

If you asked my mother-in-law, there's about a 50% chance she'd tell you that she never grew up at all. If you catch her on the wrong day or at the wrong time, though, she'd happily tell you how young she was when she had her first baby and how she grew up right away, with a strong implication of "what the heck is wrong with you?" ("In my day, we didn't have 'stress'," she says sometimes, completely forgetting all her stories about how out of her head she was about this or that, which she has sometimes just finished telling.)

*laughs* Yeah, I think the biggest surprise (though I don't know why it's a surprise) is how much I still feel like I did when I was a kid, as far as fears and uncertainties and so forth; it's not as if there's some magic switch that flips over from the "kid" to the "adult" setting. When I look at it rationally, I realize that I'm way more emotionally stable and socially confident than I used to be -- looking back at some of the things that used to send me into a tailspin is really disconcerting -- but inside I still feel like the same person I was at 20. Which isn't a shock, of course, since I am!

I think you're absolutely right that past generations of adults were more skilled at preserving the fiction of competence. Although, who knows, maybe our kids (well, children of our kids' generation, for those of us who don't have kids) think of us as just as smooth and self-confident as we considered our parents.

Didn't anyone tell you? If you haven't grown up by the time you are 35, you don't have to.

I have that on a button somewhere (I need to get a new one that says a new age)

Also I think there is one that says something to effect of "I may be getting older, but I refuse to grow up"

The Sci-fi club I am affiliated with has a rule.. that once you hit 25 chronological years you age backwards:D...

Well, hey! I'd best be careful for the next two years, then. *g*

Growing up is highly overrated. Like

leesaperrie and

astridv, I'm turning 40 next year. *iz happy to be in such good company* Growing up is nowhere in sight. :D

*laughs* I quite agree! :D

I was meant to have a school aged child by now -- 2nd grader, at that (after all, my mom did, and her sister had 3 by this age). Also, to not be still working on my own PhD.

Much less -taking- exams until midnight (take home essays) -- or doing last minute Scantron panicking. (note to Scantron people: When reporting results from a batch of Scantrons, please, Please, PLEASE make sure that what you type for the Test Form identifier (A, B, C, etc) MATCHES WHAT'S ON THE SCANTRON. This will save your clients considerable anguish and panic.)

OTOH, I suppose I was also meant to be June Cleaver, which, really, with their own backgrounds, has to have been pushing it.

*nods* I know; I'm back in school, after 12 years in the working world, and boy, is that disconcerting!

I think that realizing I probably won't have kids, and adjusting to the idea, is part of what's causing the disconnect. I have very few older relatives who weren't on the marriage+kids track -- they might have been sort of dysfunctional about it in some cases, but my model for adulthood is very strongly predicated on getting married, having kids and setting up a household. Figuring out what to do with the rest of my life when 20 years of it isn't going to be devoted to child-rearing is both freeing, and kind of scary!

We hosted a dinner for seven guests last week. I was boggled that we have enough plates and cutlery to do that quite comfortably. It's such an old-married-couple Thing.

LOL! It still feels a bit weird to host grown-up parties. Like I'm pretending to be an adult, but they might catch me at any moment!

::doodles little hearts around you both::

*giggles* :D

Heh. Well I'm in my mid-30s and am now a mom and I still sit up till 2am farting about on the internet despite knowing I have to get up at 8am-ish when baby wakes up! :lol:

I don't think you ever really feel grown up (or possibly even act it?) - you just SEEM grown up to kids. :D :D

Let me know when you find out, I'd like to know :D

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