being a grown-up

This is one of my favorite xkcds:
Grownups

The whole time we’re kids, people are always telling us to “grow up”, when what they really mean, I think, is “calm down” or “stop having fun” or “you can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat”.

I’m an actual, fully-functional, 100% real grown-up, and this weekend, it meant that I spent all day yesterday reading comic books, and then stayed up way past my bedtime to watch The Avengers, because I could.

Tomorrow, I go back to the work part of being a grown-up (which is kind of a cheat for me, because I love my job so much), but today I will listen to Van Halen as loud as I want (until Anne gets home and asks me to turn it down), read more comic books, and possibly play video games.

But first, I’m going to feed my dogs, because Seamus has been barking at me the whole I’m I’ve been writing this.

88 thoughts on “being a grown-up”

  5. Damn right. One of the best things about being a grown up is being able to go to the shop and buy chocolate WHENEVER YOU WANT and not have to justify it to anyone but yourself.

  6. Awesome! Yesterday my wife and kids went to bed early, so I got a DQ Blizzard, watched 5 episodes of Arrow and closed it out playing NHL14 on my PS3. FYI, I crushed the Kings with my Habs. No hard feelings??

  10. Sometimes being a grown up means different things for everyone. It’s understanding that difference and being a grown up about it. Unfortunately I want to just lay down and throw a tantrum because I am always the responsible grown up. For once I want to have fun and not feel guilty about it later.

  12. I went out to dinner with my friends a while back and ordered dessert for dinner. Because I’m 44 and I can if I want to.

    2. I’ve been known to have most of a large-sized Cadbury’s milk chocolate bar for breakfast and, maybe, a cup of coffee. Does that make me a grown up?

  14. Being a grown-up means you can choose with whom you spend quality time…today, I spent that time with my couch.

  15. Being an adult is over rated. I believe you can still enjoy games, movies, comic, collect action figures, play D&D and a whole host of other things not considered “grown up” by some people, and still be an adult.

  16. I think my hubby is on the same page as you. He has been playing his hockey video game for the past two days! Enjoy! #yolo

  17. “you can’t have your pudding if you don’t eat your meat”
    I see what you did there. Nicely done, sir.
    I haven’t purchased any comics in a few weeks, but I spent most of yesterday reading Post-Apocalyptic fiction, then stayed up way too late painting Zombicide miniatures while watching Hellboy and Hellboy 2.
    Tomorrow I go back to work being a science writer, which is also something I love to do.
    Live is pretty good, huh? 🙂

    1. Oh, and I forgot to mention searching for exoplanets in the Kepler telescope data (on the Planet Hunters website). I’ve actually spotted four Kepler team favourites in the past two days. Really nice transits too. 🙂

  18. I quote The Doctor at times like these. “What’s the point in being grown up if you can’t be childish sometimes?”

  19. I was a grownup last night when I stayed up way past my bedtime to play D&D online with friends *yay roll20*

    Now, I am going to have pb&j for lunch and read a trashy romance novel.

    Isn’t being a grownup awesome?

    Well, except for that paying bills thing.

    1. However, you find it way easier to pay your bills as a grownup than you ever would have as a kid. 🙂

  20. It’s like on a TV series when they about being an adult and eating a cookie….. “you’ll ruin your appetite” “I’ll just get an appetite again later!”

    Was out late last night entrenching a new PC in an on-going Savage Worlds campaign. Well worth it. Being an adult mean you can weigh the risk and benefits of staying out past your bed time and having fun with friends.

    Although the cats acted like they were my wife and I was coming home from a bar at 3 am stinking of cheap booze and stripper perfume :p But opening up a can of cat food was a way to have it all be forgiven 🙂

  21. Umm… I put the pudding in my mouth and then decide if I want the meat later. And sometimes, I stand still laddy and sometimes I’m a hyper-kinetic over-caffeinated goofball, with kids and a wife who I love and love me.

  23. That made me chuckle – kinda because a similar thought struck me the other day… I tell the kids they can’t play video games (need to go do something constructive, blah blah blah..) and then I duck out of sight to catch up on Clash of Clans.

    I hate to say it though, I had lots more fun as a kid than I do now. Though, that may have something to do with owning the poster child for This Old House…

  24. I knew I was an adult when one day I decided that I wanted ice cream for breakfast and I did it. I only needed to do it once, it felt so liberating.

  25. Yep. That was totally yesterday for me.

    Hi. I’m 49.

    “We don’t stop playing because we grow old; we grow old because we stop playing.”

    – George Bernard Shaw

  29. I love when parents say “Act your age.” How am I supposed to act this age – I’ve never been this age before. Besides for me, my mental age is kind of a spectrum any where from young child to wise sage….

  30. “Grown-ups don’t look like grown-ups on the inside either. Outside, they’re big and thoughtless and they always know what they’re doing. Inside, they look just like they always have. Like they did when they were your age. Truth is, there aren’t any grown-ups. Not one, in the whole wide world.” — Neil Gaiman “The Ocean at the End of the Lane”

    p.s. Loved the premiere of “The Wil Wheaton Project”, and very happy for you. That said, you will be missed at Phoenix Comicon this year.

  31. I appreciate this, but am another one who has to be the grown up all the time. I’m supposed to be co-parenting with someone who uses this same reasoning to avoid all responsibility. He has been known to skip child support payments because he needs a new board game and a lot of new comic books. That has made my own attitude a little more on the side of being the grown up and getting shit done. That said, ice cream for breakfast days are still good days.

  34. I think I need to print this out and keep it in my wallet. Then I need to print out and frame another copy for my mom and just point to it whenever she tells me I need to “grow up”.

  36. I like to think that being a “grown-up” has little to do with our hobbies and pastimes and the things we like to do and a whole lot more with how we handle the things we have to do.

    Me, I read comics, play video games, watch cartoons, eat junk food (though not as much as I’d like), occasionally buy silly things like toys and write a geeky blog about, of all things, fairy tales. Yet, I also go to work, go to grad school and pay my bills and rent on time with very few complaints.

  38. “When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.
    C.S. Lewis

  39. Sounds like a great start to a solo weekend. Mine? Eating strawberry tart I made just because, drinking Rose wine reminding me of my recent trip to France, and listening to independent online radio while I surf the web. *Grown-ups unite!*

  40. Critics who treat adult as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up. – C.S. Lewis

  41. The one thing about this assertion that I don’t like is the people who think that because they’re grown up that the can use grown up words, and do so in leiu of any other adjectives. I’m a grown up, so I am capable of expressing myself with a full compliment of words that will give me an edge in scrabble.

  43. I recently built a ball pit in the smallest room of my apartment.
    http://purplbearcupboard.blogspot.com/2014/05/we-grown-ups-now.html

    Every night I have sat in the ball pit for at least 10 minutes.
    And every night I come to the same conclusion; I need to energize by myself, and then it’s better with friends.

    I feel blessed that I am able to spend my life doing things that give me an outlet for my creativity and involve making those I care about smile.

    I agree with so many comments above: but, being an adult is the giving of yourself (through work, projects or craft) to others. As children we experience the pleasure of simple things, but in an entirely self-centered way. As an adult, we have the ability to give that simple pleasure to others.

    Mr. Wheaton, thank you for your creations and gifts.

  45. Wish we could all live in a world where “going back to work” meant watching science fiction and playing games!

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