WHEN DO YOU GROW UP?

Probably never on the inside.
Martial Arts really help alot though.

YM, I both agree and disagree with you! Since yup 100%, the only person who is always guaranteed to be in your life is you! This isn't necessarily depressing, it's just like... well, it's the reality of the situation. I think it's an incredibly beautiful thing that you can complete yourself and give yourself a whole life all by yourself! It certainly made me appreciate my relationships more, since I stopped trying to cling to other people for meaning and simply embraced the fact I spent time with them because I love them.

and then the prickly veneer slips away and everyone discovers that emmych is a massive sap

...anyway, the main place I disagree is the absence of a "and everyone else feels the exact same way, and this should be respected." While it's important to realize you are the most important person in your life, it's crummy to forget that other people Exist and are just as complex and important as you! I try to treat all people around me with respect. I am not always good at this. But I try, and that is important.

It's a loaded question. Physically, I've never grown up, I've got Pan-hypo-pit disorder, more commonly known as "Peter Pan Syndrome".

Outside of being unable to fly, I'm basically peter pan, my age, legally-- is 27, but most people say I look like I'm 13/14.

As for mental maturity, it's not something i find easy to quantify, especially not given that what rates mental maturity is a subjective matter of opinion. Personally, I like to think it's how you are able to deal with social situations and situations in general, how responsible and diplomatic you are. This way, you can act like a kid, but still be hells of responsible.

I find the fixation of maturity being a transition to being able to resemble a dead fish is commonly used by those with an inferiority complex, not to say that being serious and prim is at all immature, acting like something youre not to me, shows a great deal of immaturity.

Like, if you aren't happy with yourself, if you think you seem too young to the point you're acting older than you're legitimately at the stage of accepting, then that speaks miles more of immaturity than just being goofy and silly sometimes does.

Maturation speaks to me as an acceptance of who you are, your flaws and strengths, and being able to find a way to use such in a moral or in a way your opinions support.

In that manner, I'm probably pretty mature, I act like a clown with a short temper because it's fun, mostly. But also it's to veil some flaws i know about, but don't want to let loose.

On the whole thing of putting yourself first, I recognize that I am incredibly self-serving. That said, I will take responsibility for hella fucking up, my current name is a sort of inflection of that, as is the fact I'm paying this site 5 dollars a month now, it's like "Biz tax" because man do I do some dumb shit.

That said, people are different, some get a huge amount of good juju from helping others, some are all out for themselves, neither is right or wrong, so long as you aren't a dick about it.

Technically, we are all instinctively wired to make ourselves happy, but we may rely on others for that, for example, one who helps people overcome problems is also helping themselves, because it gives them a high, they feel like they've done a good deed. You may help others, but in the end, you are still helping yourself, you're just less aware of it. It's a good way to be, don't get me wrong! Instead of being a self-serving piece of human gargbage like I am, you're contributing to the lives of others. In that regard, I admit I do largely envy you, because from where I stand, you are a better person than I can be.

Okay, technically, I do the same, but in a way where I'm completely happy. I make games, see? Thats sort of a thing, I make them with the interest of fun and character in mind, to not only be able to look at this thing and say "I did that", but others can play and enjoy them, and then, I've purchased for a lot of time and effort, a bit of estate in their mind. To think that I could make a game that someone would carry with them forever, the thought is intoxicating.

I think the scenario where a grandparent gets their children's children to play like, I dunno, Intelligence: 314th, or Perseverance: Adherence, that will be my moment where I can look up to the clouds in glee and be like "I can die happy, now."

I would like that. That heartwarming feeling when your game becomes some prodigious family hand-me-down through generations. IOf I can do that, then I've become immortal, and that's all I want before I leave this world behind, for my memories, ideas and stuff to exist essentially ~ath of our planet, our species.

I guess you'd call that fame? I dunno, I don't really see it that way, I seek reverence for my games, not me as a developer. I mean I play a part in half of the fuckin' things now, so if the games are remembered I'm gonna be.

I've already made huge leaps into being recognized in the indie scene, I've beheld people clamouring in awe at what I've created, it's really special when that happens to me. I like hearing when people are just blown away. I think the best example was in that interview with the RealIndie, where he said "This is awesome you guys! Guys, how can you not download and play this??"

My reverence being what it is on Desura and to a lesser extent, gamejolt, has ultimately made me less invested in how poorly I may be doing over here. Mostly, I think joining in on the forum discussions heavily like I do was a pretty large mistake, if only because, I did it in a time where I wasn't in the best mood or state of mind, and ultimately it was a negative reflection on me and my character, and as such, the games are unspokenly judged on that virtue.

Sorry, I decided to go and get all reminisce-like. Please, do carry on!

It's a process, not a number.

Some people are selfish twits until the day they die.
Some people are adults at 15, having to grow up fast due to tragedy.
Some at 18, some at 32.
Some people grew up wrong, learning that adults are or aren't something that isn't true of all adults.

Essentially, it varies from person to person.

By the latter (growing up wrong), I mean some people think adulthood is wholly about responsibility. But it's not. Another key part of adulthood is determining what you want out of life, and making your own decisions. This might mean that you might suck it up and get a job at TasteeFreeze to support your family, it might also mean that if you have family pushing you into crappy work being an adult is also learning to say no and make your own decisions. Sometimes you do take a career but downsize it so you can manage to see friends and family.

I wouldn't know when you're supposed to be grown up because at my 25 years of age i'm still not a grown up.

Some people say it is when you reach economic independency but with the job market as it is, i haven't been able to find a stable job in a year and a half that i began scouting, so if i don't have a job and are therefore incapable of sustaining myself, that means i am not a grown up isn't it? Life is so shit.

When you start working and supporting yourself 100%

author=Solitayre
Growing up isn't really something that happens. People fake it until it becomes the truth. Some people fake it their whole lives.

This is actually true.

author=SnowOwl
Stupid robots, stealing mah jerbs.

They tuk arr jerrrbs!

What if you can't physically work?

That's a very corporate emotionally-devoid answer I gotta say. Also no one ever truly supports themselves 100% unless they don't have money, don't pay wages, or rely on any human services.

That money your earn working pays for other people to support you, it pays for a landlord to trust you with his house, it pays for the power that goes to said house, Economics 101; working and being 100% independent is something very few human beings can do, there's also the lack of security since being totally independent would mean having to find a piece of land that's uninhabited and then hope no one decides to be a cunt and demolishes it or such..

I agree with this. By this robologic, my Crohn's Disease makes it impossible for me to ever grow up. Because I sure as hell am too sick to work a full time job that will support me at any reasonable lifestyle level. Not to mention pay the costs of medicine I can't fucking afford.

Like peter fucking pan, I am a boy who can never grow up. Because my digestive system doesn't work? Fuck that.

Heck, even non-physical conditions can jeopardize someone's ability to support themselves 100%. I mean, again here I am example. I have a crippling anxiety disorder that I can't really afford to treat. As a result, I am a 29 year old man getting by with no driver's license, because driving is one of the things I live in unholy irrational terror of. Again, this factor in why I cannot support myself speaks to something besides pure immaturity.

On a positive note, the other day I finally started to realize that I was kind of a big deal in my chosen field of endeavor. More than anything else to me, that felt like growing up.

Some people say it is when you reach economic independency but with the job market as it is, i haven't been able to find a stable job in a year and a half that i began scouting, so if i don't have a job and are therefore incapable of sustaining myself, that means i am not a grown up isn't it? Life is so shit.

Yeah that's the other thing, you can be mad able-bodied and still struggle to meet this standard of "maturity". Back in '08/'09, shit was so bad in the US that as a college graduate I couldn't beg borrow or steal a shitty retail job at fucking Gamestop or Barnes & Noble. True story.

"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

"Life's tragedy is that we get old too soon and wise too late." -some asshole on the internet

When you realize your parents aren't all knowing and perfect and make mistakes just like everyone else but luckily a lot of the time they've already experience everything that you're going through and can help guide you.