"Adults are just giant children with social obligations they can't ignore."

Title is referring to this comment on a Reddit thread. Not the inspiration for this post, since it's something I've been coming to understand with myself for a little while now, but I think it puts the feeling (and my feelings) into words quite well.

I am realizing that I am overcoming the "oh, I need to grow out of that" phase of my life.

This probably isn't totally universal, but for me, I think I've had a phase of my life from about my late preteen to later teen years of feeling that I need to "outgrow" everything from my childhood.

It's a bit ironic, isn't it? One moment you want to grow up so you can do cool grown up things! And the next you wish you could turn back, because it turns out that that grownup world is actually a bit more bleak than it once seemed.
(...taxes? what's a "politic"? /j )

I'm not exactly sure why I had this subconscious attitude for so long. Something about my internalized fear of judgement and feeling the need to appear more "adult"/mature as my environment changed throughout my life, with moving and new levels of education and whatnot.

One way or another, it's unhealthy, and I've only recently started to realize that and take some sort of hold of it. Part of what took so long I think is that I don't think I even knew it was happening for YEARS. It wasn't until I had come to the realization that I barely had any hobbies or interests anymore and went searching back through some nearly lost memories that I started to realize what happened.

That was a little over a year and a half ago. Even then, it wasn't until more recently that I've really set into the mindset of "I do not care, I'm going to do what I enjoy, I don't care if it's 'childish' or whatever or anything."
If you're not hurting anyone, or creating harm, or danger (to anybody or yourself!), or anything like that, then you should not care about "what if other people will judge--" NO, stop that. Bad.

A lot of this has been returning to a lot of the stuff I enjoyed as a kid. Part of that is the wishing to be a kid thing that (almost) everyone seems to go through, of course, but usually that's nostalgia-fueled for me. This time is different. It's more of an acceptance that I never really changed, I guess. I just grew older and gained more responsibilities. And yes, I have new hobbies and interests too. But that doesn't mean I have to throw away and ignore my old ones forever. Just because I'm "older".
Also, those new ones seem to often actually be variations or extensions of things I liked or did as a kid, actually.

To be honest, I think that'd actually be a pretty stupid way of living. But it's easy to say in hindsight, because that's exactly how I was living. And I'm sure a lot of people do live that way, the exact kind of people that would try to judge someone for living carefree in that way.

Now I'm watching stuff like Bluey (shrine soon, because it actually basically started this psyche shift for me, and also its adorable and actually amazing and I love the show, even from an adult perspective) and playing and talking about old games I used to play and allowing myself to have a little bit of whimsy and fun even around other people because who cares! Have fun and enjoy the things that you ACTUALLY enjoy and be yourself instead of (maybe unintentionally) putting on a facade for others and yourself! Don't let the feelings of adulthood make you feel like you have lost your true self!

And, not to gripe with my own mortality, but you only got so much of this life to live right now anyway, so you might as well ACTUALLY enjoy it and have fun. The way you want to.
(Like, still take care of yourself and stay healthy, and don't put yourself or anybody else in danger but, you know what I mean).

All of this is kind of the mindset that's been fueling me through this.
You can be an adult and enjoy stuff that is "for kids". I can be older than I used to be and still have fun and be carefree when its appropriate. YOU'RE ALLOWED. Because WHO CARESSSS?!?

gives a new meaning to that phrase "today is the oldest you've ever been, and the youngest you'll ever be again" i guess, doesn't it?

This isn't a sad post and shouldn't be a sad post, but it's one of a journey. A journey that is still ongoing and probably will be for a long, long, long, long time.
And that's okay.

TL;DR Be yourself, your true self, and let people be themselves. Don't be judgey. Adults are just bigger children.
Stay whimsical.