This is why I don't want to grow up

I think that being an adult makes you tired. It's not even all the stuff you have to do, just the mere fact that you are no longer of the age where irresponsibility is tolerated drains the energy right out of you.

I don't even do all that much. I wake up, I eat, I clean a few things, I go to work, I come back, I stay up, surf the internet, and clean a few more things until I'm ready to go to sleep, and then I sleep.

I'm exhausted and I don't know why. It must be the onset of this sudden burden of maturity that has been forced upon me. There is no other explanation.

My reasoning:
1. My job is the same as it was last year. I'm working the same amount of hours, yet I was not so tired then.
2. I worked multiple jobs in school along with taking a full load of classes and was never so tired.
3. Adults are always tired, no matter what their job is.

Ergo, it isn't the work that is tiring, it is the extra level of responsibility.

I have now figured out the secret to why adults are no fun. They don't have the energy to be fun. It gets sucked out of them by Life and they're left as hollow shells of grown-up people.

When I was a kid, I had these grandiose ideas of how wonderful it would be to grow up because I would be able do whatever I wanted and take care of myself, and that's all true. I have my own car, I set my own schedule (granted, it's built around my work schedule), and I can have a milkshake for dinner and no one can tell me no. The perks are great.

But then there's the stigma that adults have about Maturity. There's a scene in the Little House on the Prairie books when Laura is in awe of a table holding a roasted pig with an apple in its mouth. She is allowed to show wonder and surprise because she's a child, and though Ma and Pa have an initial reaction, they quickly quell it because they're adults and they're not supposed to show feelings like that.

I always thought that meant grownups didn't have feelings like that and now I realize that it's a combination of two things:
1. Grownups quell their reactions
2. They lose their childlike sense of wonder.

With very few exceptions, the grownups that I know are disillusioned with life. My theory explaining that would be this:
It is not acceptable for grownups to whine or cry about their lots in life. They therefore adopt a stiff upper lip and inadvertently apply that to every aspect of their life. Prolonged exposure to a stiff upper lip drives them (in the name of maintaining their facade) eliminate anything that makes this mindset difficult. Anything childlike is purged.

It gets to the point that a grownup might even be embarrassed or shamed by a display of anything remotely childlike. They have to know all the answers, expect everything, always be prepared. To not know would be to admit weakness, a failure of this business of being an adult. Essentially, we have built up an impossible expectation for grownups to have everything figured out, which is exhausting. Why can't we just come out and say that most of the time we're making things up as we go along because we have no idea what we're doing? That's why adults are tired. That's why they're no fun.

They have to keep up a pretense of knowing what they're doing, and that purges everything else from their personalities (both automatically and via effort on their part).

That's why I don't want to be a grown up. I'll be an adult because I have to, but I won't ever be a grown up. Because I want to remember how to be a child and how to have fun.