On the journey to becoming a productive member of society I had to compartmentalize my inner child.
During my early schoolboy years, he waited patiently for the school day to finish so that he could finally resume his creative and playful pursuits.
As the education became more involved, he had to wait a little longer because of homework.
In university, the complicated assignments, group projects, and late night study sessions meant that he would often not get to let loose until the weekend.
The full-time job, commute, technical projects, work politics, and other adult responsibilities really did the biggest number on him though. Sometimes he would go without playing for weeks, or months at a time.
Today it’s as if my adult mask has adhered permanently to my face and I can no longer access him at all.
I have all of those rerelease retro consoles and a cheap projector onto an unprepped wall. (Cheap projector and unprepped wall imitates CRT blur really well)
Sometimes when adult life can fuck right off, I skip dinner and get my daughter to bed. Go get a pizza and a block of chocolate in MY car, blast the tunes come home and play Metal Slug on a 3 meter “screen”.
I take a moment to appreciate that 15yo me would think that this is pretty badass.
I never left it. I still have a baby tooth, therfore i still am child.
at 53…thats fucking pretty good
Oh hey, I’m in the baby tooth club! High five!
I don’t know if this exactly counts… I have embraced having kids wholeheartedly. I jump on the giant trampoline (sometimes when they aren’t around). I’ve rediscovered going to the movies. I am a huge fan of the holidays now. And a bunch of other stuff. I wouldn’t have done any of that without my kids.
My inner child is dead and I killed them in about second year of university because of fear of other people and lack of money for anything beyond food and tuition -> no fun times except for the computer -> depression, unmedicated for 3 years.
And now that I have money, I’m a mess after years of neglect, and I forgot how to have fun, and I still suffer from depression.
Dude(ess? sorry, idk your pronouns), I feel you and I didn’t even get to the phase where I have money yet.
One good part about having a kid is that you get to re-experience all of the fun kid stuff you remember, both as an adult and through the eyes of your kid. You can introduce your kid to your favorite shows/books/etc that you remember (and cringe at some of the stuff you forgot was in there).
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Not completely, but then again I am actually an adult now so that’s to be expected I suppose. Three things have helped: humor, games, and dogs. Especially dogs.
Oh yeah, dogs. I think we all had that one special needs kid in our friend group while growing up, a dog just replaces that 😂
Having kids really helps, but it’s a long term commitment and they grow up. I loved playing with my kids when they were little. It was definitely part of what made parenting so rewarding
I still drink chocolate milk and watch cartoons and play video games and shit in my free time. honestly the key is just learning not to care.
shit in my free time
Life pro tip: shit at work and get paid for it. Unless you work at Amazon, of course.
There’s some reckless recommendations to try psychedelics in here; be cautious with things classified under that name, because there are some VERY nasty chemicals getting pumped out by mafia chemists (some of whom work for large pharma corporations) and pushed under the name of relatively benign substances.
So first off, be sure you know what chemical is actually in the specific pill/blotter/tab you are considering eating.
Second, once you know what you’re dealing with, understand the cautions and protocols involved in using that particular one. I won’t start rattling them off, the information is out there.
That being said, a gram of mushrooms is safe for nearly everyone of normal adult physiology, and it’s pretty easy to tell if you’re looking at and gagging on mushrooms.
I was severely depressed at one point a couple decades ago and a chocolate containing a couple grams of mushrooms at a Folk Festival pulled me out of it for a good while and filled my head with thoughts of what was possible rather than what was not.
If you don’t smoke weed, try smoking some weed, if it’s safe to do where you are. It’s more of a momentary thing and if you don’t like it, most folks can handle waiting it out. This video is perfect for that situation, IMO. It can definitely be a heavy thing if you go too far too soon, but you’ll come back fine with a story to tell, or to never tell.
The more general proposition, which is that these chemicals can kinda shake you loose mentally, is true, but whether that is a good or a bad thing depends on who you are, how in control and confident you feel about life and the world, your immediate environment when you are on them (many end up taking these drugs at noisy parties full of drunkards, which are not the best places to be tripping balls), and many other factors.
For instance, your talk of the adult mask vs the child you cannot find might be exactly what’s happening, or it might be words you’ve put on some other mental block or bit of cognitive dissonance which you do not yourself understand yet. If that were the case, it would be quite possible for a dose of psychedelics to cause your mind to completely drop the veil of delusion, and cause you to look at that reality in the flash of a moment, with no time to mentally prepare for it, and that can be a terrifying experience for some, when reality intrudes on something that they didn’t realize was foundational to their understand of the world, and vulnerable in that way.
The long term effects of such an experience can likewise be very good, very bad, or completely neutral. We all have these masses of jelly inside our skulls and actually we are those masses of jelly.
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I feel that. It’s hard sometimes. You feel like the real you almost doesn’t exist anymore.
Creative outlets help, I think.
After losing my best friend and business partner who died from cancer, and avoiding a burnout by an inch, I started taking medication to even my mood.
A few weeks later, the video game Starfield came out. I remember telling my wife “It’s the first time in many years that I’m actually excited about something, and really looking forward to having fun”.
Starfield was made for my inner child.
Having a blast out in the settled systems?
Lots. I survey planets just because.
Well I didn’t enjoy being a child, but have enjoyed being an adult. Maybe you need to reframe your question? I don’t feel like I have an inner child (except when I was pregnant, lol) but have never lost my sense of wonder, the joy at seeing the sky, the garden, hearing music, all sorts of experiences feel so wonderful.
You don’t need to be a child to enjoy life. The idea of being stuck in childhood, unchanging, is terrifying. But there is an unbroken line, everything you have done and been is yours, it’s you. You are more now, have perspective you did not before, can see things in different ways.
If you are burned out at work, take a break! Sometimes I go in our little gym at work and stand on my hands, getting a different perspective on the world literally.
Find something you like and let yourself enjoy it. Nobody’s looking. You have one life, why not be as happy as you can?
To answer your question, yes. My inner child is very much active
