How to be an adult... anyone?

     I am sorry, but this is not going to be a step-by-step guide on how to be an adult and be a grown up, these are just my musings on what I feel it means to be grown up.
     I've never really felt like an adult, even though on my last birthday I turned twenty-six. As far as my brain is concerned, I am and will always be hovering somewhere between seventeen and twenty-one. I may look twenty-six (well, not according to Sainsbury's or Tesco actually when buying cigarettes, or in fact the corner shop owner who questioned my age when buying a lighter) but I don't feel it, I don't act it, but yet somehow I am. Does this mean that now that I am over the ripe old age of twenty-five and am in fact, in my mid twenties, make me an adult? Am I grown up?
     Yes: my hair is going grey, but it has for a long time. I call it my bling! But that is hereditary, my father on his wedding day was a walking advert for Just For Men. Yes: my eyesight is terrible, but again, blame that good ol' scape-goat genetics on that one. Yes: I am quite deaf, to some things. I have to ask people to repeat themselves sometimes, but then other times I can hear a phone ringing from a house away (me thinks my PA Spidey-Senses have come into play here) but again, blame is to be laid firmly at the door of my headphones who are blasting music and noise into my ears all the time. Does any of the above make me grown up?
     No: I do not have a mortgage. No: I do not have savings. No: I do not have a car (or a license for that matter). No: I do not have any idea of what I want to do for the rest of my life, or what any of my real interests or passions are. No: I haven't a clue as to when I am going to want to settle down, have kids, live in one place and put down proper roots. Are these things that are just supposed to naturally fall into place as you get older, or are they something that we strive towards because we think we should be doing it?
     The older I get, the more hell-bent on having some adventures I am getting. I don't particularly want to settle down, I want to go and see the world and get into trouble and meet fascinating people and make friends with people on buses and live in the sun and be a bum and do all sorts of wonderful things. That, in all honesty, has been with me for a long time. However, as I am approaching thirty, which is really coming close to the age where people have all of my No's ticked as Yes's, why am I turning in the opposite direction! Most of my childhood friends have their careers sorted, and have had them for a long time, since we were children really their talents and their interests and passions shone through. Not so much me. They know what they want to do. Again, I really don't know! I don't particularly want to get married and have children either, it just doesn't interest me and it never really has. Of course, if my friends or family have any children or are getting married, I take a full interest in them and what's happening, but in the back of my mind, there's always the ever-present voice saying 'Nah mate, I don't think this is for me somehow'.
     The idea of a mortgage, washing machine, two cars, a garden, TV licenses, responsibility, money management, loss of freedom are things that really scare me. Is it because I think I will someday buy into all of this and forget the seventeen year old Laura? Or the fact that I might actually enjoy it and become even more boring than I already am, be even more of a worry?
     Who says that we should have to settle down anyway? Maybe, I just haven't reached the settling down age, where I always thought it would be thirty. But as that age isn't so far away now, maybe I have a different settling down age to other people? That's fine by me! But some other people don't think so, and I'm sure people close to me have thought will it ever happen, will Laura really settle down, grow up, do something with her life? But what if I don't...
     So when does being a fully fledged grown up actually happen? Anyone? No?