This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

What do we do?

You tell us, you're the role models for those of us in our thirties, y'see.

My vision has gone 'bifocalish', ie I gotta take the glasses off to read.

left out we certainly be should not.

Ah, the Iain Sinclair "serendipitous random art collage" problem (xp).

I wish I could afford a midlife crisis -- I'd sure have one.

Wait, what were we talking about again? I must have dozed off.

Btw, Rock, that just means you'll have to live longer.

The nights are fair drawing in.

My toes hurt -- do yours? I think it must be this weather.

Shit, Michael, with my genes I'm doomed to 95 years at least.

I blame it on so-called asylum seeking feral politically correct Broken Britain.

(the weather, that is)

That monologue with Rhys Ifans last night.

What was all that about?

Eh?

Eh?

I can't stop feeling all \o_O/ seeing twentysomething girls wearing essentially the same fashions that girls wore when I was twenty.

Actually more like when I was fifteen.

Haven't exactly been bombarded by deelyboppers and pop socks around these parts.

Shoreham - liminal, but copper messy.

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

I had my midlife crisis from the ages of approx 15-42 so I reckon I'm due uncomplicated happiness now.

This thread is so much like me at an FAP that it's spooking me out.

Yeah, I'm drinking here at work, too.

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me. -- Rock Hardy

As per suits, I don't think I've got any I fit into anymore.
On the, er, thinner side: I amn't that dirty really.

Just don't recognise anything in this thread. Including the posts I posted so that suggests it was probably a crap idea. Oh well, it was worth a momentary try.

Please to God never let me actually become a "fortysomething."

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

What are the characteristics of a fortysomething? (I bet I have most of them).

I can legally have an affair with someone half my age!

so, is anyone on for it?

thread is otm, though now I can also see how it mightn't be otm, and would not be surprised to find myself arguing either side of the question for fifteen minutes or so before getting completely distracted by some other stray thought

They say memory is the second thing to go. I can't remember the first one.

My drug of choice these days is Back and Body aspirin, for that extra frisson of caffeine.

Memory is going, true, but at least I remember the 70s

Memory is going, true, but at least I have begun forgetting the 70's.

hi.

um, I'm OK.

What are the characteristics of a fortysomething?

Being aged between 40 and 49. Anyway I though we were all 'middle youths' nowadays.

sorry to have woken you oldtimers up . but. I misread Marcello's OP as

Yes, I know, creeping balkanisation etc. but why should we be left out?

But please leave cheeky Ovaries at the door.

-- Marcello Carlin, Wednesday, August 27, 2008 2:35 PM (7 hours ago)

I'll have you know my ovaries are extremely well-behaved; veritable paragons of polite ovarian society.

The ovaries are fine, but I'm prone to brain farts now.

The world's worst song.

Comparing your ovary to a Bronte C/D?

Wuthering Ovaries

Thrustcrotch Minge

Carry On Bronteing

One upside: being a dirty old man sort of suits me.

-- Rock Hardy

^^^

haven't you all heard - us 40+'rs are saving the music industry.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/stevelamacq/2008/08/to_bb_or_not_to_bb.html

Come on - you're not too old to have forgotten this thread already...
I am too old for this...the 40 plus thread.

Don't even remember that thread but this one could do with a few more ovaries...

my right knee

wait, is your right knee also my right knee. Because - my right knee.

No knee problems, but a lingering cough and all.

my left knee

Knees still fine, but ow my aching fibroid. Roll on the menopause, please.

back pain... bruised rib?

Have you banged a rib?

Not that I remember ... had a sidewalk fall about 6 weeks ago but I'm positive I landed on knees.

I always have back pain. I just attribute it to "lol old, also sit up straight dummy" at this point.

Had surgery three weeks ago to correct a compressed ulnar nerve in my left arm. Incision is taking it's sweet time healing all the way.

The rest of my 40s are going to suck, aren't they.

Upper, lower, middle back, Morbz?

left middle-lower

Saggy mattress? I can definitely trace my back pain to mattress + increasing girth.

Yeah, I try to sleep flat on my back w/a pillow under my knees when I get back pain.

well I sleep with my bed titled to ease the acid reflux. But yeah, mattress is old and crap.

Lord Paillasse?

Tilted means your back is still bearing weight.

usually sleep on my side (the right since pain started obv)

but pain is not as bad as it was in January.

Seen a chiropractor at all or anybody, really?

as an ILXOR in my 40s, I can confirm that GOOD POSTURE is urgent and key - even making the effort to sit up straighter at yr desk can have a tremendously positive effect on neck and back pain

I sleep on my side as well, and trial and error has led to this successful formula: an extra pillow to straighten my neck, and a pillow between my legs to elevate my top leg and straighten my spine. I'm still grinked up in the morning, but it eases by my 2nd cup of coffee.

I see my GP every summer, and that takes effort.

ppl our age really can't eat Indian food w/out sacrifice, eh?

tmi

wow, earliest sign here of my back pain that turned out to be Something Serious, unrelated to posture. Had no idea it started in winter.

Hesitated this time before throwing out mailing w/ AARP card.

My vision has gone 'bifocalish', ie I gotta take the glasses off to read.

― Dr Morbius, Wednesday, August 27, 2008 11:05 AM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

This is driving me fkin CRAZY. I just got new frames, which I love, but I only get to wear em 15% of the time. I opted not to get the progressive lenses bc I was afraid it would be annoying but...

Also damn but I (b.1970) spent 2012 feeling just physically OLD.

I feel great, I realize I'm fortunate to remember things other people don't, and I wouldn't trade that for anything. My sister doesn't remember our grandfather, for example - he died in 1975. I think she feels this loss, it's a piece of her history she can only access through pictures.

a sign of middle age truculence ids you're stil lwilling to put up with the morning after Indian food.

(yes i have passed out of strict eligibility for this thread, whatcha gonna do abt it?)

Hi dere

ow
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZ7NMg3-E50

Welp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VB74GuvPBh8

lol u old

When I was a young, I lolled as a young. When I became an old, I put away slacks that only went as high as my waist.

Oof. Hello.

Whassup fellow elders!

Two months to go then I'm hitting the next thread up, bye-bye 40s it was (not) fun

Three years and two months for me still, so let's see how the last quarter of fortydom plays out.

http://blog.mtgprice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Pain.jpg

I have 47 months of my 40s left. Wheeeee!

on the plus side - I've felt so jaded in my 40's, that rather than worrying about illness and mortality, I started thinking: let's not be so reductive about death here.

one month left for me.
~ sigh ~

Same. Thirty-one days exactly!

See y'all in a few months!

I feel like I should throw a party but I have hearing damage and it would basically involve me having a five-hour migraine and hiding from people. I do want to celebrate, though. Just trying to figure out how.

post that effortlessly sum up being in your forties tbh.

and lol at calzino. eventual death doesn’t seem nearly so much of a bad deal as it once did.

Seriously, sadly.

Just realized even though they just started that my 40s are already 1/40th over. Guess I need to hurry up and write that book or whatever it is I'm doing with this stupid 'life' thing before I'm a brittle dusty mummy.

My own (hopefully distant) death, although unwelcome, has much less fear and anxiety for me now compared to the not-that-far-off deaths of certain people around me. I know I'll cope when they pass on, but being 18 and not having to think about any of that seems like it happened to a different person in a different century (oh wait that last part is true). OTOH all of that is usually blocked out by the constant front-and-centre problem of not having any money.

Old Lunch get busy ! Stumbling forward pretending you know what you’re doing is fun

40s not working out so far

9 more glorious months

just under 12 months left gods willing

I think I learned a lot of stuff this decade, unfortunately a lot of it was learned the hard way but at least I learned.

unless personal growth is a sick trick our brains play on us to disguise the march towards oblivion

“God wiling” is right. One of the things I’ve realized is that I can be struck down any day now.

unless personal growth is a sick trick our brains play on us to disguise the march towards oblivion

it’s this

i recently became one of these :(

My own (hopefully distant) death, although unwelcome, has much less fear and anxiety for me now compared to the not-that-far-off deaths of certain people around me.

yeah :( ... I feel like the past year has been a consistent stream of people I know dying, some older, some fellow 40-somethings, some much younger. Apart from that, my 40s are so much better than my 30s.

I remember someone telling me that 40 is the cut-off point for "promising". By then, you've either delivered on your promise or you haven't.

But enjoy your 40s, people. I'm in my early 50s, and I can report it's worse.

I remember someone telling me that 40 is the cut-off point for "promising". By then, you've either delivered on your promise or you haven't.

But enjoy your 40s, people. I'm in my early 50s, and I can report it's worse.

posts very much in character

agree about the inadequacy of "potential" and "failure" as concepts - they're just wrong ways of seeing the world, and super-especially wrong ways of seeing oneself. one of the things i've been working on with my counselor. my potential was always some shit other people were trying to lay on me, until the point where it internalized. but i don't think i care about most of that tbh. the paths i cd've taken would have had their own quiddities and agonies, and i don't believe any of them would have taken me any closer to who i want to be.

acceptance isn't acquiescence. i think i'm beginning to understand the satisfaction of that bare high-wattage bulb. think it throws a lot of unnecessary baggage into the shadows where it belongs.

You would think at this age people would stop telling me "oh, you're young, you've got plenty of time" when I tell them I don't have children.

(Never mind the assumption that I want them!)

Or that people would stop asking if I've finished with school YES NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AGO.

acceptance isn't acquiescence. i think i'm beginning to understand the satisfaction of that bare high-wattage bulb. think it throws a lot of unnecessary baggage into the shadows where it belongs.

yes this is rly well put and what i think i was trying to reach towards.

Enjoy your 40s like you enjoy every day that you can.

What you see much more in your 40s is people leaving you permanently. You appreciate the fragility of life much more in your 40s, particularly as you near 50.

When someone tells you that you are in "the fall of your life" it carries so much more weight.

posts very much in character

agree about the inadequacy of "potential" and "failure" as concepts - they're just wrong ways of seeing the world

Around age 40 I wrote a poem I titled "Killing My Potential". The gist was that my 'potential' was always an unhelpful imposition by others, which I neither wanted nor asked for, and disencumbering myself of it was a wise and necessary move.

Or that people would stop asking if I've finished with school YES NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AGO.

It is usually asked at work most often by security guards or customers making small talk, I guess. (See also the guard whose second question to me was where did my boyfriend work.) Although the VP asked it once, and I just wanted to ask, did you even read any of our resumes that I know are on file?

40 has been an ok year. I've had a more active social life than I've had in awhile and have been meeting new people and making new friends.

one time when i learned how direly old tokyo r was i exclaimed 'wow, you look much younger!' and she said 'i know!'

i always enjoy your longposts, fizzles.

40.5 rn, so far not so bad

Forties have been pretty good to me! More perspective, less lack of clarity, more acceptance of what i need and where i can accept not excelling. Definitely a half step up from the thirties so far.
One caveat: i am now in pain all the time. So there is that.

one time when i learned how direly old tokyo r was i exclaimed 'wow, you look much younger!' and she said 'i know!'

This is true.

I'm closing in on 41. Not sure if it's been the best of years, but it's definitely... making aspects of life more real somehow, and making me more aware of time's passage, that there's stuff I HAVE to deal with before long, etc.

there's not much time left before i am sentenced to a decade of hard time in this thread

what cool stuff should i do before then to milk my thirties for all they're worth

nothing man

40s are the new 30s anyway

There isn't a fifties thread.

I had an OK 40s. In my 40s, I'd squarely reached middle age, and yet the worst of middle age had yet to hit me. I felt in the midst of life, bringing up a child, doing enough of the creative things I'd always wanted to do not to feel too bitter and twisted. The idea of my own death had yet to take too much of a hold on me, and physically all was not too bad. Now in my early 50s, my body is not playing ball so much, I'm taking pills for cholesterol and hypertension, a bad knee has stopped me from jogging for the past year, and mortality feels so much closer. My parents are ailing, my Dad is sliding into dementia. There's a real feeling of "this is it, this is the life you've made, you had your chance and this is what you did with it". I mean it's not all bad, but I feel a kind of fatalism about things...

There isn't a fifties thread.

it’s inevitable

See you all on the ILXor fifties thread in six and a bit years. Hopefully I won't be flat broke by then.

I'm only beginning to not be the youngest person in my line of work, aside from grad students. I am moving into the middle period of this thread's subject. It is strange to watch the world turn to amber around you.

this will make me sound about 90 but i’m consistently impressed by the younger people coming through. they are focused, switched on, sexually frank, even cynical and uninhibited, aware, “woke” if you like, hard working, professional and competent. i’m sure they’re not all like this but it feels like the next-gen is like “next gen” is sometimes used in a technology sense - better, cleverer, smarter. hopefully recouping some of that “coastal shelf” discussed in the this be the verse thread.

moving into my forties - and this is partly because of the state of the u.k. at the moment - i feel i’m doing far more of my learning from people younger than me than i am from people older than me. this is good.

See you all on the ILXor fifties thread in six and a bit years. Hopefully I won't be flat broke by then.

haha ditto

There isn't a fifties thread.

it’s inevitable

I'll break out a sixties thread in 2021, if someone else doesn't do it first.

I like Fizzles post. I don't necessarily agree--primarily because of demographic gap; between the kids in my school (14 and under) and the youngest teachers I work with (basically, 30), I don't know really know anyone 15-30--but it's a nice change from the usual whining from people like me.

I'm 46 and have generally enjoyed my forties. It's been a good time for me in terms of general well-being / happiness / stability. Marriage, children, music-making, and work are all going fine. I have a mix of childhood friends and new ones, my family doesn't drive me nuts, I have low-key interests and few needs.

My body is definitely feeling it, though. Nothing dire, but a steady stream of minor complaints. Unexplained pains here and nagging aches there. Needing different glasses for the computer vs. reading vs. distance. I'm trying to take all this with good humor.

My body is getting to a state like that of a beloved car with a lot of mileage on it. Things are starting to wear out, some bits just fell off somewhere and haven't been replaced. At some point something major is going to need to be repaired, and it won't be worth it; my wife will have me towed off to the junkyard. But not today. Not yet.

My forties have been absolutely shit so far and this year doesn't look like it's going to be any better.

username checks out

I'll break out a sixties thread in 2021, if someone else doesn't do it first.

I could start one now, but it would be fairly lonesome in there. I've seen strong hints that there are a few other over-60 ilxors, but they tend not to flaunt their age. Even if they did out themselves, I'm not sure there'd be very much to say.

Medicare providers S/D C/D

What, end up getting escorted to the Hoffman pages?

My sense was that you were already there, Aimless, but didn't want to be presumptuous.

Had to shoehorn myself into the forties thread and you gave me the opening.

My forties have been a calamity. Did some good work at the beginning that pointed me in some interesting new directions, but starting midway through 42, there was a loud gear shift into a slow crawl of misfortunes which continues to deliver at least one new insupportable weight per annum. Am at this point just a collection of maladaptive tics, bottled-up resentment stories, counterproductive self-soothing strategies that walks like a person. I always knew I should never be a parent because the enormity of the responsibility would drive me insane, but I’ve ended up more or less right in that place without kids anyway, and lo and behold it’s ruined my mind. Occasionally I am able to confirm that the prior, useful me is still in there under debris. Am glad that’s the case. I’ll turn 50 in mid-2020.

Feel you bro

Turned 46 two weeks ago. On the career side, I feel great - the last time I had a regular office job was in May 2016, and we (25th wedding anniversary coming up in June!) are still living in middle-class comfort based solely on freelance work. Health-wise, well, I'm diabetic, but other than that things are fine - I've always been remarkably lucky with stuff like that, never even broke a limb growing up.

As far as life ambitions, I have a single big idea I'm working on: escaping the US. I think I can pull it off. Beyond that, I'm just gonna keep working and doing things I enjoy - my website and the podcast I launched in October - and maybe write another book in 2018.

I don't care about young people at all anymore. If you're under 30 (35, if I'm being honest), your opinion means nothing to me, basically. I just assume you're an idiot and wait for someone who's actually lived in the world for a while to speak up.

Not feeling this bro tho

Some of the nicest people I've met in the last five years have been Millennials.

Unperson, move to one of these countries. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-youngest-populations-in-the-world.html

Nah - I'm headed for that Mediterranean island where everybody lives to be 110.

thought you meant the Isle of Wight for a minute

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html

Whenever I'm tempted to think or say something like "you'll understand when you're older," I try to remember how that felt when people said it to me when I was 27.

My parents-in-law came to visit last week. I did some mathing and realized that when they met me (I was 27), they were my current age (46). They thought they knew a lot about the world and that I was a callow youth who didn't deserve their precious daughter. Now that I'm here (age-wise, at least) I realize that probably everybody's improvising to some extent. Faking it to some extent. "Performing" adulthood to some extent.

I have vivid memories of my parents in their forties. They seemed like they knew what they were doing, they seemed like they had shit figured out. They didn't. They probably got just as lost and confused and scared as I get sometimes, but they didn't show it.

THAT SAID, sometimes I wonder how much of this is perception and how much of it is real cultural change. In the 60s/70s, at least some people married younger and started childbearing younger. They were expected to grow up pretty fast by today's standards. ("Today's standards" includes 30-year-old men whose moms still fold their underwear.)

My eldest sibling was born in the University of Missouri's Married Student Housing. I don't think most contemporary colleges have "Married Student Housing," let alone with children. The very idea might seem absurd. How the fuck are two 22-year-old English/Philosophy majors married and having a baby?

Now that I'm here (age-wise, at least) I realize that probably everybody's improvising to some extent. Faking it to some extent. "Performing" adulthood to some extent.

I have vivid memories of my parents in their forties. They seemed like they knew what they were doing, they seemed like they had shit figured out. They didn't. They probably got just as lost and confused and scared as I get sometimes, but they didn't show it.

This x10000

I'm 44

Not sure when "wise" is supposed to happen. 50? 80? Never?

I saw Guided By Voices last night (they were great), but they made me remember that back when the band was hitting its out of the underground peak, around 1994, the two big takeaways were that the singer was 1) a former school teacher and 2) old. Robert Pollard just turned 60, which means back in 1994 that "old" guy was considerably younger than I am now (almost 43).

there are still some MLB players who are older than me, which gives me comfort. but since the players are Bartolo Colon, Ichiro, and R.A. Dickey it's cold comfort.

once i wanted to be the greatest (greatest greatest greatest!)

• I used to keep tabs on my age and the age JFK was elected. Now I'm counting down the days until I pass whatever age he was on 11/22/63.

• The junior U.S. Senator from my state is four years younger than me. Fuckin' junior.

• Listened to the Doors recently, and for the first time, I was just all "Ha, just listen to this kid. He thinks he's got it all worked out, doesn't he?"

• On the same side of the coin, I listened to the Doors recently and whaddya know, they fuckin' rock.

• I lifted a rock the other day and placed it about four feet away from where it had been. I couldn't stand up without pain for about three days.

My great-uncle died this year at 85, so I keep thinking, hey, I might not even be halfway there yet. In some ways, that's exciting. In other ways, well, I certainly envy JFK and Jim Morrison every once in awhile, especially after I've been picking up rocks.

I was just thinking about my first concert which is still fresh in my memory, and how going forward the same amount of time I'll be 70 years old. Still younger than Harrison Ford is today!

My dad died at 72 but my mom is still cruising along at 89 so I’m hoping I’ve got a few decades to reread some shit.

i have a mentor who's like twice as old as me, so knowing him is kind of like seeing a preview of my possible future, but even still it kind of boggles my mind that i could live another forty years - like, what the hell are you supposed to do for forty years??

Still younger than Harrison Ford is today!

Ford is 75 now, I'll be that age in 2049. So I'm the same age as Rick Deckard.

Also I'm in better shape than Deckard because a) I no longer drink, and b) I'm not getting beaten up by replicants all the time.

many xposts to Jon. Godspeed to things getting better for you soon. My feeling is we make harsh judgments on ourselves and our capabilities as we get older and, tho i can only speak for myself, this certainly isn’t fair and often isn’t even correct.

if i revisit what material evidence there is of my thoughts and capabilities from say twenty years ago, when things felt so intellectually fluent and bright i’m both pleased that they just exist but also feel they can be lacking in things i now feel i have. not intellectual fluency perhaps, no, definitely not that, but experience. how is experience apparent or defined? i wonder whether it’s actually the stylistic effect of having to grind the no longer fluent mental gears a bit more. having to work against all the impediments, both material and emotional or intellectual that age brings.

like the formal constraints of poetry, maybe these constraints, as much as they feel they incapacitate us, make for better work. less marvellous maybe, but better.

regardless, wishing you and yoursvery well for 2018, and hope we get to hook up again at some point in the year.

Oh I forgot, I outlived my dad this year. :(

yeah that's weird, my dad was killed in a car accident and I realized I was older than him, very surreal

My dad died at 56. But he was a bad diabetic (Type 1 since age 3 or so, smoked, drank, was generally sedentary), and I'm better behaved than he was (don't drink, don't smoke, try to go for a walk now and then), so I figure I'll break his record.

it's always crazy to me the number of people who have been on here for 15+ years--lots of us in our 40s who've been on here since we were in our 20s. Blows my mind.

(although I was in my 30s already back in the early days)

I would have been...29 when ILX began, and now I'm a couple of months from turning 47. Hm.

in at 26 i believe.

I think I started posting in 2004 or 2005, so I was 33 or 34. (I did take a long break, and have had several periods of mostly lurking, though.)

I'd've been 35 I'm pretty sure, I'm kind of a noob

I've been here for just over a decade, so 33 as well.

I asked my mom (who is a little over 70), if you could go back in time, knowing your current health and how you generally feel, would you change any of your behavior or exercise more or anything? Now, granted, she never smoke or drank, but she basically said she wouldn't change a thing except maybe eat less meat.

Hmm, it seems I was 42 when I started here, now am 56

I was 29 when I first started posting here too.

I am now 72 years old.

I know, you're all like But how? and I'm all, Yeah, I know!

Having no other remorse healthwise when you're over 70 other than having eaten a bit too much red meat are real goals. God I'll just put myself in the deadpool for this year.

Yeah, okay, holy shit, I just realized that I was like 26 when I first started posting here, thanks so much for the extra reminder of oldness.

this thread is amazing.

unperson what's your podcast??

in real life i'm in my 40s but on ilx I'm always 28 btw, this is just a cameo

unperson what's your podcast??

Interviews with musicians, 45-60 minutes long, once every two weeks. Next one comes out on Friday.

http://burningambulance.blubrry.net/

https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/burning-ambulance-podcast/id1296224800?mt=2

for real though, do we have 60+ ilxors?

Yup. I'm 63 and counting. I have strong suspicions about a few others, but I seem to be the only one who puts a number out there.

I was mad for newsgroups back in the 90s but now at 47 I find ILX to be the Platonic ideal of an online community.

and shit, only a little over 3 months from being 48

Reading this thread with trepidatious anticipation; I'll be joining you in 17 months. I was 21 or maybe just 22 when I started posting.

I am thy father's spirit, doomed for a certain term to walk the night

57

yay oldies

I was 29 when I first started posting here too.

― pplains, Monday, January 1, 2018 6:29 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Me too. Eleven years. Jesus.

So I turned 40 and it was p good. Despite my thread revive and "oof" post I'm excited for my 40s which I think this will be my best decade yet.

People generally think I'm a lot younger than I am and often guess anywhere from 28-32 which I've always taken as a compliment but lately I've begun to wonder if it is indicative of some kind of immaturity on my part and not just the fact that I look young. I don't know. My worrying about this is probably more a projection of my own fears of not being adult enough than anything else because most of the time I don't really feel that much different than I did when I was 18.

People used to regularly express surprise when they'd discover that I was roughly a decade or so older than they assumed but within the last couple of years the reaction has been more along the lines of 'yeaaaaah, that seems about right.' It's been...humbling.

I used to get stopped for police line-ups with 40 year old blokes when I was 21. Once one of the filth reassured me in a very sensitive manner: "don't worry you look older than your age, lad"

xp

yep, that's been one of the fun differences between my early 40s and late 40s

Middle-Aged Lunch OTM.

we're close to our "twenty years of ILE" bash

Yup. The exact 20th anniversary of ILX as a whole, starting with the birth of ILM, will be in about two years and seven months or so.

All of you hush and let me enjoy looking young thing while it lasts, dammit. ;) Also, I noticed little crows' feet for the first time recently and was kind of excited about it so it's not something I'm stressing about too much tbh.

hello I am 41

First posted here approximately 15 years ago – was 17 at the time. This place begins to make more sense once you hit 30.

ENBB, you might be the youngest 40something in here, so congrats.

I've always been told I was an old man ("born in a leisure suit," as my father used to tell people.) I embraced it back then, but now that I'm actually turning into an actual old man, it's not as cute anymore.

We were watching a mid-morning showing of Pulp Fiction on AMC yesterday. Between the Old People Personals commercials that were running in the breaks and that whole "Wait, you just ordered a five-dollar milkshake????? dialogue, I felt like I was 100.

Ha the five-dollar milkshake????? dialogue thing occurred to me sometime over the last year and made me feel ancient too. Don't think you could get one for under that at a diner around here now.

Hello I am 41 2! I've been here approximately forever.

I think this decade is going to be the best yet. This getting older thing has really brought the benefits, ime.

Also a member of 41 club. Also get told I look younger than I am but I think that is starting to change. At least I think I've aged - a few more grey hairs, I've put on a bit of weight (always used to be skinny but I'm 16 stone now) etc etc. I did get ID'd for booze in shops twice in 2017 though which hadn't happened to me for 6 years.

I was 27 when I started posting here...

i have been on ilx since 2002 or 3?
so since i was... crikey... 26 or so

we are old, father william

i like not caring as much about ppl i dont know and what they may or may not think of me
that is the thing about my 40’s that i looove

Yes.

I can be painfully self-conscious and over the past year when this has happened I've sometimes told myself "fuck what anyone thinks you're awesome and almost 40 who gives a shit what anyone else thinks?" and it has actually worked. I mean, sure, I still have to actually remind myself of this but it's a start.

the thing that happens a lot for me is the realization that the person i'm talking to and hanging out with is literally young enough to be my child.

Yeah but that's been the case for a while now.

xp I'm still painfully neurotic but my mum told me at Xmas she stopped giving a shit a couple of years ago. She's 58 so maybe by my mid-fifties I won't be a complete wreck mentally?

I mean at least for me it's something I started realizing of teenagers about 10 years ago that if I'd had a kind when I was a late teen then current teenagers could technically be mine. Also, when i worked for that youth center and was only 2 years younger than one of the girl's on my caseload's mom.

Woah young mom!

And ok lol maybe we can hope for that. Also, my mom was on the older side (she passed 6 months ago at 78) so I think that just seems especially young to me.

I haven't quite figured out how to stop caring what people think about me (although I've definitely come a long way in recent years) but I've realized lately that I'm not really concerned with trying to impress anyone anymore. That feels like a solid start.

xp
Sorry to hear that ENBB. My wife's mum had her late too, she's 84 now, 5 years older than my grandma

Weird to look at old ILX posts from 2003-2004 and think "wow what immature twentysomething would say something like th--ohhh"

ha, yes

x-post Thank you, CP.

It's kind of crazy how we're nearly the same age but have parents decades about in age. I would still like to parent in some form (whether my own bio kid/s or adopted/fostered) and sometimes worry about being an older parent but I honestly don't think I would have been ready much before now at all.

*apart* not about oops

U all old af but <3 anyway

deems you’re older than all of us in spirit

Deems is our Yoda, hundreds of years old and forever hitting us in the face with his staff.

"Page-turners, they were not. The adaptations, even worse."

hahahaha

Lol

Unbelievably I forgot to tell you guys about the major corner I turned last week in my journey to senescence:
Bought myself a motherfucking lanyard neck cord thingy for my motherfucking bifocals, you fuckers! It’s such a relief. Why yes, I am the caretaker of this property.

People used to regularly express surprise when they'd discover that I was roughly a decade or so older than they assumed but within the last couple of years the reaction has been more along the lines of 'yeaaaaah, that seems about right.' It's been...humbling.

Yep, me also. Probably the gray in the beard gives me away. Or the thin hair on top. The circles under the eyes? Hard to say really. Surely it's not a reduction in my boyish joie de vivre.

My 40s started rough but have been pretty great, all told. Best decade of my adult life, for sure. I'll be 49 this fall, so ... hope the trend continues into years that start with five.

https://i.imgur.com/faJ2rWF.jpg

That one was easy. xp

Jon not Jon, it better be one of these and not one of those modern-looking lanyards.

https://i.imgur.com/h5h5DlX.jpg

^ uncanny resemblance to deems (xp)

great, now I have Shane MacGowan in my head singing “...and they called him the irish yooo-da”

xps

I am 47 btw, where the fuck has my life gone?

Jesus you old fuckers are mean imma leave this thread until my time

yyyyyeeeeaaarrrss from now

It's kind of amazing to me how many under-30 dudes I see whose hair is almost or entirely gone on top. I still have my hair, and while I don't think I look 30 at 46, I do look several years younger than I am. I think part of it is that I don't drink, I don't smoke, and I haven't got any kids. Kids make your hair fall out.

My hair on top was almost completely gone before I even hit 30. It was nice to get at least one indignity out of the way early.

Crossed fingers but looks like my hair is here to stay for a while.

god ned lord willing

Xpost to pplains yeah it’s that kind, except for a sort of black shoelace instead of a chain.

I'm still getting away with 'forty-ish', so when I do go grey or thinning, can't really complain.

My wife is ten years younger, so hey.

I am old enough to remember logging in to ILE with a PC that had a giant red SWITCH hooked right to the mother board on a PC that seemed as big as a main frame - and I still am able to leap 5 feet in the air - the reulst of good eating

"still" - a nice touch there

Was the five foot leap as a result of getting an electric shock off the giant red switch?

It's kind of amazing to me how many under-30 dudes I see whose hair is almost or entirely gone on top.

We publish an annual 4O Under 4O feature that showcases high-rising and influential movers and shakers who have yet to reach their fourth decade.

And whatever jealousy I may have had toward these successful people is completely off-set by how they all look twice my age. Apparently hard work and big money will wear you out!

that would explain why I've still got a full head of hair

Male pattern baldness isn't a choice nor is it stress related, if someone looking not dissimilar to Zidane or Larry David shagged your mam, then it's just a part of the ageing process! You think any of us ugly bastards would choose to look like this! jokes of course.
I have a cousin in his early 40's who is the singer in a wedding band who has had a Rooney style hair weave. He looks fucking preposterous, a younger version of him already popped up on your Swagger Roses thread!

oi zidane shagged me mam

I should've said those bright and prosperous people have lost more than their hair.

Not saying they're unattractive either. Just saying.... boy, I would've never carded any of these people back in my Liquor Depot days.

39
https://i.imgur.com/SoKxmtk.jpg

35
https://i.imgur.com/sid2dzg.jpg

35
https://i.imgur.com/M3ZzNWW.jpg

29!
https://i.imgur.com/VXoONRs.jpg?1

i thought i my biology teacher in high school said that someone's hair traits come from the mother's side via genetics

I meet up with a group of childhood friends about this time every year for touch football and pizza. It's been interesting watching us collectively age; it's like a 30-year longitudinal study. The men going bald on top have generally shaved their heads entirely and/or worn knit hats. At some point somebody is going to stop bothering and just go ahead and let it show.

Men on both sides of my family have died with full heads of hair so that's not likely to be an issue for me. I am greying at the temples and I love it, particularly in the workplace. Professionally I benefit from exhibition gravitas. For a long time I looked a bit too young to be taken very seriously and I'm glad that's ebbing.

Um, exhibiting gravitas

I thought you were meaning you do seminars and get taken seriously.

Ha, now that you mention it I do that too.

I got a pretty drastic haircut before Christmas, and I thought the dude was shaving Santa Claus as I was watching the hair fall down on to my little... barber's gown?

Anyway. Since that white hair isn't visible to anyone, it must hide under my regular hair - not getting light, hence its color.

scrunching nose when smiling makes me IA

i remember when i was younger thinking gray hair is no big deal but now that i have it i am slightly horrified

i don't want to dye it though

Salt and pepper hair can be v v attractive imo.

The worst part about my 40s was my eyesight going to shit and it seemed like it happened overnight.

Also my hairy palms, obv.

Dudes who were v v attractive with normal hair can be v v attractive with salt and pepper hair it's true

Even salt and papper pits?

Everyone gets much more attractive as they age

'Everyone gets much more attractive as they age' vs. Geo. Orwell's remark that 'at age forty everyone has the face they deserve'.

Sheesh, I guess I must have four decades of hardcore assholism under my belt, then.

You have an asshole face?

It probably depends on who you ask.

My hair is still thick and still mostly dark, with some gray at the temples and speckled throughout, but my eyebrows and beard have gone more or less completely gray. :\

Some female comedian did a bit in one of her routines about her pubic hair going grey and how that was what first made her feel really old. That fact that that was even a thing that happens was pretty eye-opening for me.

I think it might have been Jen Kirkman.

YOu know I was giong to mention the salt and pepper pubes but I was afraid of offending ILE

i just noticed this past weekend that some of my aunt's eyelashes have turned grey and i felt sympathetic in an "oh we're getting old right?" kind of way, even though she is much older than i

the underside (?) of my hair is almost white in places, it’s kinda cool
i *almost* have a cruella deville/j jonah jameson streak on my right temple

on top is still dyed and kinda brownish

I don't look forward to going completely gray but I confess I am a big fan of the "skunk stripe" on women (cf. Bonnie Raitt, Stacy London, Rogue/X-Men, JoBeth Williams at the end of "Poltergeist," etc).

can't remember the year i started posting here (it wasn't this account), 2001 maybe, when i was a highly strung and combative 27 (?) year old dickhead. now my hair's fallen out so my head is basically a dick. in fact the only thing that shits me about ageing is having no hair (which makes me lucky tbh).

I don't look forward to going completely gray but I confess I am a big fan of the "skunk stripe" on women (cf. Bonnie Raitt, Stacy London, Rogue/X-Men, JoBeth Williams at the end of "Poltergeist," etc).

― Monster fatberg (Phil D.), Wednesday, January 3, 2018 4:19 PM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

My maternal grandmother had this. I never knew her but it looked awesome in pictures.

^^ I've had my first real 'am I going bald?!' scare last week. It's still early days but that hairline is receding mighty fast all of a sudden.

(15 months away from being completely eligible to participate in this thread; I see this as an apprenticeship)

xp

^^ I've had my first real 'am I going bald?!' scare last week.

my scare lasted a whole day, i found a hairdresser (i was abroad) and got them to shave it all the fuck off. never went back.

I'm thinning a bit at my crown and I've always had a high forehead but I don't think I'll go bald, based on my family. I have a load of greys on the right side above my ear, but I don't really mind that tbh

Is it too challopsy to say I think grey hair is attractive (cf. Emmylou Harris, G. Clooney) and that I'm impatient for more of it?

my scare lasted a whole day, i found a hairdresser (i was abroad) and got them to shave it all the fuck off. never went back.

― rove mcmanus island (Autumn Almanac), Wednesday, January 3, 2018 9:25 PM (five minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

That's admirable. I'm not ready to throw in the towel tbh.

The scare was coming home having walked through rain and storm and suddenly seeing the hair on the fore of the top of my head is getting so thin it's like it's isolated from the rest of the hair on my head. If that makes sense. I want both parties to make up and rejoice again, to be one do. I also know wishing this is in vain.

xp not at all. Grey hair rules imo.

otm re grey hair

The scare was coming home having walked through rain and storm and suddenly seeing the hair on the fore of the top of my head is getting so thin it's like it's isolated from the rest of the hair on my head. If that makes sense.

pretty much the same for me, but in a photo i saw a tiny gap in my forehead. that was enough. fuck recalcitrant hair.

people keep telling me how sexy salt and pepper hair is... but i feel like they're just being nice. because i'm old now. also hi, i am now tall enough to ride this thread.

I have a load of greys on the right side above my ear

Same here. I'm not bothered about going grey but I wish it would come in a bit more evenly. My hair was receding at an alarming rate in my early thirties (tonnes of hair on the pillow every morning) but that's stopped at least for the moment. Again, I'm not bothered - there's a picture of my grandfather at my parent's wedding where he's rocking a swept back Jack Nicholson look.

I admire your strength and courage, AA. I'm just not ready yet :-/

it wasn't strength and courage so much as not wanting to look like this guy or this guy

people keep telling me how sexy salt and pepper hair is... but i feel like they're just being nice. because i'm old now.

nah, it's gobsmackingly sexy

Lol, well I've got quite some time left before it turns as ugly as that.

Though, admittedly, in my darkest hour I did google "dick advocaat hair". /shudders xp

the worst thing is how everyone thinks it's fine to openly remark and take the piss out of you

(not *you* lbi specifically)

if i were missing a leg or had giant sores all over my face nobody would say anything, but a few hairs drop out and it's game on

I'd never say stuff like that, but will cop to having had those thoughts abt bald people. I should've known it'd bite me in the buttocks.

me too, if i'm honest

40s eh

Aye

I'm able to console myself wrt my baldness by remembering that the alternative (ie, literally every other hair replacement option) is ten times as gross and unsightly.

That said, there is admittedly some appeal to the thought of procuring a hilariously-awful toupee.

Perhaps coupled with a gaudy, oversized sports jacket and a bow tie?

Yes, for those unsure, I am an idiot.

there’s also hats

which… can be wanky

THERE'S NOTHING WRONG WITH GOING BALD.

I've got a buddy who went bald like, schzwoop, one year. And now he wears caps indoors and says things like "Ha! Like when I used to have hair!"

It's cool, man!

Baldness does seem to be one of the final frontiers of body-shaming - my boyfriend is mostly bald and it's amazing how people will just make jokes about his baldness to his face in social situations, even people he doesn't know. Not that it bothers him too much, he's thick-skinned, but people wouldn't do the same if he was obese or had a bad stutter or whatever

Thread got too real

i get to die with a full head of hair, everything else is up for grabs tho'

i get to die with a full ear of hair

In re hair, I grew up with dire warnings that my mom's father and brother had both gone completely bald in their 20s, and baldness comes through the mother's side, etc. As it turned out, I had plenty of hair well into my 30s, and since then it's been a long drawn-out matter of thinning on top and receding in front, but still more hair than not. Since I'd sort of made peace with the idea of going bald young, having thinning hair in my late 40s is nbd.

Yeah, I honestly have basically zero sensitivity about it at this point. When I had hair, it was dumb and unmanageable. No big loss.

My hair's been receding slowly for a good decade, but I'm not close to having to shave it yet. Had a smattering of grey for the same amount of time. Now getting to the point where there are too many grey hairs in my beard to tweezer them out individually, which i did for years, less out of vanity than out of the physical sense of satisfaction that removing one gave me. Have tweezered out a handful of grey pubes, a grey chesthair, and, most pathetically, plenty of grey nasal hair. GREY NASAL HAIR wtf.

(Orwell's quote is about being 50, btw; he died at 46 so just missed finding out.)

(Looking at Steve Bannon makes you think there's something in it.)

a mate of mine is undergoing chemo atm for lymphoma and when he first started it he’d had a marvelous rockabilly quiff of hair which rapidly all fell out. he went out clubbing one night not long after and some old goth tart laughed, patted his head and made fun of the baldness. i wish i’d been there when he’d retorted it was due to cancer to see her stupid face.

i hated having hair, my orinal hair was thick and too curly and determined to do anything with.
then in my late 20s i realised i was going to go thin on top.
so, one day i walked into a barbers got a blade #1 cut and went home.
was a sharp cold winters days and my head absolutely buzzed and felt tingly all the way home.
it felt absolutely brilliant.
i walked into our flat, and bh was not too happy, but realised there was no going back and so had to accept it.

There was recently an Orwell quote on that recipe thread where he described a random on a bus as "obscenely bald", while the ugly fucking lunger was spreading the pulmonary TB mycobacterium with every cough!

I was just having a few lols at a twitter thread on Adam Perkins, the discredited academic who wrote the vile garbage that inspired Toby Young's "Progressive Eugenics". The commentary soon goes from attacking his work to comments about him being an ugly, bald bastard and insinuations that he only became a eugenics stan because he couldn't get laid. probably true tbf!

https://youtu.be/Pb51aSiwUEA?t=34m33s

If I ever start to recede properly (49 and not yet, touch wood) I'm determined to rock the Steve Buscemi look for as long as I can:

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/90/Steve_Buscemi_2009_portrait.jpg/1200px-Steve_Buscemi_2009_portrait.jpg

oops sorry that's a bit big

i had salt and pepper hair as a teenager, maybe some of you will know what a Mallen streak is but i totally had one at 14. love2grey tbh

Know what a Mallen streak is because this was p much my granny's favourite ever book:

https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1330925465l/1495952.jpg

i've had the same hairstyle since i was 15, and it's the buscemi. i'm majorly receding, and also my hair is thinning out in the back. (i'm not sensitive at all about the receding hairline, but for some reason i am about the fact that it's thinning out in the back.)

My youngest brother (35) is sadly going as bald as me (as is my next younger brother, 37) but has opted for what I'd call 'the Brett Gelman' in lieu of shaving, which is a good look if you can pull it off. Which I don't think I can.

I've got hair, kept it all in there even after 12 rounds of chemo ten years ago.

But I don't have any chest hair, and at 44, I'm starting to think I may never hit puberty.

My dad has the Tony-Soporano-in-a-tank-top look down pat. My grandfather had those tufts of hair that came up through his undershirt like a cat. I have no idea what my mother's father looked like without a shirt, but I'll blame him anyway.

It's never bothered me. One time in New Orleans, I took off my shirt in the hotel room and one of my pals, a little guy with a nice, natural sweater vest, pointed at me and went What the fuck? I had just never thought about it before, and it was the first time it had been pointed out like that.

My pal is a cool dude, don't get me wrong. He's also bald as fuck now, hahaha.

But I don't have any chest hair, and at 44, I'm starting to think I may never hit puberty.

I have had a goatee since I was about 20, but couldn't grow a mustache to go with it until I was in my mid-30s. I never had much in the way of chest hair until about the same time, but now it's...not a full-on sweater-vest, but in '70s Burt Reynolds territory.

heh, I'm remembering my grandfather when he was in his late 60s. Maybe in another 20 years, one of these tiny little hairs will work its way up and out.

I've always had a fairly full chest of said hair. It, more than hair elsewhere, is what's going grey quickest. (Well likely my beard too but the world will never know, obviously.)

more than hair elsewhere

Gosh. That must be a lot of hair.

Lol

The main place I’ve gotten gray hair at all so far is my damn nostrils. Shock white, really. And thick, like fishing line :(

I just yank em

My beard's got a gray streak, but none in my head hair. My dad, in his late 70s, still isn't gray, so I may miss that one. I've been balding since I was 19 though, though oddly it hasn't really progressed thaaaat much since then.

beard is graying at the corners of my chin, hair has some gray in the temples but remains ample as ever, fair bit of gray chest hair

none of that is bothersome but i feel like the hair growing out of my damn ears has gone into overdrive

wookieproof

ha!

Apologies to any women present about the long "guy hair" digression; be thankful it's not All Prostates All the Time

I'm given to understand that women have their own set of age-related follicular issues, and I believe there's at least some overlap with the ones we get to enjoy. They're certainly welcome to join in the commiseration-fest!

ya another thing to note is i'm getting hairier and hairier as i get older

nose hair, ear hair, bushier eyebrows (i have to trim my eyebrows now which is a thing i only associated with my grandfathers), etc

just wait...

some slightly tmi info coming but:

i do trim my nose hairs too

i shaved my ear hair but i'm afraid that makes it worse

and hell while i'm at it: i wear flip flops to work sometimes and a lady expressed her disgust at how hairy my feet were

made me feel conscious so now i check out other guys' feet which is a weird thing to do and i have noticed shit maybe my feet are abnormally hairy

My nose and ears are OK but my eyebrows started growing in my mid-30s, just a few hairs on each which almost makes it worse if I leave them, which I don't.

Seriously, wtf is with the eyebrow thing. Like, those hairs managed for decades to grow to an acceptable length and stop. Suddenly, a handful of them start having a midlife crisis and gettin' all rebellious on me. It's not a good look, fellas.

Frankly, I don't mind the thought of having eyebrows that extend two inches from my face once I'm like 75 but can we maybe wait until I'm actually 75?

your fault for drinking the juice of sapho

All this talk of balding makes this thread deeply 'forty-something', although it's confined to forty-something men.

No it is not!

I don’t have much gray, but I do have one gray hair in my right eyebrow that gets the plucking treatment.

My mom is bummed by thinning hair in her 70s. Chemo probably didn’t help.

No it is not!

I meant the eager enthusiasm for discussing the subject of baldness was confined to men.

Yeah I don’t think I realized how sensitive guys were about the balding thing!

Having a hairline that resembles a public toilet seat is a thing that requires some adjustment.

FWIW my best friend has always had a thing for older bad guys (with bad teeth to boot) so for everyone worried about losing their hair just shave that shit. It’s just hair and there are people out there who are totally into it!

Bald not bad thought tbh in her base both work.

xpost lol aww ok fair point

I have so much hair that even if it does start thinning it would still be a lot.

I have a few weird chin and neck hairs but I got those in my 30s.

i had vitamin d deficiency and for a while i seemed to be losing my hair at an alarming rate, it was v unsettling

also thanks to genes inherited from my good old Dad I have hella, mega nose hair, full-on gross spider legs level. they require constant trimming. they havent gone gray yet but i am sure that’ll be the only hair left when i’m like 90

FWIW my best friend has always had a thing for older bad guys (with bad teeth to boot) so for everyone worried about losing their hair just shave that shit. It’s just hair and there are people out there who are totally into it!

making the assumption that bad = bald ..
i can confirm that this is true.
shave and embrace the new world.

This new world for me = small children throw apples at me, I'm effectively Cezanne without the artistic talent!

“I know a few things from his last years when he was old and shabby and children followed him every day on his way to his studio, throwing stones at him as if at a stray dog. But inside, way inside, he was marvelously beautiful.”

Oh, I just thought of a fun thing I'm experiencing lately! So, pretty much totes bald on top, to the extent that I don't really have to do any maintenance aside from pruning the random hair that forgets nothing grows there anymore. Well, since I've also been going grey, those strays tend to now be stark white and go pretty much unnoticed until the lighting is just right and reveals a snowy two-inch strand jutting straight out of my otherwise bald pate like a radio antenna desperately seeking the long-lost signal of youthful dignity.

hee hee

Xposts - lol yes bad = bald there

Xposts - lol yes bad = bald there

losing my hair happened in my twenties so I had to get over it quickly. Once I went through denial/depression/anger/rogaine/acceptance, I was fine. I shaved it to a Statham and never looked back.

Definitely went on dates with people who didn't like the bald thing, but i didn't ever get down about it, weirdly. And eventually I met someone who *really* likes the bald thing.

Shaving your head down is *almost* like hiding it but it's also saying fuck it, this is who I am.

shaved heads look fine and i never think of them as a sign of incipient baldness, i view them as a sound aesthetic choice that’s been made.

This ^^ ! I think that even if it is cause you’re balding, this is helpful to remember.

i agree

mr veg had long hair until his hairline receded too far back - then he cut it all off because he said he didn’t want to look like David Crosby lol <3

I honestly think bald on top with very long hair, inclusive of ponytails and braids, is an extremely strong look and in no way worthy of shame

yeah idk, mr veg had a real thing about that look.

silby: you mean a Mick Fleetwood?

Sorry, the "baldytail" is the worst haircut in human history. Wanna be bald and still have long(ish) hair? Put a hat on and never take it off, like Brian Johnson from AC/DC or Klaus Meine from Scorpions.

Yeah, agreed. That is literally NEVER a good look.

Not even with a brightly coloured waistcoat?

A friend of mine used to call that hairdo The Faded Glory.

Add an inexplicable little leather pouch on the belt to the waistcoat and yes it really could work

The highest concentration of baldytails I have ever seen in one space at one time (this will surprise absolutely no one) was a King Crimson concert last summer.

and that was just on stage

I loved that Futurama gave Wernstrom, its egomaniacal, petulant scientist character, a baldytail.

https://morbotron.com/img/S07E08/273189.jpg

Also popular at Ren Faire

the "bill bailey" is alright if you can own it.

nope

Bill gets a pass because he's Bill but even he admits he's part man part troll and I think the hair is a lot of that.

if you give me enough time i can come up with other examples of successful bill baileys but they'd have to be self effacing comedians who look exactly like bill bailey

lol :)

omg i mistook bill bailey (who i had to google, no idea who that guy is) for beetle bailey
on account of the hat and implied attitude? idk

my 40s have been great so far but sometimes i find myself being completely out of the loop wrt a conversation in which people use references to imply something and i am not aware of what that thing is or what it means

oh well! i'm alright w my 40s so far otherwise.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/c/c0/Recruta_zero_03.png

Oh man, yeah, these kids today with their references. I've been getting some first-hand experience with the 'clueless adult' archetype as I've slowly relinquished all effort wrt keeping up with what's 'hip' and 'dope' and 'fresh'.

the thing is that i don't care that i don't know -- i can look it up, whatever, or just ignore it. it's just a sign to me that i am on the outside looking in. whatever! i am still a decent person and know plenty of interesting things. i am not very into complaining about being in my 40s tbh.

i've never felt particularly interested in keeping up with what's cool which might make me a "cob nobbler" or a "lamestain" but i guess rather than keeping up i prefer to just go through life making discoveries randomly.

with music i actually use the ILM year end poll to discover what's good or rather what i like from the previous year. though i think i'm generally pretty good about keeping up with certain types of new music.

So sad right now that only someone in their 40s would pick up on your grunge insults.

I'm generally at least five years behind the curve on most 'hip' pop culture. I'm really not worried about it at all. Can't wait to discover fidget spinners sometime in 2021, though.

haaa i am in my 40s and i still didn't get it
tbh this is a lifelong issue for me that has only gotten more pronounced as i age, it's ok

i too prefer to skip my way through life enjoying what i enjoy & discovering things at my own pace

La Lechera otm. Enjoy what you enjoy; I believe that it's wrongheaded to regard "keeping up with ___" as a moral imperative rather than a taste / preference / lifestyle choice.

I used to wonder "How can my grandmother not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

And now I wonder, "How in the world can my kids not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

there's always a time to learn about something

my dad has always done this really REALLY annoying thing where I will show an understanding of, say, Busby Berkeley movies and he's like flabberghasted, and asks "how do you know about Busby Berkeley movies???" like I could only possibly know about things that have happened while I was alive, like that is even logical. he's done it since i was a teenager, it's so annoying! he still does it!

There are times when a casual onlooker might assume that I was unaware that mass media had continued to be produced after I was born.

Generally speaking, most people are best at appreciating and evaluating cultural products produced when they were aged 15-20.

Coincidentally, that's exactly when culture feels like it is of life-or-death importance; that's when your favorite band is likeliest to define your social group and your wardrobe and your self-image.

Of course there are always also people who are WAY into Buster Keaton or Duke Ellington or Emily Dickinson or w/ev from a young age; my hat is off to those people as well.

i'm pretty inspired by my mom, who is really interested in keeping up with new art and new fashion. she's 70 years old and lives out in the sticks far NW of Chicago. She follows fashion trends and likes to make her own clothes, and she listens to a lot of Sonic Youth. it's probably no wonder my folks got divorced (though they're still friends), my dad's the type of fellow who will visit and I'll fish for something he'd like to do and it's always like "oh you know me, i'm ok with settling in at Coffee Bean for awhile to read a book, maybe we can go find a sandwich somewhere..."

it's always "find a sandwich"!

but it's ok, i respect both their interest levels.

Your parents sound very cool

OL I love your mom!

my dad has always done this really REALLY annoying thing where I will show an understanding of, say, Busby Berkeley movies and he's like flabberghasted, and asks "how do you know about Busby Berkeley movies???"

Sometimes, I'll make some B.J. Hunnicutt reference at work, and someone will say, "HAHA The millennials don't know what you're talking about!"

And hell, I know all about the Honeymooners and Lucy & Ethel at the chocolate factory. I'll give millennials the benefit of the doubt about a show that went off the air the decade they were born.

OK yes but I've had to explain that Paul Newman wasn't just some salad dressing guy to more than one person in their 20s in the last few years so it does happen.

i also love my mom!

partially relating to being in our forties: she was having financial difficulty and there's no way in hell we're going to be buying a house in L.A. since everything here that's convenient is either 700K plus or a fixer or usually both (leading to feelings of financial inadequacy as people around us buy homes for 1.4 million and the like), so we bought her house for her so she could stay there and continue to live her life. so now we actually own a house, which feels very adult. it's just not *our* house.

In my 30s I'd say stuff like "I prefer darker roasted coffee" but now I say "At my age, I prefer darker roasted coffee." This is a good trick for seeming wise.

now I wonder, "How in the world can my kids not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

Listening to Bruce always struck me as highly optional. But at least I know who he is. By the same token, as a kid I knew, for example, who Jimmy Durante was, even though his career had basically ended before I was born.

your mom sounds super cool omar

Generally speaking, most people are best at appreciating and evaluating cultural products produced when they were aged 15-20.
maybe. but i feel confident saying that generally speaking, i am not most people :)

it's always "find a sandwich"!

your dad has got it together

When I was 15 I got super-offended when my aunt said I couldn't possibly understand the lyrics to "Purple Rain." Now I hear some contemporary music and am like "WTF are they singing?" :(

pretty much all specific bits of culture are highly optional.

I grew up with a sense that there was Essential Culture, but lost it quickly. When I got married, my parents were a little surprised that my wife hadn't been made to sit through all of "our" canonical movies. Nowadays we occasionally try to tell the children about Elvis Costello or the Go-Gos or Animaniacs. If they yawn and roll their eyes, we just drop it. Life's too short. They'll find what they need to find.

the only answer if you fear top baldness is to go - FULL mullet - so top is hairless, sides are partying. Like Ben Stahl

or john weathers from gentle giant

Essential reference for "top is hairless, sides are partying": Larry Fein
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/58/Larry_Fine_in_a_promotional_image_from_1962.png/220px-Larry_Fine_in_a_promotional_image_from_1962.png

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFZTmglPKag

We are apparently newly and differently fecund at this age.

Our forties might be "the decline of fecundity and the beginning of something else: a fecundity of the imagination, an era when we become not creative, but creation." My latest, for @onbeing. https://t.co/qLkUkUxNwU

— Kaya Oakes (@kayaoakes) January 5, 2018

whole lotta things "might be" true

so . . . wanna see my fecundity?

whole lotta things "might be" true

I couldn't get past the fecund line tbh. You don't need to be in your 40's to eschew that type of Richard and Judy show level bullshit psychobabble, and know confidently know that your not fucking missing out on anything of use.

sorry i blew all my fecundity 20 years back

fecund sounds too fecal to me and I dont like the word :<

In re keeping up with stuff, I think it’s a sort of misleading concept. When you’re younger it’s easier to be aware of some strains of pop culture because your friends and social circles are likewise tuned in and you’re more likely to just kind of absorb things by osmosis. otoh you’re likely to be aware of a relatively narrow band of stuff just because it takes a while to discover everything that’s out there in the world. In my 40s I’m definitely less cognizant of youth culture than when I was in my teens or 20s, but I’m more aware of at least some stuff across a much broader range.

Honestly, On Being usually makes me want to throw eggs at the radio. I can't stand that show.

I used to wonder "How can my grandmother not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

My grandpa tried name-dropping him in a dinner table conversation once, but unfortunately he called him Bruce Springlestein by mistake

Shaving your head down is *almost* like hiding it but it's also saying fuck it, this is who I am.

this is massively massively otm. when i decided to shave it all off it was a single-fingered “fuck you” to my deviant cocking hairline. in general, balding people who clean-shave (imo) are people who take full control of unwanted bullshit.

Shaving my head worked well when I was living in a tropical country, but in the UK it just exasperates the "it's cold and there are no hats that I can now acceptably wear" problem.

I really don't get why "hiding" that you are bald by shaving is a problem for some people. Not on this thread, but I have actually seen people say that it's somehow cheating or deception.

The wonderbra of haircuts

XP Because people are massively, inexplicably keen to judge other people for everything they are and everything they do?

and who they do it for..

Taking back control - the bald by choice movement.

TBF, it's not really 'hiding' anyway, inasmuch as the perimeter of the stubble still clearly telegraphs your hairline.

I'd actually been clipping my hair down to nothing for several years before I started losing it, which made the adjustment to the haircut I'd have for the rest of my life relatively smooth.

No pun intended!

Taking back control - the bald by choice movement.

― Luna Schlosser

as opposed to the InBald movement, come join our popular reddit

I used to wonder "How can my grandmother not know who Bruce Springsteen is?"

My grandpa tried name-dropping him in a dinner table conversation once, but unfortunately he called him Bruce Springlestein by mistake

― faust apes (NickB)

quick, somebody come up with a humorous mispronunciation of "brockhampton"

seriously this is the real '40s shit, i don't mind groaning every time i move (my wife insists it's performative, which it isn't, but there's no actual pain attached), but knowing that my brain function is degenerating is tough. i know more now than i did ten years ago and i'm learning more stuff all the time, but frequently i can't remember words, basic simple words like "shoe", and my typing has gotten a lot worse grammatically. i make stupid errors that i used to make fun of people for, like two/too/to and typing "grammer" instead of "grammar" and i have no idea why. and then i start leaving out connecting words so that when i write stuff it winds up not making sense (on top of the frequent logical incoherence, which isn't a new thing for me, i've always had that).

i decided long ago that alzheimer's is the one acceptable reason for me to kill myself, so i worry a lot about this stuff.

They say the memory is the first thing to go. I forget what the second thing is.

It's the memory.

Thanks. Dadjoking aside, I need words and language to eat (as I have no other job skills). Losing my grip on them would be a serious problem. It may be silly to believe in this, but I do hope that things like word games, crosswords, and Scrabble will help keep my wits about me.

xp Bruckprampton

Brocklepimpton

Throckmorton

Boringstreetrapton

i don't mind groaning every time i move (my wife insists it's performative, which it isn't, but there's no actual pain attached)

i was just thinking to myself about this this morning! It's much more prevalent than it was even a year ago.there may be a performative element but i do it when I'm by myself too so...

New maddening pain in left hip this week, firs-ever complaint related to that area for me (though unlucky in right arm, i've been lucky re: back neck and hips before now).

OK no more bitching about hair loss or aches and pains for now damn guys.

i feel great :D :D :D

that's more like it!

I'll say that I don't feel any worse than I did in my thirties. But I'm only like three months into this thing so let's just wait and see what happens.

i feel pretty good imo

I feel pretty good, considering

http://cdn.ebaumsworld.com/mediaFiles/picture/73250/83371800.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuG2uAWVlP4
this makes me irrationally angry but that is dead proof i am old i guess

from The Times today:

Analysis: Prince is taking back control

Who would have predicted that a member of the royal family would take grooming tips from Jason Statham, Ross Kemp and the UK’s community of nightclub doormen? Yet the Duke of Cambridge has, without warning, joined their chilly-scalped gang (writes Hattie Crisell).

It probably feels like a seismic change to Prince William, but visually it’s not dramatic, truth be told: in recent years, the close and ever-diminishing style he sported was more of a nod to the idea of hair, a dream of a memory of hair, rather than anything substantial enough to be considered hair itself. Now Prince William has taken back control, with a shaven head that makes baldness into a decisive choice, not an ongoing source of hilarity for his wife and brother.

And thank heavens he has. He looks better, more modern and younger with it; it’s a style fit for the kind of future king who gives warm interviews to Ant and Dec, and speaks out on matters that previous generations of monarchy might have avoided, such as mental health. The fact is, the majority of men with thinning hair would be better off biting the bullet so bravely.

it’s a style fit for the kind of future king who gives warm interviews to Ant and Dec

rummages in the kitchen for guillotine wax

the performative groaning made me laugh. getting up and going holy mother of god or “not again”, or just leaning on the kitchen counter staring at the toaster for what five minutes in the evening when i was about to do something else but got distracted by fatigue.

I was a little 'wtf @ this performative groaning thing' and then I climbed onto the bathroom counter to clean the mirror and groaned pretty performatively and realized that yes this is probably a thing I've done for a while without even realizing (old).

One time I was carrying lots of groceries up the stairs (all on my one good arm, natch) to our 5th floor apt and the little girls who live across the hall literally laughed at my exertions
I like that memory

I feel pretty good too. My only exercise though is walking about 7000 steps per day plus climbing 11 flights of stairs a couple times a week. I have a salad as part of every lunch and try not to drink during the week.

Never mind, in Hexadecimal I'm only 39

i used to think the ageing process was slow, but all the elastin in my skin seems to have fucked off overnight

Slough off to the shed thread I guess

Was talking with friend about how impossibly old the Traveling Wilburys seemed when they released their music in 1988. I've listed their ages at the time. For some perspective, three of them are no longer alive. Enjoy yourself, it's later than you think. pic.twitter.com/eoPTmgwz1K

— Neal Brennan (@nealbrennan) January 24, 2018

jesus
that's depressing

holy fuck at george harrison being 45 with the wilburys, that doesn't seem possible

Huuuuuuuuh.

Welp.

I find myself doing that all the time. I see someone in an old movie or TV show who seems like a capital-A Adult, an elder if you will, and then discover, yeah, I'm older now than they were there. Sheesh.

i try not to think about it but it was super cool of this person to call it to our attention

Dylan in particular there does that for me. In the '80s when I was in high school and college, he seemed so ridiculously OLD. He'd been through like five different careers. But for nearly the whole decade he was younger than I am now. (There's a "My Back Pages" joke there somewhere.)

Though of course with my couple of career changes and divorces and a kid in middle school, I know I am myself ridiculously old.

As it happens, I was born exactly 30 years after Bob Dylan, so I have an ever-present reference point here.

I'm right between Harrison and Dylan in that picture.

Jeff Lynne still looks exactly the same

i guess i didn't realize Orbison was only 52 when he died

So, going by 2017 numbers:

<pre>DYLAN : 47 : DMX</pre>
<pre>LYNNE : 41 : RICK ROSS</pre>
<pre>PETTY : 37 : GUCCI MANE</pre>
<pre>ORBISON : 52 : DR. DRE</pre>
<pre>HARRISON : 45 : BUSTA RHYMES</pre>

"Old Man Tries CSS on HTML Machine, Film at Eleven."

DYLAN : 47 : DMX

LYNNE : 41 : RICK ROSS

PETTY : 37 : GUCCI MANE

ORBISON : 52 : DR. DRE

HARRISON : 45 : BUSTA RHYMES

in other oh fuck we're dying fast news, twitter informs me that "Girl You Know It's True" is thirty years old.

:(

I just heard "handle with care" in the grocery store the other day for the first time in ages and immediately though how three of them are dead now. I had no idea that Tom Petty was only 37 then, they all seemed so ancient.

I think about this a lot in context a lot of those 80s network tv dramas from the 80s that I knew of but never really watched when I was a kid. Magnum PI and Matt Houston were both my current age (43) or younger when those shows were on but they looked SO OLD and I refuse to believe that they aren't like 50 years old in pictures from that era:

http://dtlon6z3v1kfl.cloudfront.net/wp-content/uploads/2017/03/19155710/Aloha-Shirts-Tom-Selleck-Magnum-portrait1.jpg

http://www.davidhedison.net/hedison/galleries/gueststar/Matt_Houston/Matt01.jpg

omg i totally forgot about matt houston

I had no idea that Tom Petty was only 37 then

Petty didn't seem that old to me at the time. i was really only familiar with his MTV era songs when the Wiburys hit and i guess he didn't really start charting until his late 20s. wasn't until he died that i realized he was the same age as my mom. he certainly seemed a lot more of my gen than hers.

the rest though def seemed like grandpas.

I had no idea that Tom Petty was only 37 then, they all seemed so ancient.

and yet bowie was older and didn’t. perhaps the wilburys were just strange.

Petty def the youngest one and always the weakest link in the Wilburys but sorry, I’ll duck off and take it to some TW thread

But yeah I’ve lapped the fools and the bartenders at the bars by a factor of at least one and it’s amusing as hell

I realised recently that had I had kids as soon as feasible (lets say at 21), I could now easily be a grandma if my daughter did too. Ack.

yeah i know someone younger than us who’s solidly a grandfather, meanwhile we almost owned a cat once

I was looking up people from my grade school, and a girl who was in my class IS a grandma.

Maybe I should share that the next time someone tells I'm young and have plenty of time to have kids.

This has come up already OTT but my grandma was 37 when I was born.

how can you tell whether you have lower back pain in the morning because you old, or it's just time to replace your "2nd cheapest from Sears" mattress you bought 8 years ago?

I broke out into a little sprint yesterday but had to stop almost immediately because of a incapacitating twinge in my left knee.

sarahell, does the pain manifest itself while in said bed, or shortly after getting up?

I think that if a mattress is the problem you'll be aware of it throughout the night, not just in the morning. Back pain specifically in the morning is probably more about your body complaining about what you're asking it to do (namely, get up and deal with shit). Back pain also very famously associated with stress.

I get a twinge of morning back pain sometimes; it arrives about 7 AM while I am feeding people breakfast and radiates downward into my thighs. Sitting on a heating pad for a while eases it tremendously. A heating pad is a great thing to have around anyway.

Of the four distinct flavors of pain I get, it is probably the most benign because it's treatable. (The others are gouty arthritis, Lyme arthritis, and a nonspecific wandering arthritis.) I don't do a lot of performative groaning (at least I don't think I do), but I do do a lot of stoic wincing.

another holy shit i'm dying moment: Snow's "Informer" is celebrating its 25th anniversary this month.

A choccy gum gum now?

xxp - it's less of a pain, and more of a dull ache that goes away after I've had coffee. It was pretty minor this morning -- I moved more towards the center of the mattress last night when sleeping, so the mattress theory seems more likely atm

Reginald Perrin is a grandfather at 46, perfectly normal.

I'm getting that loback pain too..

lower back pain : do some 'planking'

i try and do about 60-90 seconds a day to keep my core muscles in action.

since i started, it has cleared up my reoccuring lower back spasms/muscle sprains.

Do I have to plank in a public place and post a photo on social media in order to derive lower back pain benefits, y/n

Hmm, worth a go

Next question, how I get go elsewhere of warts on finger 🖕

In the Signals household, "planking" is childhood patois for a meal of pancakes.

Is "planking" the thing where you get in push-up position but don't actually do any push-ups?

yes
it's very effective for building strength and you can do it anywhere!
http://www.yogawiz.com/images/yoga-poses/dolphin-plank-pose.jpg

Why not just do push-ups?

I think I "planked" once at a party. Someone was explaining it to me, and I did it, but I was also very drunk. From that experience, I believe that it is something you should not do while drunk.

pushups put the brunt of the work on you pecs and tris, planks (done correctly) are about core strength

thanks! I still don't know the difference between yoga and pilates, so clearly I am not up on my 20th century fitness activities.

^ er 21st century.

yoga is crazy ancient!

Seriously! It's been around since at least the mid-'90s!

planks are peaceful
pushups, less so

haha, i sorta found it the opposite, because with push-ups you at least were "doing something" as opposed to holding your body in one position for more time than is natural, which is something I don't have the patience for.

i like to listen to a song i like with a long intro and then trying to plank for as long as possible (i've only made it maybe 3 min max)
keeps me from overfocusing on how bored i am
preferably something slow, super loud, heavy enough to be distracting

OK, "Fascination Street" it is then.

i like to listen to a song i like with a long intro and then trying to plank for as long as possible (i've only made it maybe 3 min max)

humblebrag.

(i rarely can go beyond 90 secs these days)

for a while before my 40s i was running, and it turns out that it's just too hard on me (and i don't really like it that much apart from listening to music while i do it), so i had to switch up exercise routines to something more placid/indoors
i don't really pay much attention to the time -- once i estimated i was planking for 4 min and it was like 2.5, lol. i briefly tried to increase my time (hence my record) but stopped caring and went back to just planking for as long as possible...and then a little more. eventually the time increases but i try not to pay attention to that.

i do the same.
put on something loud, and try and stay distracted.
no outdoors crap/gear required, and so far has deterred my back issues.
that and my exercise bike (which i have just rediscovered after years of neglect), will have to suffice cos i refuse to leave the house to do any of this shit.

Holy shit I just tried planking and boy is it hard.

planks (done correctly) are about core strength

Certainly feels like it.
I work in an office where half the people are gym gym gym and the other half don't take any exercise whatsoever. I'd like to be the middle ground.

Although having said that I do walk 3 miles a day.

Holy shit I just tried planking and boy is it hard.

hence my reaction re the 3 min max.
looks and sounds easy, but ..
that said, a few days/weeks in and you can feel the difference in your lower back (my initial reason)

XP not even going for the cheap laughs when I tell you I had to read that twice

In my region, planking is method of cooking fish.

after you plank how much more are you supposed to plank after your attempt at planking gives way

i.e. how many 'reps'

I'm 40 on Sunday, and spending it with my partner in a quiet Suffolk hotel, hopefully reading a PG Wodehouse novel and having our energetic walking plans rained off.

That’s a good birthday.

My bf was complaining about how much his joints and muscles were always hurting and he does moderately physical labor for a living so I wasn't really listening, and then he started taking a basic multivitamin and now he's a new human being. So fwiw.

thanks! I still don't know the difference between yoga and pilates, so clearly I am not up on my 20th century fitness activities.

― sarahell

Pilates has more cool gear and less spirituality

We've all heard a lot of aging-related jokes about the Nirvana Nevermind baby, but for real, 2018 is the year that baby outlives Kurt Cobain

Just gotta get past April first.

Old metal dudes are the best. I kinda wish I was among them but I'm pretty damn borderline.

That’s a good birthday.

Whether or not it rains.

friend on FB (Carrol O'Connor was 44 years old and Jean Stapleton was 45 when All in the Family first came on TV) pic.twitter.com/pJnvAECzPs

— joe janecek (@joejanecek) January 26, 2018

maybe we're okay

holy shit

Those were the daaaaaays

they look like they live on cottage cheese and applesauce

Cottage cheeese- and apple blintz-fueled epidemic of chinlessness.

That's not quite true about the AiTF leads; O'Connor was 46 and Stapleton was 48. (They seem to be referring to the first pilot from a couple years earlier, which never got a regulkar broadcast). Still yeah, people generally looked older then.

James Gandolfini didn't turn 40 until 2001. In this pic, he's 39:

https://i.imgur.com/gM5XAY2.png

is it just me or are we aging better as a generation? i mean i know _I_ look good but it seems like most of my fortysomething friends look like they're in their thirties. these boomer/greatest gen guys in their forties look like they're in their fifties

i wouldn't say it extends to everyone in my generation but many people whose lifestyle permits seem to be holding up better than their elders (self included)
life can make a person look haggard in any number of ways; age is but one of them

having a kid pretty much destroys you is how i break it down to an extent

having a kid pretty much destroys you is how i break it down to an extent

ABSOLUTELY. Though I never say this out loud around people I know who have kids.

(active) dads and moms alike ime; pretty clearly the lack of sleep and massive stress that does it

^ This. Obv it's a generalization and not true of everyone but in general the ppl I know who look the youngest out of my peers are the ones who don't have kids.

also these days we're less likely to have been smoking for 30 years

and probably eat more fresh vegetables

I smoked for 20 years but I've also been using eye cream and anti-aging moisturizer since I was 18 and a very wise esthetician told me it was never too early to start and to always always wear sunscreen. I would tongue kiss that lady if I could find her today. Also, I do think genetics plays a role in this stuff too.

I got made fun of for leaving my eye cream at a friend's apartment after a sleepover for a bachelorette party when I was in my mid-twenties. An email was sent around asking who the old lady was her forgot her cream and they all laughed. Guess who's laughing now, ladies? I read something the other day which said that 20 somethings are now getting botox as a preventive anti-aging thing which seems bonkers to me.

I had a meeting with a client yesterday who is two years older than me and has two kids, and she looks pretty great. Like the people I know who are my age that have kids don't look any older than those who don't -- maybe the women are slightly heavier, which culturally connotes "older" -- however, fat generally makes your skin look younger.

Like, all else being equal, the heavier people I know in their 40s have younger looking skin than the thin ones, so it kinda evens out in the "what age do you look" department, outside of wardrobe choices and balding/graying issues.

but honestly (xp way up thread), if I had the time (and fuck I wish I did), I would photoshop Archie and Edith wearing contemporary "hip" 40-something clothes and see whether they still look "old" for their ages.

the way people treat agedness as repellent disappoints me
youth will always be fleeting -- even for the genetically fortunate, the diligent moisturizers, the health freaks. even if i look younger than i am right now, some day i won't and i want to be able to feel alright about myself when that happens.

yeah! especially at our age(s) -- it's one thing when your a teen/20-something, but now, it's like self-loathing. Why do it? ... Funny enough, earlier today my neighbor (who I think is about 80) was using her new walker and getting on the senior bus, and I envisioned myself at that age doing the same thing -- what it would be like, how I would feel about my fellow infirm senior citizens -- would it be like when I was 8 and switched schools and had to take the bus, with a bunch of other children, an age where we're fragile and dependent as well.

I'm fine with aging and actually looking quite forward to it but I agree that the way people treat it is really upsetting. I know that it's inevitable but I'm still going to take small measures like using moisturizers and sunscreen to look the best I can as I get older and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I don't want to look like I'm 25 but I'm quite happy to look good for forty if that makes any sense.

Tbh I'm going full on kaftan, crazy glasses, and turbans when I hit 70 and I'm very much looking forward to my Mrs. Roper chic stage of life.

I'm pretty much full-on Mrs. Roper chic in the summer when it gets over 90.

And although I would like to see Carol O'C in the outfits you're proposing, S, I think he'd sill look pretty damn old for 44. I honestly would have guessed he was about 60 in that picture.

x-post - yessssssssssssss :)

the kaftan thing is great -- you get air circulation, don't worry about shaving your legs, getting sunburned ...and potentially importantly, it signals to the men who seem to develop into super solicitous creeps in the hot months, that you do not give a fuck, and they should leave you the fuck alone.

xxp - I just think about how we perceive age -- as in "how old is this person" -- and what forms those perceptions, what cues do we look for. Some of it is biological/genetic, but I think there's cultural influence in that as well, idk.

Yeah think about Cary Grant or Humphrey Bogart as romantic leads. In the mid-20th century straight white guys did not necessarily want or need to look young.

x-post - No, I think you're definitely right about that. Also, the air circulation factor is key. I pretty much only wear dresses in the summer for that reason. When it's hot and humid out I can't stand clothes that are clingy.

xp - honestly think about the fact that Harrison Ford and Clint Eastwood were romantic leads up until ...

which brings us to the contentious territory of aging men vs. women

Well, yeah.

when Spencer Tracy was Bruce Springsteen's age, he was dead.

An ex-bf of mine (Irish, not an ILXor, died unexpectedly last year) always asked people ‘what is your age’ and I always thought that was a better way of putting it!

did he get a bunch of clever responses like "stone", "mesozoic", and "golden"?

Carroll O'Connor in 1968 at age 44:

https://i.imgur.com/dwiNJjp.jpg

https://i.imgur.com/M9JO4nG.jpg

Also so happy to have finally found a thread to post 50-year-old Carroll O'Connor pictures.

is it just me or are we aging better as a generation? i mean i know _I_ look good but it seems like most of my fortysomething friends look like they're in their thirties. these boomer/greatest gen guys in their forties look like they're in their fifties

― Chocolate-covered gummy bears? Not ruling those lil' guys out. (ulysses)

no i'm pretty much decrepit, carroll o'connor looks great compared to me

http://i.cdn.turner.com/v5cache/TCM/Images/Dynamic/i440/kellysheroes_forgetaboutyourflanks_FC_470x264_052720170642.jpg

Carroll O'Connor at 45

https://www.thevintagenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/12/006wy7kd.jpg

meanwhile, same movie - clint eastwood at 39 (movie came out when he was 40)

Potato chips will do wonders

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-nfRW82om7IE/UVL0JSb8KOI/AAAAAAAADf4/QGz2GfIJ5nU/s1600/The_Enforcer_Clint_Eastwood.jpg

Clint at 45

YEah, he and George Harrison at a tie.

OK, feel like we're making progress here.

https://i.imgur.com/TMkybHs.jpg

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z3FxI3Mt3PU/U5a5ydpRNcI/AAAAAAAAN-8/3hzfSRCCukg/s1600/Up-The-Down-Staircase-Jean-Stapleton-1967.JPG

here she is at 44

carroll o'c did a nice slooow southern accent in 'in the heat of the night' despite being from nyc

I think people were expected to dress/look old, back in the day.

I was watching God's Own Country last night and noticed how it inverted the sexist movie rulebook by having Ian Hart play the partner of Gemma Jones, who is 20 odd years his senior. Mind you he, fine actor as he is, is knackered and old looking enough looking to pull it off. Not meant in a shitty way, I've similar genes at work on me.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DVBDw1GX4AAlCJr.jpg:small

by having Ian Hart play the partner of Gemma Jones, who is 20 odd years his senior

The rulebook is intact; she plays his mother-in-law, as I remember it (not his mother, I don't think). At any rate, she is the grandmother of the protagonist. A few critics missed this too.

the son calls her "Nan" i think.

I must have misheard that as "mam".

https://i.imgur.com/tDyNaxf.jpg

Rarely have I ever wanted to actually punch a computer screen and yet.

People scream at concerts?

http://www.babylonisburning.net/wp-content/uploads/2011/08/psycho-scream.jpeg

how can you tell whether you have lower back pain in the morning because you old, or it's just time to replace your "2nd cheapest from Sears" mattress you bought 8 years ago?

― sarahell, Wednesday, January 24, 2018 11:06 PM (one month ago)

Update -- I rotated the mattress a few weeks back and now do not have the pain anymore.

√

Rotated my mattress a couple of weeks ago and got the same effect. I think I might have worn a groove in it.
Also it might be because of the relentless summer sunshine, but oh boy are the grey hairs starting to come in on top. Looks OK though. If I can pull of an 'old Deckard' look at 75 I'll be happy.

Also I would like to report considerably less patience with people who talk out of their arse all the time.

Hey turned 40 a bit over a month ago, don't care much so far. Lots of grey but for some reason it only seems to show in my beard.

Yokoso

I’ll be landing squarely in the middle of my forties this month as I turn 45. I’m uh, not in love with the idea but I don’t have too much of a say in the matter.

More on the ground reportage as my 40s keep happening.

I'm liking 40 a lot so far I think. The creeping sense of FOMO about basically everything actually seems to be helping with priorities a little bit.

I'm 41, so I guess I should mingle in here, right?

Christ I am 48 now. Does not compute.

just u wait!

Yeah was gonna say, just wait until you pass through Area 51.

Gonna be 47 in December. Celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary this minth.

Lol morbs quoting Hamilton

Murray Hamilton?

Know yourself at any age. Lots of us love y’all

Gonna be 47 in December. Celebrated my 25th wedding anniversary this minth.

sort of got skipped over but this is utterly brilliant

In my 50s here, and in my experience it's a lot harder than your 40s.

The main reason is that if you're not happy with your life, or you feel you took a major wrong turn 30 years ago, it feel too late to do something about it. And its all too easy to be lost in obsessive thoughts about it. For the first time in my life I'm seeking counselling.

Would be good to hear more from morbs.

Well, having separated from my wife of 20 years and fallen in love with someone who actually makes me feel loved, I can attest that 48 has been a watershed for me. And counselling has helped me to realise how I constructed the trap in which I found myself.
In a weird way I am delighted, I had felt very hollow after apparently solving all the problems most people deal with in affluent Western societies and gaining no satisfaction from that.

Good to hear. And good to be reminded that if you can overcome your problems, there's a positive side when you come through.

48 later this month. Regrets become a extremely potent brew by this point, but I’m still trying to build a way out of this economic leg hold trap I’m in.

Not sure i have "come through", I think I'm about 50% of the way "through" and with plenty of my old problems stuck to me. What is great is the realisation that growth and change is possible at any stage of life.

The hardest ages for me to come to terms with were 25 and 50. My forties were a golden age, I loved them. I'd spent my thirties hell-bent on pleasure, to compensate for a lack of fulfillment. In my forties, pleasure settled into a better place in my priorities, as fulfillment rapidly increased.

Turning 50 made me feel old, in a way that turning 40 hadn't, and I found it harder to envisage a path forwards. I'm 56 now, and that's all resolved. I've gracefully shed some aspects of my younger life, but by no means all. My aging system can't take quite so much pleasure, but it can take enough.

In my twenties and thirties, I socialised almost exclusively within a narrow age range. That started changing in my forties, and to my surprise, it's expanded even more in my fifties. I have friends who I see regularly in every half-decade age group from 19 to 80, and I value that enormously. I've also become a great deal more accepting of my weaknesses and flaws. That took long enough.

beautiful words Mike

The main reason is that if you're not happy with your life, or you feel you took a major wrong turn 30 years ago, it feel too late to do something about it.

otm, i really feel like my life is over

In an odd way I feel fortunate that I screwed up almost continually between 18 and 27. I spent my entire 30s feeling terrible, but now it feels like I got all of that out of the way early.

The main reason is that if you're not happy with your life, or you feel you took a major wrong turn 30 years ago, it feel too late to do something about it.

otm, i really feel like my life is over

― karl wallogina (Autumn Almanac), Sunday, July 1, 2018 8:45 AM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

too real

Reality used to be a friend of mine.

Snoball I think you might be completely otm but I’m getting into a groove lately and don’t wanna count my chickens just yet

34 here but my life was way better 5 years ago. It’s been downhill since then. Despite having great friends and a music “career” nothing has really worked out. So I basically don’t care anymore. I’m healthier and looking better than ever. But meh. So where do you go from here?
H

So where do you go from here?

around the next curve. most lives have plenty of them.

Yeah

my forties were fucking heavy.
the biggest rollercoaster of my life.
already my 50s have proved to be interesting.
a few days before I turned 50 I was made redundant for the first time in my life.
and 6 months on, I have no desire to ever return to the full time/corp crap.
its been a lovely experience just being a stay at home dad, and stuff.
once the dad thing is over though I suspect things will be very different.
so, already my 50s is very very different to what my expectations were.

Maybe we're going to need a new thread for ILX'ers in their 50s.... Great to hear bits of everyone's stories. I'm 53. Between work and having twins at age 40, my 40s went by in a blur. Time has slowed down now that the kids are older and I feel like I've kinda figured out what I like and what I don't. Just more comfortable doing me. And there's still plenty left to accomplish. I'm lucky to be in a line of work that values experience & perspective so getting older actually opens up some opportunities.

we're going to need a new thread for ILX'ers in their 50s

Predictably, every ilx thread with a title containing the words "fifties" or "sixties" refer to either the 1950s or 1960s.

In my early 50s and I agree with everyone upthread that your 50s is qualitatively quite different from your 40s. In my 40s I felt in the midst of my life, I could still take major life-changing decisions in my stride like moving continents. Now, I'm more like, this is what I made of my life, I chose this pathway for good or ill, I'm stuck with it.

And then there's health. Ten years ago I felt in perfect health - now I sleep with a CPAP machine, I've got a dodgy knee that I'll probably have to live with for the rest of my life, I'm on a daily statin for my high cholesterol ... To get down to brutal brass tacks, I guess the fact that I'll eventually die felt more abstract in my 40s, and more real now.

Not long till I'm eligible for this thread and everyone's bailing on it? Story of my life.

My old life came to an end in my fifties. I was made redundant at 51, thus bringing a 28-year career to a close, as my senior technical IT skillset is no longer marketable. That was fine; I rarely enjoyed the work very much, and having just paid off the mortgage, my living costs were reduced. I look back on those 28 years as a means to an end - something I had to do, and that I'm glad to be done with. I make a far more modest living these days, but my job satisfaction and work ethic are massively higher.

Then, at 52, we left the city I had lived in for 34 years, and moved to a small town in a different part of the country, where we knew no-one. So I've basically had to re-invent myself. The first year was lonely and tough, but I forced myself to adapt, integrate and contribute, and I now love my new life.

and I now love my new life

this is heartening to hear, both as a positive example and also i'm glad you're doing well mike

This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

15 months I was at the best point in my adult life. I was doing what I loved, and generating a good income from it. I had no debt! Then I decided to try to make a good situation even better by adding drugs. That worked for about three months until the drugs took over. I had severe addiction issues in the past; I just thought I'd be able to manage it this time.

I went broke (and unemployed) last September. My life the last 9 months has been heavy, heavy going. But just last month I met a guy in AA, an extraordinarily kind, wise, thoughtful dude, and he's been coaching me into, hopefully, a better way to live. He's got me running around like a headless chicken, but it's working, I feel real hope, real joy. My whole fucking life has been bullshit basically, but maybe that can change. I'll do whatever. I'm 43 -- sorry for the lifestory I maybe needed to express this somewhere.

Thanks for that. I'm in a similar situation myself, been thinking about AA.

xp No, that's fair enough, 40s have a way of producing self-reflection.

I started mine at the start of 2015, in a protracted breakup with my ex-fiancée, and at the weekend I got affianced again. This seems ridiculously lucky - I was expecting a quiet life going to the pub and occasional movies, with some ILX elder statesmen (S's Mark & Martin) as role models.

Now I have to actually go out and get that blood test (for high blood pressure) that I was hoping to ignore for another few months.

fiancées will do that alright (grats)

Congrats YMOF.

ty ty.

Indeed, adding to that.

50 still a ways off but I'll hit three-quarters through my forties in two more months; as 50 is theoretically the earliest I could retire (not that I plan on it) I do see it as something I want to get through, if only because it opens up a few more general possibilities. But I'll enjoy the time I have now, of course.

retire?!

i'm 48 and i honestly can't see me being able to give up work for at least another 20 years ;_;

public servant fistbump

course the actuarial cut is swingeing

Just don’t retire from ilx, Ned

I was here the first day, think I'll be here when they finally turn out the lights.

;)