This is a thread for ILXORS IN THEIR 50's

Our cohort is few, but mighty.

abbott being a sexy cold war scientist

OH MY GOD WHY WAS I NEVER THAT

I remember Howdy Doody.

and i thought i was old for remembering leaded gasoline!

madonna, michael jackson, prince and ME -- i am now 50 and 1/2.

sept 1968 was like the gayest time to enter high school

everyone cool in those days were entering college

there is truth lurking here -- people in our sub-generation have a complicated relationship w/our older sibs, the 60s baby boomers. this usage of "gay" is uhm, anachronisitic, or something. (I entered HS in 72 FWIW.)

anachronistic! edgy, you mean!!1!

so is bimble part of this exclusive club?

I didn't expect to get shoulder and back hair this late in the game.

ha was wondering what you meant in the 40s thread

what's up y'all

had a cardiologist call me at 7am to cancel my appointment (snow)

this morning the dentist said that my teeth with metal fillings will all eventually need crowns; seems legit, the youngest of those fillings is 40+ years old

i went to the dentist for lots of work this past year, first time since forever, and it was all space aged nano whatever shit and i think the dentist and his assistant were legit smirking at my one old iron ore filling from when i was a teenager, fifty years ago, in an eastern bloc nation

oh hi, I'm 54 now

peeing takes a long time

backache is a thing

(knocks on wood)

As hinted above, I have a cardiologist now! My primary doctor, who has pretty amazing raw skills -- like hearing -- apparently, thought he heard a murmur in my heartbeat last month. GREAT!

It turns out I have an "unconcerning" prolapse which is a "2" (not a 3 or a 4), so it just has to be checked every year from now on.

Aging is a motherfucker.

all the best morbs

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murmur_(album)#/media/File:R.E.M._-_Murmur.jpg

i am two years older than william hartnell in this picture :D

https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/images/ic/1920x1080/p01hg14p.jpg

(obviously i have regenerated several times: also did not grow up in poverty etc)

He got paid five times more per ep than Anneke Wills was, to make up for the poverty stricken childhood!

what a feelin'

mainly feeling it in my lower back today

Rapidly approaching Sammy Hagar milestone.

Minutemen?

Can you hear me, Dr. Mu

Imagine my surprise

Just realized that the “ordinary guy” in Pavement’s “Stereo” is maybe a reference to “Dr. Wu.” I still got it!

Oh wait

I just went through all the tests you are supposed to do when you get to 50, only 7 years late.

Anyway, all passed 100%, so hey!

I guess that lower back pain is gonna go in the "what do you expect at yr age?" cart.

Thanks for reminding me. I just did the same with one test, the biggest of all, remaining to be done in the next few months. If the news is bad I will speed post my remaining backlog of screennames.

I was Big C diagnosed about five months after turning 50, so maybe i didn't get the other tests.

(i'm mostly OK now, just medicated)

He got paid five times more per ep than Anneke Wills was, to make up for the poverty stricken childhood!

― calzino

for two months and then he got sacked. quintessential "being in your '50s" experience tbh

Definitely another bummer about being in your 50s. If you lose your job, you can't necessarily bounce back. You might never have a salaried position again.

Definitely another bummer about being in your 50s. If you lose your job, you can't necessarily bounce back. You might never have a salaried position again.

HI DERE. Raise your hand if you have been rendered depressed, rudderless, and without direction because you've structured your life around a eight-hour, salaryman working schedule for so long that when you were inevitably disrupted out of your career you've become addicted to the anxiety and panic of not being able to focus. oops TMI

raises hand

in my case it took several years to work through the trauma of being ejected and to figure out other ways to live ... I won't trivialize the difficulties involved, but now the only thing I miss from my salaryman days is the income

i need the med coverage

As mentioned on the other thread, in January I was made redundant 7 days before I hit 50.
my skills are probably no longer in demand (manual software tester) due to an increased focus on automated testing, and to be honest, I think I have had enough of software/corporate culture.
The last few months I have been a stay at home dad, and will probably remain so while mk2 goes through his teenage trials and tribulations (3 more years).
The very idea of being the Office New Boy at the age of 50 fills me with dread, and I know it would bring on a lot of stress and anxiety.
I am in a 'fortunate' position in that due to life insurance, I have no mortgage and get a small occupational pension from BH so will not be made homeless or starve, but coming to terms with a very different financial outlook is still the big stumbling block.
That and daytime TV.
Thank goodness for 'Walter Presents .. '.

In other news : re lower back pain.
Having sat on my arse in an office for 30 years the last 2 years were very problematic re my back.
My solution : swimming.
I have started swimming 4 times a week (roughly 1km each time), and the change has been very noticeable.

Slightly overlapping with what I said on the Forties thread, but I was made redundant at 51, also due to having skills which are no longer in demand. My partner has always earned a lot more than me, so we were OK - but then he was made redundant last year, at 58. Thankfully his skills are still in demand, but he refuses to re-dose himself with the poison of corporate culture - so it's taking a while to sort things out, and we are having to be careful with money, for the first time since our twenties.

I cover my monthly outgoings with DJ-ing (a weekly gig and a monthly gig) and Discogs selling (I inherited a rare and valuable collection, and am being ruthless with my own). We also have a lodger, for the first time in nearly thirty years - a good friend, also in his fifties, going through a divorce and coming to terms with being on the gay side of bi. He hates his job and wants to change back to his old career, but it would involve a precarious salary drop, at least to begin with, which isn't great timing when you're getting divorced.

Despite this difficulties, my net life satisfaction level is still hugely in credit. I feel busy, fulfilled, and grateful for all I've got. But I can't deny the presence of a persistent low-level background hum, which says "You are uniquely unemployable. Everyone else can get jobs, but you haven't got what it takes." It's bullshit, but it's there.

Fuck those cry baby under 50s in that other thread. Here's to getting Saga Holiday ads and people ringing me to ask if I want to cash in my pension and/or release some equity from my home and to being told I can't increase my life insurance because YOU R 2 OLD.

Also I just put up a desk, not too shabby eh? I'll be paying for it tomorrow mind.

it doesn't start getting real until you can't remember your 40s

xp Incidentally my pension is not worth the paper it's printed on so who's laughing now Mr Random Cold Caller?

it gets really real when your pathetic gig income and Obamacare fast-track you to bankruptcy

what a feelin'

― the ignatius rock of ignorance (Dr Morbius), Monday, July 2, 2018 8:55 AM (one year ago) bookmarkflaglink

Right in my knees.

oh hi, I'm 54 now
peeing takes a long time

― WilliamC, Thursday, January 4, 2018 12:24 PM

Seven weeks shy of 56, but I found the secret: constant impotent rage keeps me young.

momus is almost 50

He’ll be 60 in February.

Fuck those cry baby under 50s in that other thread.

They're just coming to grips with their ultimate mortality, poor dears. Be kind to them.

I’m 55 and having a pretty good time.

I seem to have rediscovered my mojo this year: got serious about my job, holidayed in Japan, rekindled my interests in art and photography, good clothes (lost 40lb weight which helped), and the joy of short breaks by Eurostar.

Yeah, i’m at that point. I managed to lose 40 pounds by eating right so exercising is a lot easier now. Less meat to lift! But I don’t have much muscle at all. My legs are ok from cycling but I’ve never done a pullup in my life. Last week I ordered a pullup bar and i’ve been working on situps and pushups. Hooray for fit old-timers!

Got some hip xrays done the other week, with the unsurprising result of "Moderate bilateral hip joint osteoarthritis."
I've had creaky/sore hips and knees for years as I've banged on about before but this is the first time I've had osteo confirmed in the hips (I knew about the knees). Dunno if theres much I can do now beyond mitigate it with the physio I never bother doing, haw.

xp The important thing is that wanting to know what's coming up next seems to be the only thing keeping me from killing myself, so there's that.

I definitely relate to the wanting to know what happens next thing. the inverse of that is I think the worst thing about losing someone you love is missing their takes on things that are happening. For me, when something happens that makes me immediately think thinking, "man, ____ would have loved this", and having that sort of gut punch of sadness with the thought is one of the worst things.

Oh for real. So many friends I want to talk to and ask about specific things. That's always sad but also it's nice to think of them.

I find that with groups of friends these days, some deliberate remembrance and invocation of the departed. It's good to share memories with other people who knew them, it keeps them more present for all of us. I know people who died 20 years ago who lots of us still talk about. Kind of a tribal memory, at a social level.

Yeah there's something to that. There are some friendships and connections that were very close and specific for me and I often feel like I'm the sole person remembering -- may not actually be the case. But then there's someone like stirmonster on here, or Kaleb Horton, and I know there's a lot of people who will carry their memories forward and it's good to be among them.

Certainly nice to see someone who I don't always see who knew someone deceased well and the shared memory comes up.

One place where it is painful is with neighbors whose family or others close to them I didn't know. Walking by the former houses of people who I'd wave at every day...their spouse is also gone and I don't know anyone who they knew...

An older friend and I were talking and of course a lot of the conversation revolved around our aches and pains and what’s wrong with our bodies. My buddy refers to these conversations as an “organ recital.”

so um where's the 60's thread? I forgot I'm too old for this one now

very sexagenarian of you to be unable to search for it

(these threads are hard to find what with not knowing whether it's 50s or 50's or fifties, the mass of threads about 50s music and the way ilx search treats apostrophes)

How did I get here?? (Thread for ILXors in their 60s and beyond)

Re invocating dearly departed, I often do this just to myself. My friend Cahl died some years back from cancer and I still think of him every time I pick up and use one of my good knives and remember him rousing on me and taking over my kitchen one birthday party of mine, saying I didn't look after my knives properly and "get out of the way let me do this". Whereupon he whipped up a japanese storm foodwise.
I think of everyone here as well, esp bimble.

Also my oldest kid is working on two different self-produced albums and this week successfully sold a beat to a rapper for $25.

― paper plans (tipsy mothra), Thursday, October 1, 2026 9:42 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

with these gas prices?! that's some shameful beat haggling.

My buddy refers to these conversations as an “organ recital.”

"One place where it is painful is with neighbors whose family or others close to them I didn't know. Walking by the former houses of people who I'd wave at every day...their spouse is also gone and I don't know anyone who they knew..."

Recently my dad switched mobile phones, which isn't earth-shattering news, but we suddenly realised that without the old phone he'd have no way to contact so many of his (and my) family, because we just have their numbers stored in the phone.

In particular he's gone for one of those old person big-number retro-style phones, so all of the contacts are stored on the SIM card rather than in The Cloud. The thought of losing contact with someone just because you didn't write their number down on a piece of paper feels like the setup to a romance novel from the 1930s, but it can actually happen in the actual real world today.

Luckily he had my uncle's address, so I wrote him a letter! Which means that I have now written letters to people in three different decades. Once in the 1990s, once in the 2000s... and once in the 2020s. I don't think I ever wrote a letter in the 2010s.

When I say "letter" I mean the physical kind, on paper. Obviously I didn't write it, I typed it. I deliberately didn't justify the text because that's not the kind of thing you do with a personal letter.

I got retinal laser surgery this year and now I know that if I see flashes and floaters I am going STRAIGHT TO AN ER.

When I actually went to the eye doctor I asked him a bit more about the best thing to do, because he admitted that unless the ER had an eye specialist there wasn't really much they could do there. He said now that I was registered as a patient with his practice if it happens again I should call them so they can see me immediately.

As for the rest, well... I made it to my 50s. My mother didn't. Like Christine, whatever may come I just want to see what happens in the world tomorrow.