This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

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