This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

many of my female friends in their late forties/early fifties bemoan their invisibility

For sure! But being visible as a woman isn’t necessarily great, either, vis a vis in orbit’s comments upthread about street harassment. Visibility is at best fraught, I think. Invisibility isn’t good, but can be a perverse relief. To be seen without being objectified would be ideal.

When I was young enough to be uncomfortably visible in public, I was still invisible/inaudible in grad seminars, for example.

When I was young enough to be uncomfortably visible in public, I was still invisible/inaudible in grad seminars, for example.

Yeah, that's the fun thing about sexism! It never works for you, only against you.

I'm sure it's partly being in the longest/only long-term relationship of my life but I'm fine with being invisible in an "acknowledgement of sexuality" sense. To some extent I've comfortably forgotten the presh to be feminine and attractive in circumscribed ways or to care if men find me so. (Lockdown in sweatpants has helped.) The last man who tried to "flirt" with me was unbearably awful and I would like to never care about attracting dating partners again, tyvm.

I'm very happy that my circles of female friends are expressly rejecting worrying about aging. I can't think of anyone who moans about wrinkles or aging, apart from a reasonable amt of effort to be kind to ourselves. And a of them are single and planning for a single life, which is also interesting.

Re financial security: It sucks that so many of us had to get into our 40s to not live in fear of catastrophe, hunger, losing access to housing, being unsafe. Everyone likes nice things! I don't want people to blame themselves for enjoying NOT being on the precipice! As always, it turns out the problem was capitalism all along.

tbf in my own case, I had help from family while i struggled to make a living wage, which obvs most don’t have. that only makes the ridiculous difficulty for most people more stark.

Meant to say "...many of them are single and planning for a single life"...not ALL, obviously!

Sorry to keep coming back, my morning has been a little fragmented.

I know that illness & death are coming for me and the people I love but it hasn't happened yet, for the most part. I'm sure my late 40s will look different. My parents are, seemingly suddenly, "old," and my dad's getting open-heart surgery soon, so every day is uncertain.

Re personal ambitions: I would like to own a home that I can potentially age in, in this decade. Other than that I just want to Do More and Be More Effective at righting wrongs and helping ppl in various ways, and to get the chance to use my skills and enjoy my work. It's too bad I have to worry about getting paid for it, honestly.

PBKR, to answer your question from earlier today: both.

I’m 44.

I'm very much in the unperson/horseshoe sphere, honestly. I'll be turning 50 in eight days, and while this wasn't how I expected to end my 40s, I'm alive and well, happily employed at a place that doesn't rely on sales or profit margins and where I've been able to easily work from home the whole time (and which recently gave me the most glowing performance review I've ever received), comfortably housed and only possessing a few twinges and things along those lines in terms of health -- my daily morning walks have been excellent ways to maintain things as well as my mood this past year. My parents are very well (and now vaccinated), my sister and only sibling is doing fine and my circle of people close to me is getting through it all, which is a relief, though I've no doubt people have their own individual struggles. I have lost a couple of very dear people over the years but for other causes than COVID. The wider world is a wreck and a half and seflish and evil grotesques are the worst, and are manifold, but I hope I see that clear-eyed enough and help at righting balances as I can. Meanwhile, my choices years back, conscious or not, on several levels -- not to bother with a car, never to register for any specific political party, accept fatherhood/stepfatherhood if it occurred but not seeking it out -- seem to have played out comfortably enough.

41, and my forties have been absolute adulthood peak times for good mental health and loving family, and an absolute low point in self-worth, professional accomplishment and income.

Other than that I just want to Do More and Be More Effective at righting wrongs and helping ppl in various ways, and to get the chance to use my skills and enjoy my work. It's too bad I have to worry about getting paid for it, honestly.

This is beautiful, thanks!!

To be seen without being objectified would be ideal.

Having kids has shaped my life in a good way, imo

Like, when my daughter was born, every trivial stupid selfish impulse I had suddenly slid to the bottom of my priority list. Hell, _I_ slid to number 57 on my priority list, and I feel like that helped me become myself in a new and better way.

That's me, though - no judgment of how other people structure their lives intended or implied

Something I’ve experienced increasingly in middle age: a lack of need to engage in modern popular culture. Hyped things have never been magnified for me generally but more and more hyper things are demagnetized. For instance, in 2020, I think saw like two 2020 movies. Maybe I’ll catch up by 2025, or maybe not.

This also goes for other media as well. I’ll get there when the spirit moves me.

Something I’ve experienced increasingly in middle age: a lack of need to engage in modern popular culture.

ooooh good one! same here

Yeah, absolute same. I know there's an element of "my changing job" and an element of "I'm getting older," but I really attribute a lot of it to how much I used to love "the discourse" and how it's basically turned into the serving bowl from Salo

It's the simile we've all been thinking tbh

The fact that we dedicated like three days to "indie rock woman smashing a guitar makes single Twitter rando angry" is like a good sign that maybe pop culture is stupid and talking about it is for absolute idiots

otoh my brain is now filled with a lot of detailed info about "boring adult" shit ... 10 years ago I could write paragraphs detailing the different categories of hipsters and their attributes and how that relates to Bourdieu's theories of cultural capital but also taking into account the Birmingham School and Stuart Hall's writings ... and now ... I have to google Bourdieu to make sure I spelled it correctly, but I can go on at length about the ramifications of not properly capitalizing and categorizing building repairs as improvements and the potential problems the Rental Assistance Program might have in re documentation and eligibility calculations ... but tbh, I kinda think I'm still cool?

in another decade, will there be an ilx thread: Old Man Yells At Cloud Computing: A Thread for ILXors in their 70s?

Plus no one can stop talking about TV shows

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

hey man, good for you if you're tired of pop culture; it sounds fun!
dunno if that correlates so much with age though. clearly doesn't as of yet for me!

in another decade, will there be an ilx thread: Old Man Yells At Cloud Computing: A Thread for ILXors in their 70s?

I like "Can a I Get a Clapper on this Alexa?"

hmm wonder why ILX is watching so much tv right now, instead of going out to concerst and stuff

this is fucking funny content commentary btw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h4SMSCKOXO8

xpost idk movies are better and there's more than 100 years of them to enjoy

Hmmm, did I perhaps misjudge "Videogame Dunkey"? Today is not the day I find out!

lol, you would certainly like it but you will never try it

I am still dying at Totino's Fortnite Training Room

I am 48

It's odd that I am, on balance, as happy as I've ever been considering I'm now divorced and my kids now live in another state

(checks notes to see how many films i saw last year)

(+180 apparently)
(not seeing much this year though as my focus is fucked)

Dunkey is hilarious but if you DGAF about video games I'm not sure he'll do much for you

Ok, it's not the kids or lack thereof that make me feel old, it's the Totino's Fortnite Training Room.

I'm recently 46. Two kids (15 & 12), wife, 3 bedroom house, became a teacher 5 years ago. Have recently bought some Jack Wolfskin accoutrements. I buy too many second hand books. We're vegetarian (recently converted). I can practically hear the scream of Pol Pot's wheels as he comes around the corner for me.

We've become financially stable for the first time in the last few months as my wages have finally caught up to where I was before I switched careers. My wife is a maternity carer and adores her job. The money is shit to non-existent but that's fine. I get a vague sense of deferred pride from others about my career while personally feeling conflicted about it for all sorts of reasons. I've enjoyed the relative peace of lockdown and am shitting myself about going back to work.

My boy has severe OCD which has had a huge impact on us in the last year or so. We're managing it but I worry about his future.

I'd say we've been pretty lucky with immediate death and destruction but I'm well aware it's coming (I'm fighting quoting Larkin).

I'm stunned daily by how my job and my own kids deprogramme me of anything bigoted and retrograde (there's nothing like a room full of gobby 14yr olds to politely point out your an old fart) but I still worry about what I don't know and haven't thought through properly (this place is also great for the slow reveal of my ignorance). I don't really have any grand gestures to make but hopefully some tiny changes have a ripple effect.

I watch a lot of tv and hardly any movies -- probably because "movies" feel more like "maintaining cultural cred" than like, Better Call Saul or that time-travelling Viking show my similarly middle-aged ex-hipster neighbors raved about that was super funny.

for the record, Whiney, and to acknowledge where we were 10 years ago -- said neighbors are a married couple, no kids -- he was in a noise rock band and used to work at a popular record store and she was an editor of an indie culture magazine as well as an editor of local free weekly.

I'm honestly still enamored with my relatively recent engagement with the celestial odeon/cablebox torrence of fucking everything which allows for deeper dives into unknown territory and indulging any little curiosity.
the question becomes "if i can watch more or less ANYTHING i want to watch anytime i want to watch it, what am i watching?" For the past month or two, that's been Only Connect about 60% of the time.

and, um, two guys who play mario real good

I watch a lot of tv and hardly any movies -- probably because "movies" feel more like "maintaining cultural cred" than like, Better Call Saul or that time-travelling Viking show my similarly middle-aged ex-hipster neighbors raved about that was super funny.

I tend to watch one or two episodes of a TV show and then get bored with it and give up, and any movie more than 95-100 minutes long can fuck off. Beforeigners (the time-traveling Viking show) was fucking great.

Omg I’m 40 now I think I started posting here when I was like 17?

kurt, do you want to be in my old person band, Goths at the Beach?

sorry ... our band should be called Goths at the Beef

41, and my forties have been absolute adulthood peak times for good mental health and loving family, and an absolute low point in self-worth, professional accomplishment and income.

42 (43 in april) and very similar. having quit my stressful job last year i'm feeling pretty adrift professionally, while my friends are conquering in their various arenas. hard to imagine what would ever get me excited about work enough to do really well at it.

on the plus side, ten years ago i would have been an emotionally frozen, depressed mess right now. and while i'm not the happiest i've ever been, emotionally life has never been richer for me.

I turn 50 in 3 weeks so will age out of this thread. I'm here to offer an alternative view on "women have it better in their 50s", because no one seems to be addressing menopause and how fucking awful it can be for a lot of women.

Its fucking awful. I've never been so fatigued/incapable/fogbrained/angry since I had mono in my 20s. Yay.

But on a more positive note, my silver hair looks pretty neat!

43. Don’t have anything figured out. Still grieving the loss of my mother which was the most traumatic thing I’ve ever experienced. Still feel and look pretty much exactly the same as I did at 33 and mostly I worry that means there’s something wrong with me because shouldn’t have I’ve it figured out by now?

xp That's horrible, and I'm so sorry to hear it! This is a huge topic I'm always up to discuss. I'm having minimal symptoms/side effects but I'm also only mid-way through. If there's enough interest, should we start a thread?

I know nobody ever really figures it out but you know what I mean.