This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

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.

I'm in the early stages of "the change" -- and a number of my female friends my age are like, "is it covid or is it menopause?" in terms of trying to make sense of the symptoms ... i have had night sweats, brain fog, anger, and the period that lasted 12 days

Xpost - You should. I’m not there yet but it’s of interest to me and I have some resources I’ve been bookmarking for friends/fire that I can share. The biggest single predictor of age of menopause is your mom’s age when she went through it which means I’m looking at another 10 years. Joy.

Perimenopause is a whole thing on its own S and from things I’ve read it can be the worst part for some people!

Yeah I dont want to crap up this thread with health woes haha. But yes, we prob can do so if we have enough of us lady-presenting types!

I remember my mother being constantly angry/weepy/weird/dropping things when she was in her late 40s (we get it early in my fam). So much I didnt know were symptoms. Dry eyes! Flu symptoms! Constant headaches!

my mom was about 50 when she started, but apparently if you are a regular/heavy smoker you are likely to start earlier ... so 46, for me, I guess.

xpost - yes E I've read the same, I guess thats whats happening. Lot of hormonal BS.

Perimenopause is a whole thing on its own S and from things I’ve read it can be the worst part for some people!

yeah that's where I'm at ... I am definitely having to pay more attention to those issues that when I was in my 20s/30s my biggest concern was accidentally forming babby

Yeah I bet it is. :/ Def think it’s warrants a thread. Trayce do they call it “the menopause” in Australia? That’s what they call it here in England and it makes me cringe every time because it makes me think of “the curse” or “the change” lol.

hahah I remember when I first heard the term "Aunt Flo" and immediately thought of the tv show Alice! and so at some point I associated grits, and the kissing thereof, with menstruation.

Aw, E, I’m sorry about the ongoing grief about your mom...that’s one of the things about getting older I have total fear about.

At least in school they show you a little movie about periods. Nobody tells you anything about menopause! It’s only from reading a bunch of stuff in a Facebook group I’m in that I started realizing how little I knew about it and started reading more.

my hippie aunt apparently said "the trick is eating root vegetables rich in vitamin E" ... but ... hippie aunt is not always otm

Horseshoe!!! Hi! :) So happy to see you and thank you. That’s sort of another thing nobody talks about and I’ve found it particularly tough but I do know it will get easier with time. Eventually. ❤️

I won't be in my forties for another few years, but I'm already dreading menopause because birth control pretty much made me lose my mind and so I have this lurking fear that menopause will mean being whomped by mental illness.

Turned 46 last week. Forties in general have been pretty great, though as my wife says, in a lot of ways I've been in my forties since my twenties. I feel very, very fortunate for a lot of different reasons, but this past year has really underscored how important my wife and kids are to me, frustrating though they may sometimes be (probably because I am in fact the frustrating one, at least most of the time). Our living parents (we each only have our mom) are nowhere near us, our siblings and their families are both in other countries, we don't have particularly large extended families to begin with, but we have a core group of local friends and acquaintances that we've known for a while now, and they often feel like surrogate families.

As far as pop culture consumption goes, I've never been more aware of all the great stuff around me that I just don't seem to have (literal and figurative) time for. From music to TV to movies, there is just so much it's downright inspiring/dumbfounding, but I don't necessarily feel the need to keep up with it all. Leave that to the kids, or anyone else that rates anything down to the decimal place. (I give being 46 ... an 8.1! Best New Age!)

whole board is getting old! i thought the contract i signed guaranteed we were all immune.

Speak for yourself forks - I don’t feel old. Not quite yet.

That said - this April it will be 10 years since we FAPed in NY (I still have my little dish you gave me) and that IS kind of nuts.

Wasnt there supposed to be a global FAP last year, haha! What a year to have picked.

Trayce do they call it “the menopause” in Australia? That’s what they call it here in England and it makes me cringe every time because it makes me think of “the curse” or “the change” lol.

IKR? Yeah older ladies do seem call it that, it sounds anachronistic to me.

Ha oh shit was that last year??

Last year was the 20th anniversary of ILX so...

March 1st! It seemed like jokingly long way off when the idea was pitched.

dang was that a decade ago? times move.
we should def do an east coast NYC thing in the summer/fall once widespread vaccination is a real thing.

pop culture is stupid and talking about it is for absolute idiots

Well yeah, but so is arguing about old Miles Davis records, so.

Idiots r us

I will 100% be in a old person goth band with you, Sarah, but we will have to work pretty hard to be older than the Alter De Fey dudes.

hahahahaha we could enlist Eth@n.

lol ... totally unnecessary googleproofing ... as there are lots of dudes named Ethan and our Ethan doesn't read ilx, and is on my list of "friends i love dearly who would be horrible ilxors"

I'm turning 50 next year! Forties have been pretty good, other than this last year, which actually ended up not that bad either. We got a new bigger house, and we're about to get a dog, which is exciting. Working for a big tech company means I don't worry much about money these days, which is, I have to say, a HUGE weight lifted. On the physical side, my knees hurt all the time, and it's been a huge bummer not being able to swim for exercise. I got shingles a few weeks ago, which seems ahead-of-schedule, but ended up being very mild. I'm still making lots music (music with the band, making dance music, DJing, jamming on Endlesss), and the new house means I have a space to do so. I watch a ton of TV these days too, and have been getting into DJs on Twitch on the weekends. I try not to think about the looming deaths ahead too much. I assume I'll slowly adjust to the reality of my 50s and 60s as I did to my 40s.

I keep looking at all of the celebrity deaths where the celebrities in question were younger than my parents and cringing

You don’t have to be in your 40s for that head trip tbh

(My parents are around 70 and in excellent health but sheesh.)

(Sheesh at life not DJP)

I keep looking at all of the celebrity deaths where the celebrities in question were younger than my parents and cringing

Significant aging benchmarks for a sports fan are when you are older than the oldest players retiring and now older than many coaches being hired.

Tom Brady is younger than me.

Super Bowl Sunday, we were all "Well, damn. Brett Favre must've been like 47 when he retired."

Nope. That old goat was 41 when he played his last game.

I am forty. My sadness at this age is regret for the time I wasted on a stupid career (screenwriting) that fed my ego but not soul, and how my ambition in that career meant that I didn’t properly celebrate my successes.The joy of this age is finding little domestic pleasures everywhere, which sum up to something like contentment.

I know the next decade will be tough, as my older relatives die off. However, as I am watching work them through chronic illnesses now, I recognize that death is not the incomprehensible, total loss that I once thought it would be.

I keep looking at all of the celebrity deaths where the celebrities in question were younger than my parents and cringing

is it weird that one of the biggest reasons I've aspired to a successful long-term romantic relationship is so I wouldn't be alone when my parents die?

if it's weird, I am weird with you.

right? I'm going to need someone to cope with the wreck that I'll be.