This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

I've somehow managed to stretch a prescription from like, prior to a year ago through the last year. I think I had leftover contact lenses from prior to last year, and I keep reminding myself I need to go to the eye doctor, as my 'backup glasses' disappeared 3 years ago

I get motion sickness from all sorts of things (motion, mainly) so I'm assuming I'm going to feel really rough getting used to varifocals. Better than headaches, probably.

Chinaski - I don't have that problem, but I picked mine up on a Friday afternoon and that evening was ready to take them back - going down stairs in particular was hairy - but by the end of the weekend my eyes had completely adjusted. You will be surprised how quickly and automatically your brain adjusts.

Losing eyesight is so annoying. I'm nearsighted so I've worn glasses and contacts forever, but in the past two years I can't see the little print anymore--that is, print that I used to be able to read looks so little to me now. I bought a pair of reading glasses to wear over my contacts but they give me a headache. Last year the optometrist suggested that I get some updated form of more expensive contacts (bifocal/trifocal I can't remember) but I told him I'd rather wait. I think this year I will have to bite the bullet though.

Cheers PBKR that's really good to hear.

I'm 40 and I'm not sure how it happened. I remember a friend of my parents turning 40, and she was a proper grown up woman with a husband and kids and a house and they ran a golf club. A GOLF CLUB ffs. And she taught me the flute and played tennis on the weekends with my mum.

I really am not that person. In fact it feels like my life has been one of arrested development, either through lack of want to grow up or lack of open doors. Things like mortgages just haven't been as easy to access as they were for my parents. My dad was able to buy his first flat in his mid-life twenties before meeting my mum.

Still, perhaps it's a trade-off. I don't feel forty in the same way as my patents' aforementioned friend. I'm eating better and exercising more than I did in my early thirties, and if anything I feel healthier and more sprightly than ever before. Fingers crossed, I'm not experiencing any of the usual woes of ageing; bad knees, eyesight, thinning hair etc, and I'm thankful for that.

Lockdown has been a grind, but it's meant that rather than dolefully visiting the gym on my way home from work twice a week, I now look forward to getting out of my house and going for runs. I listen to online courses on my runs, so I feel like I'm getting fitter and smarter at the same time.

I just sometimes wish I felt more grown-up in mindset so I could assert myself a bit better in achieving all the things I want as a mature person.

I can't remember exactly when I went from feeling too young to be a proper grown up to feeling like I'm too old to be a "young person". Perhaps I feel both ways right now. Perhaps this is it.

Sorry for typos, maybe getting a better phone would open more doors for me

I have a wife and kids and a house (though for a long time - till i was in my forties! - i thought I wouldn't) and I don't feel like that person. I don't run a golf club though, maybe if I did I would. Or is it the other way round, do you have to be that kind of person to run golf clubs?

I was going into a rage the other day because I couldn't even read the tiny instructions on some washing machine cleaner fluid and then was even struggling to read it with my reading glasses on and shining an led torch onto the writing and cursing and shouting - it was like when you have an eye test and the optician puts up letters that are so tiny they might as well be ants. For goodness sake the fucking text needs to be much larger you ageist, ableist wankers at Dettol packaging design.

Xp well.. I have a house, it's just not mine. These friends of my parents were likely fairly well off, but not sure of their backgrounds really. Still, I don't think it was unusual for someone like my dad to have been the sole owner of a flat at his age. Being able to afford a mortgage certainly affects other life decisions that push one into the normative model of adulthood

Then again I don't think such a model was one I ever wanted to follow. I didn't have a particularly unhappy upbringing, but the comfy suburban family lifestyle wasn't something I ever really coveted since that was what I'd always known till I was ready to leave home

I do worry that in five or ten years it could be what I want though, and I won't have made enough plans to be anywhere close to switching into it. Ah well, the future is the future *fucks off to spin afrobeats tunes in his room*

VP, same thing happened to me..

I had the 'bifocal' contact lenses suggested, I also had the 'one lens for reading, the other for distance.'

I tried the latter, it was mmmmmm OK I guess.

Now I have both long sight lenses, and cheap reading glasses over the top. I did have the headachyness, but eventually got the right strength (+1.50) and decent quality (renaldi strasbourg, about £10)

Some of the £1 ones are OK, some are awful, try five different and you'll probably get a good pair

dog latin, your comment makes me think of "Song About 'Rocks Off'" by Scott Miller:

They showed me pictures, all I remember
From before being too old was being too young

So I got my varifocals and I think I'm slowly getting used to them. In the classroom is probably the weirdest as I don't really need them for middle and distance stuff, so I just feel cut-off (and half the world is blurry). Outside also weird for the same reason. And I'm still getting used to reading at weird angles.

On the plus side, I've not had a single headache so that's good.

My latest middle-aged day. I went to the dump (because I'm always going to the dump. I practically have a season ticket and the blokes there know me by name) and got rid of an old bed and a shit ton of cardboard because Shiva lives in our garage and likes to create cardboard when they're bored creating worlds. Then I went to the garden centre to check when I was going to die and to buy some plants for my wife for mothers' day and some pots for my seedlings. On the way back through the garage to put the hefty bags of topsoil in the garden, I knocked with my elbow the peg bag off the freezer into the recycling bin and ALL the pegs fell deep into the bin. I shouted, loudly, 'I'm just trying to be a good man!' and kicked the bin which properly exploded, spraying recycling and pegs all around the garage.

Nb, I wasn't wearing my glasses; this may or may not have had a bearing on what followed.

That's my dark, gritty reboot of American Beauty.

striking imagery

found out i already have tiny cataracts, and got put on a statin within a week of each other.

#thisis40

Amazing post by Chinaski.

Hope you're okay Neanderthal

i'm fine. I'm sedentary and dont' eat well so I'm working on both.

cataracts = LOL my entire family is blind.

I'm now a member of this illustrious group of ilxors. Currently feeling rather upbeat about it all, even if celebrations are rather curtailed for the moment for obvious reasons.

Lol, 40s: in like a lion, out like a lamb :)

Welcome. Personally I am twelve days away from aging out.

Still feeling approximately 19, mentally. My body does not agree.

They let anyone in here these days huh

There goes the neighbourhood.

maybe just as well i’m getting out soon

Fleeing is a great word all the same, and underused imo

Do you want any spoilers, or do you just want to wait and find out on your own?

Ive read the leaflets and want to go back

Early 40s are good numbers.

40 = WD-40
41 = Sum 41
42 = Answer to ultimate question of life, the universe & everything
43 = Harry Partch's 43-tone scale of just intonation
44 = Obama
45 = 45rpm

although two of those are bad actually

49 is OK.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_qHU_6Ofc0

46 this summer, help me out

just ordered first paor of dedicated reading glasses after getting first pair of varifocals last autumn. man should not have to extend arm to full length to read cooking instructions on bag of pasta.

45 = 45rpm

I had a 33 1/3 birthday party (4 months after my 33rd obv) where we played LPs

looking forward to playing dance 12"s at my 45th in a couple years

i was looking for one for 47 and am now reading about the irish potato famine

Specifically, you want to talk about the famine?

empty prayer, empty mouths, combien reaction
empty prayer, empty mouths, talk about the famine

Recently sometimes finding it hard to focus on small text

Eg zing fucking touch

I have an eye test booked in for mid November and I find myself holding small text at odd distances away from me compared to just over two years ago. My prescription hasn't changed in over ten years but I think it'll change this time. Can't tell if I'm getting more or less short-sigthed though.

I have a buddy whose eye doctor finally told him to get reading glasses last year, and when my friend pushed back, the eye doctor said, don't complain, you're almost 50, you've had a good run.

aged 42 I now have my first pair of glasses, cannot read anything closer than about a foot away, and the distance is getting bigger all the time.

I'm 48 and no sign of the apparently nearly inevitable presbyopia yet but thanks to that link I read a few weeks ago I now know what to expect and how best to deal with it.

I also can't focus on small text like I used to, and if I get up too fast, I get dizzy.

I've needed reading glasses since my 30's and never really got used to not being able to read small text. Like I still do a futile attempt at reading it before getting the reading glasses out every time just to feel infuriated!

it could always be worse. Towards the end Monet was still doing his work half blind and his retina so gone it was only able to take in 3 colours, or summat like that.

Fuck glasses

I've totally adjusted to my varifocals and now wear them all the time (I'm 46). My eyesight is still decent (according to the optician) but has deteriorated enough that the compensatory work my brain has to do to fill the gap is causing eyestrain (and gnarly headaches). So it goes.

The only time my glasses are rubbish is in twilight when I'm better off without.