dreaded birthday

that's unfair, I think, since I would not say that!

now, he says it sounds more like something I'd say, than something I'd type.

please don't end up like cook.

I am going to be 30 next year, I'm not particularly looking forward to that, but I guess it's the GBV age, so maybe I'll start rocking out and drinking.

Actually, if I recall, I kinda hated turning 13. High school and etc.

I think what also gets me down is that I really haven't done anything, accomplished anything, what have you, since I was 22 or so. I really haven't, moved.. like, onto the next level, or whatever. Barforama.

x-post

ohhh i just turned 25. its horrible. we're christmas cakes. no good after the 25th.

actually, its not so bad. ive done a lot more with a lot less effort than my college friends, so thats relieving. 30 is what scares me.

xp

I didn't think I'd make it to 25, and the year I turned 25 turned out to be shittay, so after that, it's been (mostly) all gravy (except when folks younger than me bitch about getting "older", & then I call the cops on their bitch ass).

I'd be up for it! That'd be fun! Might be coughing a bit here and there I guess.

I think this is what bugs me most--like, when I was younger, I still felt like Who I Am or whatever was still in flux and there was time to change and stuff--lately I feel like my personality is fixed in place or something and I don't know if I like it. It makes me want to give myself a drastic hair cut& color or something and pretend to be a different person for a while. Plus since becoming 'late-twenties' I am suddenly aware of increasing pressure (from where? I dunno) to do stuff like buy a house and get married and start having kids and I totally don't feel ready for any of that at all. I don't even have a career.

22 was good. I miss it sometimes.

ANYWAY Mandee I didn't know it was your birthday! I am still going to wish you a happy birthday even if it's making you angsty. I hope you have a fab day! And that photo you posted of the beaker explosion seriously made me laugh for like 5 minutes. Every time I looked at it again, more chuckles.

Heheh. I'm happy with my little nook -- less stuff to clean, and as I've muttered elsewhere, home has always been where I've been rather than some fixed dream-come-true concept. Owning such a nook, well maybe, as I did almost do that four years back -- that I didn't do this probably was a good thing in the end for a variety of reasons, etc. etc.

I'm still kinda glum about it. Plus Mondays are the worst days here at work, the day I usually work until 8-9 p.m. BARGH.

It was after my 25th (well, it's the quarter-century innit, seems significant) that I started to feel a bit itchy about not having 'prospects' or well-defined goals, and I occasionally think about that stuff, generally on the way to the pub. It does feel like it's downhill to 30 now. Meep.

Given that the only time I met you, though, was at a karaoke night, I'm not so sure.

But I come from a line of very long-lived women too, so at least I can figure on another 60 years or so to achieve something...

I suspect that age 26 is going to be awesome.

25 was easy. For me, the hardest was 20 because I was ALMOST old enough to drink, but not quite.

for reasons i can't fully explain, today -- my 43rd -- is feeling like a difficult birthday.

Oh snap, birthday twin.

I think a lot of it comes out of people being hard on themselves. My 20th birthday was terrible: I was no longer a teenager, I felt that "time was slipping away", I felt like a failure. But that's ridiculous - how can someone be a failure when they're only 20? Or 30? Or any age? Your life needs to progress at the pace that's right for you, not at some Olympian ideal set by others who are probably lying about their achievements, or at least heavily exaggerating, and certainly not revealing their faults and disasters.

other notable february 19 birthdays:

• smokey robinson
• lee marvin
• jeff daniels
• falco
• justine bateman
• haylie duff
• victoria justice
• batman

Were you born under a wandering star?

haha. you're just saying that because we share victoria justice's birth-date.

When I was 28 I dreaded my 30th birthday like it was some imaginary equatorial line that once I crossed, all youth and fun ceased and everything would go downhill.

Turned 30 last year and it wasn't so bad at all. Actually made many strides between ages 28 to 30 and feel much wiser than I was in my early twenties, and enjoy life a lot more now.

Yeah, in the couple of months before my 30th I was shitting it, but then a couple of weeks after I realised that I didn't care.

Tbh the shindig I threw for my 30th was one of the best ever too.

I'm 31. I think I was a little anxious turning 25, didn't really care that I was turning 30. I'm probably around my midway point, given my family's crappy genetic history (women in my family all live to their 80s; men, not so much).

i think for me 43 sounded like 45, where somehow 42 sounded like 40. nonsense, i realize. also inevitable, so whatevs.

happy birthday anyway, some years it's just like this.

yep, and thanks.

aww Daniel, you don't type a day over 30

thanks. it's true, and mostly i think because i've forsaken all capitalization and punctuation rules.

Leave out vowels and you could pass for 18.

it's like internet Oil of Olay

happy birthday Daniel

I'm turning 40 this summer and I'm trying to come up with something suitably festive. But it looks like we're going to be in . . . Manchester. Which is a bit of a challenge for me, celebration-wise, never having been there and knowing no one in that city.

maybe you could hang out with our kid?

yeah. manchester seems like it would be an exciting city ("madchester," and all). thanks, btw.

43 sounds yucky because it is a prime number! There's no reference point for 43. That said, you are actually in your 44th year of life (having completed 43) so it's smooth sailing until 47.

happy birthday btw

thank you.

i am happy to set the new goalpost for feeling bummed at 47. when i get there, somebody better tell me it's smooth sailing until 52.

Gratz to you too.

I didn't feel like I was getting old until about midway through my 37th or 38th year.

...and then it hit me all at once.

i am happy to set the new goalpost for feeling bummed at 47. when i get there, somebody better tell me it's smooth sailing until 52.

I hit 47 last November...ehh.

not sure how to interpret that "ehh," but i'm taking it as "smooth sailing until 52." thanks to you both.

52 is not a prime number, but 53 is.

Me? I'm dreading 37. Blecch.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_QFL4msacT2c/SSK4GH92qII/AAAAAAAAAY0/JG3oPwts8AM/s400/PrimeNumbersHundredsChart_1.jpg

From my Facebook feed:

2 weeks till 20!!!! yikes

Hate.

Personally I found 29 the hardest I think. Once 30 actually arrived it was no big deal. And I can say I'm in my early somethings again now.

46 tomorrow. better than the early 40s ones, have recovered from the shock of being an old

40 did my head in a bit.

Once I hit 50 they didn't matter any more. Long as I'm here I'm OK. Of course, 60 may mess me up.

yeah, i just reached 50 a couple of weeks ago. last year i was really dreading the date. i've spent a lot of my life longing, wishing, regretting what i hadn't done or who i haven't been. a lot of effort but often against the grain of my being. so through the winter, and recuperating from a broken leg, through the dark nights, i finally got to a certain point where i couldn't give a shit about this milestone. or more precisely, where i give a shit, but not out of shame or fear: out of pride. now i'm more like "fuck it, i'm still standing".

so tired of apologizing to the gods (or whomever) of my existence, and however incomplete and flawed it might be. half a century on this rock, fifty trips around the sun, and i figure i've earned the right to just purr like a big tomcat, enjoy the ride, and try to give some love to others.

oh, and thanks ilx by the way. i'm not here super-often, but having you here to talk with on occasion has been hugely important to me.

we were all so young when this thread started!

10 years from now someone will revive this thread and we'll all be old people looking back at ourselves fretting about turning 25....

60 may mess me up

When I hit 50, it felt the need to acknowledge that I'd entered an age where the mortality rate start to inch up after a long plateau. I'll hit 60 come November. That feels more like the point where I must acknowledge I've passed the boundary between middle age and old age. I don't think it will mess me up, though. It's not like I can't see these things coming and it helps immensely that my baseline health is still excellent.

40: alarm
50: resignation

Guess who's coming to birthday? Natty dreadlocks!

age of Christ on Monday it is rly the second or third birthday since icngaf about being older or w/e

Hit 40 a couple of months ago. At the moment I'm doing a short term data entry job to fill in some of the time between longer term IT contracts. It's a fairly physical job with a lot of lifting of piles of documents. Two thirds of the people there are students in their early 20s. On paper this seems like the kind of situation that would make me feel my age, but I feel that I'm holding my own amongst these 'youngsters'. I looked at myself in the bathroom mirror yesterday, and I have to say that I'm in the best shape I've been since I was at university myself, probably even better than that.

having a shite time lately and my looming birthday is filling me with angst. I've put off planning anything, a few of my closer friends aren't around, all I want to do is induce a coma for a while and then for no one to ever mention it again. is there a solution to the impossible birthday?

I am a misanthrope who enjoys a drinking sesh as much as anyone, but the unplanned ones are best and there is something very gaudy and suffocating about celebrating your birthday or even when a drinking sesh becomes coordinated and planned like some fucking army exercise. As you get older and family and friends either die or become or become more distant - it gets easier :P

lol mb I can find solace thinking of the death of my nearest and dearest