Tell me the awesome things that happen in your 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond

Tell me the cool stuff I can look forward to!

Gold? Wisdom? Prowess? Shingles?

Two years in, I'm still waiting for all of this awesomeness that everyone told me my thirties would hold. It hasn't been the worst two years ever, but it hasn't really been any kind of sea change, either. I still feel pretty much the same as I did in my twenties.

Probably totally not the answer you were looking for. Sorries!

I learned how to cook, esp. to bake, starting in my 30s. Realized that all the hard work/long hours/drama of employment had actually paid off in competence, excellent reputation, and solid network of contacts in my mid-40s.

I'm 35. This year I stopped envying the young.

ha, i was thinking just the other day about how mad people on ilx get when somebody criticizes one of their fav tv shows/bands/movie. even fairly mild statements can provoke a cutting response.it provides a lot of laughs for me but also i think once you hit a certain age this stuff just isn't worth the rage. not that you lose interest in your favorites but you don't get hung up on the opinions of others so much.

married long-time girlfriend
made a little person
home ownership (fingers crossed, we're in the middle of this)
made 3 albums
ate/prepared lots of awesome food (gotten much better at biscuits and pancakes and roasting chicken)
travelled all over: swam with dolphins, did a bunch of drugs in Amsterdam, climbed a glacier, second trip to India

I dunno, its been pretty sweet

velko i don't think the rage comes more from younger people............

for me: probably the biggest fear of my 20s about getting older was dealing with the eventuality that I wouldn't be "important" or "successful." But the thing is, it's something I came to accept and am generally okay with it, with occasional lapses. Contentment comes easier. Also, at some point my memory reached its capacity to remember everything, which includes various past slights, embarrassments, etc. Probably the best part, is that my teenage years are almost literally half a lifetime in the past. It's almost like I'm remembering things about another person.

but also i think once you hit a certain age this stuff just isn't worth the rage

Absolutely.

i dunno, unscientific sampling of the people i have in mind tends towards people in their 20s or younger and maybe early 30s. older people can be ragey too but not so much about someone zinged their favorite director or something (obv morbs is an exception tho)

my unscientific sampling looks different but maybe you're right

but also i think once you hit a certain age this stuff just isn't worth the rage

yeah I cosign this too... part of it is, I'm sure, just some internal biological/hormonal thing that happens as you age. But another part of it is that I came to realize and accept how much our culture is stratified by age. there's essentially nothing inherently "cool" about any particular age, and this kind of weird and misguided mythologizing of youth happens primarily so that old people can make a lot of money off the young.

not that you lose interest in your favorites but you don't get hung up on the opinions of others so much.

true. I remember an almost lightswitch type moment where instead of throwing myself into a huge argumentative defense I thought "huh, whatever" instead. Not dismissively, but with a distanced interest. And realized later that could apply to pretty much every drama-laden thing that came up. Like I jumped off this massive self-righteous high-horse finally and could just start accepting people and things exactly as they are.

I also agree with Jaq's mention about years of hard work leading to competence and a solid network of connections ...

xpost kind of already in lightswitch mode but I hope in my 30s I marry someone great

"I stopped envying the young."
"Realized that all the hard work/long hours/drama of employment had actually paid off in competence, excellent reputation, and solid network of contacts in my mid-40s."

good ones!

That second one kind of depresses me.

what about is depressing? the hard work/long hours part or the mid-40s part?

That solid network of contacts and excellent reputation would be important in my life someday.

shakey's 30s sound pretty cool, although seriously dude you're a poor spokesperson for the idea that people rage over minor stuff less as they grow older

it's shakey's glib response to pop culture that creates 50% of the rage here!

Pop culture sort of deserves glibness.

shakey's 30s sound pretty cool, although seriously dude you're a poor spokesperson for the idea that people rage over minor stuff less as they grow older

haha well um... less is relative...?

xp - not knowing very many people and having those that you do know think you're incompetent is a depressing thought.

haha i suppose that's true...a younger shakey may have made it through every season of the wire by now!

xpost Yeah, particularly the latter. That's why I returned to school, which is depressing for its own reasons. I don't participate in acquaintanceships very well, though, so I only half care about that issue. But thinking of it in terms of network contacts or whatever - I couldn't do that.

"that issue" = knowing very many people

I generally don't think of it in those terms, or work to cultivate "networking contacts." It's just that if you're in a place long enough and aren't a total dilettante or shut-in, you end up meeting and working with people that will give you better opportunities or that you can hit up for things.

I don't think there's anything wrong with thinking about it in terms of 'networking.'

That second one kind of depresses me

It's allowed me to be successfully self-employed and work on my own terms. Also, I like that people I've worked with think well enough of me to recommend me for stuff, like being an expert witness in a patent case (nothing came of it, but it was great that my name even came up). ymmv, of course.

Yeah I have to admit one of my favorite things about getting older is having all these past associations and experiences that end up being beneficial in unexpected ways later on, professionally or otherwise.

It means I musn't be an ass in the present.

I think I'm more prone to desire more "natural" relationships with people - or at least prefer thinking/describing them in less "professional-speak" terms. And I can definitely see how it can feel off-putting (and I sometimes feel this way) to do things for the self-described purpose of "networking."

not knowing very many people and having those that you do know think you're incompetent is a depressing thought.

on the bright side - at least not many people would think you're incompetent!

It's just that if you're in a place long enough and aren't a total dilettante or shut-in, you end up meeting and working with people that will give you better opportunities or that you can hit up for things.

The fact that I am a dilettante means that I probably know more people, though: not just co-workers, but people I know through the band I was in, people I took improv classes with, people I helped run a non-profit arts group with, people that wrote for Stylus, etc.

do things for the self-described purpose of "networking."

I've never really done this but I feel like I'm in a similar position professionally - I consider more of a side-effect of just doing my job. If I do it well, people notice and will continue to want to work with me or help me out. That's just the way it goes. I don't go to bars or conferences or whatever for the express purpose of "networking", which sounds unpleasant.

xp jaymc: but you're not a total dilettante from what you're saying ... a lot of these connections are within music/the arts ... I'm in the same boat, actually.

One nice side-effect of getting older is that more people that you've hated become dead people and you get to dance on their graves.

Any networking I've done has involved routers, switches, and cat5 cable, fwiw. But I've worked on a lot of different projects, taught classes, taken classes, started and managed a listsrv for people in my profession, met scads of people at tradeshows/conferences where I was working or speaking, but mostly just stayed interested in others and listened to them. I've never thought of it as anything except my worklife.

I can't say that being in one's 50s is guaranteed to be awesome. It can be, though. A lot is going to depend on making good decisions all along the way. Another chunk will depend on whether you've been given to work with -- call it luck or chance.

But even if you've been handed a load of crap to deal with, if you think you're doing a good job of dealing with it, then you'll have that sense of competance and experience to steady you and help you get through. When the crap finally goes away (if it ever does) that feeling of confidence stays with you.

I'm 32 in less than a month. How did that happen?

I was 36 a month ago, if you figure it out let me know thx.

i was sure that i started secondary school the week the big breakfast was first on, but wikipedia tells me i'm wrong. lol memory

Well, I had a baby, and that's pretty much the awesomest thing ever.

Other than that, eh. I guess I have a legit "career" now in which I'm given real responsibililty and perform complex tasks and have a sense of ownership about my work. So far I don't find those things, in themselves, so amazing, although there's a kind of satisfaction in them, it's just that the satisfaction is overwhelmed by the feeling of dread at doing this until I die.

not entirely convinced there's much to look forward to except becoming increasingly jaded, dying alone and having to be chiselled off the kitchen lino when i'm eventually found

especially now apple are changing the dock adapter, my life is over

I think the only way to have life not get immensely worse as you approach your 40s is to put enormous effort into health and fitness. But I'm 32, so I'm just kind of surmising that.

fitness, bleugh. i'm just waiting to see whether emphysema, cancer or cirrhosis get me first

I am turning 30 in November. I feel like I've squandered whatever youthful momentum I had and now I'll have to work extra hard to just be a semi-functioning person.

I guess I've gained a certain steadyness and feel more of a license to give less of a fuck about things like being cool. I've also come to find a lot of things I used to get fired up about very trivial, but that doesn't actually feel good.