35-and-older support group thread

are you happy getting older? or do you wake up every morning wracked with mortality-angst? do you envy, pity, or resent twentysomething cockiness? have you started getting really freaked out over minor day-to-day changes in your health?

How did you know?

definitely the latter, given what I've been through in the past year. the others not so much. I was wracked with mortality-angst as a teen, seems kinda juvenile at this point. ditto twentysomething cockiness. I'm eternally grateful for my family, my life is kind of all about that now, which is cool and something that I associate with getting older.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHPOzQzk9Qo

LOL you fuckin kids, I turn 48 this year. You ain't seen nothing yet, people in their 30's seem young to me now and people in their 20's seem like teenagers.

I have been blessed with good health so the only things I have really had to worry about so far are needing reading glasses and having to bike to work to avoid gaining desk-job weight.

do women have the same panic attacks over turning 40 that men do? i don't see myself cougaring it up; how else can i exhibit my midlife crisis?

My only real fear is retirement. I had a wimpy 401k at one point, but I think it got cashed out when I left that job. Now I don't have one. Or any real savings to speak of.

HELLO, SOUP KITCHEN!

I'm generally pretty healthy, but now that Shakey brought that up I have another thing to worry about. Thanks, Shakey!

how else can i exhibit my midlife crisis?

penis car

Oh wait, that was get bent in the op.

My memory's going, isn't it.

xp - i can drive around in a barbie-pink corvette like angelyne. oh wait, i don't drive.

needing reading glasses and having to bike to work to avoid gaining desk-job weight.

i've had to do these since my 20's ;_;

definitely seen my health get patchier and energy decline in the last few years since passing 35

on the upside i appear to be living my midlife crisis via synthesizers instead of sports cars

I don't know about being happy getting older, but I'll certainly happier to be less of a reactionary screw-up compared to my younger self, even if on the other hand I have to live with some of the decisions he made. I've not met that many cocky 20-somethings, but I neither envy, pity, nor resent them, knowing that the cockiest of them have the sharpest of learning curves ahead (I did).
As for health, no real problems yet. Just mildly aching joints and a sound like a pepper grinder when I turn my head from side to side. Oh and that thing where you wake up and have somehow pulled a muscle in your back/shoulder, which then takes two days to stop feeling sore. Or pulling a muscle while bending down to pick something up or lift something. And the whole General Melchett "Baaaahh!" thing when doing anything that requires exertion.

Being 35 has been pretty sweet for me so far. No complaints (other than the damned occasional tinnitus flare-up).

I've had to wear glasses just to see since the age of 8, so I have no idea, but is worsening vision more of a worry for people who only started needing glasses in their 20s?

Too-much beer intake usually gives me wake up problems now. Either physical ones or from guilt & shame.

34 1/2 here. Feel like the merry-go-round is spinning out of control and there's no way off.

You ain't seen nothing yet, people in their 30's seem young to me now and people in their 20's seem like teenagers.

This x1,000. And actual teenagers seem like aliens or zoo specimens. I'll be 44 this year. I often have literal panic attacks thinking that, on the whole, I'm probably closer to being dead than I am to the day I was born.

eh death is always there, and has been since you were born

i don't think you're blowing anyone's mind with that

i can honestly say that i never ever wish i were younger. maybe when i'm older i'll think this. i was kinda bummed when i turned 40. didn't think i would be. felt like i was in my 30's forever. i'll turn 45 this year. god willing! i just feel fortunate to still be here. for real. every day is more than i ever thought i'd have when i was young and sad. wish i could go back to young me and tell myself to cheer up a little. feel like it took me 4 decades to really get a handle on the whole life thing.

i used to freak out thinking about my mortality but now my body's kindly taken over so i just get permanent panic attacks instead, real physical ones. i don't think i've felt fit and well in 2 or 3 years tbh, and the shit i shd do to make it better is stuff i haven't got the energy to do after a hard day's thinking my heart's about to stop/burst

yeah i smoke cigarettes for that.

i think the cigarettes help cause it

i don't think it's my age bothering me tbh, i think you just don't pile up enough shit to really get on top of you until you reach a certain age

really! that sucks. cigs definitely calm down my natural panic state. or manic/depressed state.

i also think that 30 years of steady drinking slowed my brain down enough to make things more manageable in general. pro tip!

What is steady drinking? I drink roughly a bottle of red wine a night and maybe the odd extra ale or two. Is that steady?

So far 35 has pretty much been the shittiest year of my life but that's all circumstantial. I do worry about being 35 and the fact that it seems like the last 15 years have passed so damn quickly and I still don't really feel like an adult. Still, I would never want to be in my 20s again and I like myself more now than I ever have so idk, really. I think from here on out. I'm just gonna get younger. 34 should be pretty awesome.

I bought the convertible at 34. My regular companion still loves it, 8 years later.
http://i44.tinypic.com/qnl7gl.jpg

I mostly regret not pursuing the family option, but like hitting the road with Teufel on a whim.

DOGGLES. YES.

^ should read "mid-life crisis convertible".

Part of it is that I really fucking hate what I do for a living but don't feel poised to make big career changes right now, and there's no reset button or anything. You can't just hit pause while you figure shit out, there's bills to pay.

Bill Hicks was OTM when he told marketers to kill ourselves. We are the worst.

Jeez, this thread makes me realize I am too old for a 35-and-older support group. I belong with the 55-and-older group. So, uh, carry on.

"What is steady drinking? I drink roughly a bottle of red wine a night and maybe the odd extra ale or two. Is that steady?"

you're on the right path.

having said that, maria and i don't really drink anymore. i have the occasional when i go out or i'm at a friend's house. but that's about it. 30 years of steady did the trick. we were both really good at it. can't say i miss it much. i need all the energy i can get.

Luis Buñuel drank a bottle of red a day and lived until 83. I don't think I will fare that well.

a bottle a day is sensible. i wasn't always so sensible. my motto is: if it feels like work, don't do it.

Turning 40 this year and honestly approach it as nbd. Late 30s have been great. So much happier in all aspects of my life now. And if quitting your corporate drone job and moving to rural Mexico (on the beach, natch) is a midlife crisis, I hope to have many more of them before I die.

I've gained some weight (but still have an "enviable bmi" according to my doc, so who cares). Dudes don't check me out/hit on me because I guess I am not hotttt anymore, but I have a dude who loves the hell out of me and things I'm the bestest, so who cares. I have better self-esteem, greater financial resources, and much more diverse interests now. 40? P'shaw, bring on 50.

^^ people who seem to have figured out how to live

oh yeah, the tinnitus, that is kind of a drag and I worry about it getting worse but hey, what can I do? I wear earplugs now so I try not to worry.

are you happy getting older? or do you wake up every morning wracked with mortality-angst? do you envy, pity, or resent twentysomething cockiness? have you started getting really freaked out over minor day-to-day changes in your health?

no, yes, yes/yes/yes, no (grimly resigned, not too freaked out)

I'll be 50 in November and have warned all my loved ones that it's going to be ugly. The other day I thought "If I thought I was going to die in Mississippi, I'd start believing in God so I could curse Him on my deathbed." I think a lot about reset buttons and off-switches. I hate much of my life circumstances but I can't throw it all aside because I'm the caretaker and not the caretakee.

Unfortunately, I don't really enjoy drinking.

I am pretty down with being 40 at this point actually, although frankly massive insane extended youth and bad decision making syndrome honestly makes responsibleish adult life sort of a relief really. I mean, having a kid (which I am finally getting around to at lol 40) would have fucking freaked me out even a few years ago, but now it's like yeah I'm ready and this shit makes sense and somehow it's fairly anxiety free. To be fair, the thing that does freak me out is thinking abt whether my comfort zone with my age might be more delusional than being terrified of it.

Another huge bonus is that some of my psycho extrovert vibe has mellowed out now. Back in the day staying home and doing nothing pretty much any night ever was like srsly anxiety inducing. Now 2 or 3 days out and the rest hanging at home reading or babbling at the wife, and then staying up after she goes to sleep is pretty much the best thing ever. I used to go to shows or house parties like 6 days a week. That's insane to me now.

And to clarify, I'm not talking in my early 20s, I'm talking like 5 years ago. Old man at the party style

I used to do that, kind of. I would have a full-time job plus hobbies/rehearsals plus 3-5 social occasions a week: meet someone for brunch, meet someone for happy hour, go home and power nap and go back out dancing til 4am, bike home, etc. My accident slowed me down and then I discovered that with a computer and the internet and a home and roommate I really like, I actually like being slowed down. I stay home a lot.

It's also possible that when I got rid of my full-time job a lot of my compulsions to DO ALL THE THINGS in my spare time eased up.

I was extremely content at 40. Then my husband left to marry the woman he'd been sneaking around with for months, and I lost most of the things that made me happy day-to-day. So, I'm not dealing very well with age, though I admit my problems may be more related to geography than chronology.

42 and pretty relaxed. Have healthy salads and walk a lot, you should be good.

linking exercise to weight loss exclusively is missing a huge part of the point of exercise!

linking cholesterol to bad health is missing a huge point of bacon

ok, now it's a death by pizza thread

there's a schnitzel place by my office that puts potato salad in it's schnitzel sandwich! (and also sauerkraut, fried onion, tomato, lettuce and cheese)

i turned 41 last may and im still not even close to being comfortable with it. id never be a 20 something again. i mean it was so fun but so dysfunctional too. i loved my 30s . if i could be say 32 forever then yay!

I honestly keep forgetting that I'm married to a 41-year-old. Not saying this just because she's here, but sunny looks and acts like a 32-year-old. She doesn't forget the neighbors' names, make a racheting sound when getting up or go on meaningless rants about the county government.

id never be a 20 something again. i mean it was so fun but so dysfunctional too. i loved my 30s . if i could be say 32 forever then yay!

Yes! I know I'm supposed to lament getting older, but so far i'm liking my 30s way more than I did my (sometimes fun, mostly dysfunctional) 20s. I mean, if I could go back and do those years without being an absolute neurotic mess, that'd be great, but the relative calm and sanity that has characterized my 30s thus far is far more preferable to me.

I'll be 45 this year and it's mind blowing if I think about it. My 30s were kind of great (my kids were born) but also were marked with tragedy.

I guess it's not really possible for me to lock into a decade as any better than the others. I think the hardest part for me about getting older is a) I don't physically recover from exercise like I used to, b) my vision is starting to get worse, and c) I'm starting to realize that some of my dreams might come true long after I'm gone.

Whoever said getting old was a privilege is OTM.

I'm gonna be 42 in December and am happier now than at any prior point in my life. Good job, been married 20 years, no kids, no debt...things are pretty fucking good. I'm diabetic, but I keep it pretty well under control (I've cut back on red meat and high-carb stuff in a big way), and I have pretty good health insurance for an American, so all things considered, I got no real complaints.

even better than the dad thing if you want to feel like you haven't accomplished anything in life is to do the famous death thing. for instance, i am 44 going on 45 and John Coltrane was 40 when he died. oops, looks like SOMEONE forgot to change the entire world with his incendiary art. :(

ha, this is the thing that used to bother me most about getting older. I've failed at a lot of things in life, but they were things I never really expected to be any good at. being older has made me both more shameless and more focused in pursuing my creative interests. a lack of those attributes is what held me back for a long time. haven't changed the world w/ incendiary art but at 42 I made the kind of record I've wanted to make since I was 16yo, and it's coming out on one of my all-time favorite record labels. it's hard not to get that old-dude-down-at-the-club feel when hanging out in a warehouse at 2am on a tuesday night with a bunch of young noise freaks, and I guess this is some shit I should've done when I was 25. but I didn't, ah well. just trying not to be this guy:

A group of young people formed the company of the first deck, apparently tradesman’s apprentices from Pola who had merrily united for a trip to Italy. They made a lot of fuss about themselves and their enterprise, chattered, laughed, contentedly enjoyed their own gesticulating and mocked those colleagues, who, portfolios tucked under their arms, were walking along the street to pursue their business and who made threatening gestures to the departing. One in a bright yellow, excessively fashionable summer suit, red tie, and a boldly bent up panama hat, exceeded all the others with his shrill voice and gayness. No
sooner had Aschenbach set eyes on him than he realized with a kind of terror that this ephebe was false. He was ancient, there could be no doubt about it. Wrinkles surrounded his mouth and eyes. The meek crimson of his cheeks was makeup, that brown hair below the colorfully-banded straw hat was a wig, his neck was dilapidated and sinewy, his moustache was dyed, his yellowish and complete set of teeth which he laughingly presented was a cheap counterfeit, and his hands with signet rings on both index fingers were that of a very old man. With a shudder Aschenbach looked at him and his communion with his friends. Did they not know
or notice that he was elderly, that he was wrongfully appropriating their garish dress, fraudulently played one of theirs? As if nothing had happened, seemingly out of habit, they tolerated him among themselves, treated him as an equal, answered his teasing nudges without disgust. How could that be? Aschenbach covered his forehead with his hand and closed his eyes that were burning from a lack of sleep.

Woah, what is that?! Amazing.

even better than the dad thing if you want to feel like you haven't accomplished anything in life is to do the famous death thing. for instance, i am 44 going on 45 and John Coltrane was 40 when he died. oops, looks like SOMEONE forgot to change the entire world with his incendiary art. :(

Yeah, but Sun Ra put out his first records -- self-releases, no less -- when he was 41 or 42. And Bill Dixon made more (and arguably better) records in his 70s and 80s than in his 30s and 40s (he was 37 when his first record came out).

Someone inspire me with examples of women who have done that in their 40s! It can't be too late for me.

death in venice - thomas mann iirc xxpost

I don't even want to change the world, I just wanna set things on fire with noise.

For like 30 seconds.

Ma Raineys first recording came out 1923 when she was 37, and in the next 5 years she was crazy prolific. and she is badass

Move thread to ilm ffs

Yeah, but Sun Ra put out his first records -- self-releases, no less -- when he was 41 or 42.

Great. I've got two years to book a flight to Saturn.

my "look at what that person did by x years old" seems to have long passed, thank god.

jesus was 33, if you can't create one of the dominant world religions and irrevocably change the course of history just hang it up imo

death in venice - thomas mann iirc xxpost

― Hi i am your great fan suces (jjjusten), Wednesday, June 26, 2013 3:59 PM (47 minutes ago)

ding ding ding

The Speaker of my state's House of Representatives is just slightly younger than me. He tweets about having posters of Michael Jordan up on his walls when he was a kid, and my first reaction is "How could a Speaker of the House be young enough -- oh yeah, he's 36."

One of these days, we're going to have senators named Jason and Emily and Justin and Stacy. When Jennifer Granholm was elected, that broke the seal.

Oof, yes. Ronaldo's a few weeks younger than me - means that I've had a whippersnapper scaling heights I can't even dream of since I was 20 ffs

...just trying not to be this guy:

lol I thought "Aschenbach" before even reading the quote. Everyone's deepest fear!

If you're gonna play the "how old were they when" game it's easier on the ego to play it with composers and authors and directors. Musicians and athletes and chess players will always make you hate yourself

Gosh, I'm 16 times older than Secretariat when he won the Triple Crown.

rimbaud stopped writing before he was 20 and then he bacame, like, a pirate or something. think he was 34 when he died. they don't make them like they used to though.

it's like I always told my kids, you're pretty good on the recorder but mozart composed his first symphony at 8

i mentioned this in something i wrote but when i idolized the rapper Rakim in the 80's i thought he was, like, 400 years old. he just seemed like the authority and voice of experience in some legendary sense. i didn't know until years later that we are the same age.

people didn't live as long way back when. more urgency. you packed more in and did things quicker. like when people got married right out of high school and had 6 kids by the time they were 30. now people live forever and 30 really is like the new 18. 30 year olds definitely LOOK 18 now. way back when 30 year old men and women looked much older. all that smoking probably. and coal smoke in the air or something.

yeah! rakim made "follow the leader" when he was like 19 or 20, blargh

ugh i know. but some people are genuine prophets.

30 year olds definitely LOOK 18 now

exception: candidates on The Apprentice

it's not even "how mature" or "what an old soul", more like "from what ancient rock were ye hewn"

xp

well yeah exactly. he was biblical.

Someone inspire me with examples of women who have done that in their 40s! It can't be too late for me.

― free your spirit pig (La Lechera), Wednesday, June 26, 2013 12:58 PM

Georgia O'Keeffe!! She was even older when she started painting iirc

Grandma Moses!

Just realized I'll never make a "rising star lawyers under 40 list," like my boss just did. ;_;

One of these days, we're going to have senators named Jason and Emily and Justin and Stacy.

Live long enough and it'll be Jayden and Emma and Aiden and Ava.

We already have a Rand fergawdsake

here's hoping North West goes into politics

Just realized I'll never make a "rising star lawyers under 40 list," like my boss just did. ;_;

― carl agatha, Monday, July 1, 2013 2:28 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The newspaper I work for does a "40 under 40" feature each year, and I got assigned research and cold calling all the past winners this year.

I got into my boss, You would pick the year I'm 39-and-a-half for me to do this one, right?

Even if I hadn't waited until I was old to actually get on a proper career path, I'd never make such a list because I am just not particularly motivated toward that kind of success. But I liked thinking that it could happen if I really put my mind to it one day.

I'll also add that when we'd publish their pictures, boy were those a lot of old looking 36-year-olds.

Also, most of the bios start with lines like "Dawson Murphy may be the CEO of Murphy Bait Inc. at the ripe young age of 33, but his grandfather was even younger when he founded the company at age 24 in 1948..."

I wouldn't make a list either, because so many of those 'achieved unbelievable success age 25' people either die young, have serious mental/emotional problems, or are horrible people.

or achieved unbelievable success age 25

Georgia O'Keeffe!! She was even older when she started painting iirc

Georgia O'Keeffe is awesome, but -- and not to discourage anyone! -- she started painting as a kid, went to art school, etc.

xp Despite everyone in the world hating them.

boy were those a lot of old looking 36-year-olds.

Like nearly everyone on The Apprentice ever. I've never really fallen foul of one of these high flyer executive whiz-kids, but I always watch shows like that and think that by the time those kids reach my age (hey old man), they'll regret (or at least seriously start to question) burning themselves out just to make some unpleasant rich guy even richer.

nah they'll be diving into their swimming pools full of money