I feel both of these. I'm 40 and yeah, sleeping slightly weirdly I get shoulder pain the next day. Working out regularly has definitely helped things. Also for alcohol, I have to be careful to also include non-alcoholic drinks in an evening, say a non-alcoholic beer or something before the real thing.
You don’t feel older mentally, but your body starts to betray you. I don’t mean stuff like your legs aching after getting up when sitting on the floor, or getting tired easier; it’s the subtle things that really are irritating. Like taking longer to learn something. Getting fatter even though you don’t really think your diet is bad. Taking longer to find that word you can’t think of or the name of that person, movie, place, whatever.
The irritations that add up are the ones that you don’t really expect, not just the ones you do like needing glasses.
Then there’s “time.” Fucking day goes too quick. Used to be you felt like you could get all kinds of shit done in a day. Now? Run two errands and half the day is gone. Wtf.
Also, “lasts”.
You start to realize that there are things approaching that are the last time you’ll see or do something. The last time you visit where you grew up. Last time your kid lived at home. Last car you’ll ever own.
You start to realize that there are things approaching that are the last time you’ll see or do something. The last time you visit where you grew up. Last time your kid lived at home. Last car you’ll ever own.
Yeah, the lasts suck.
I remember being in college, and this Onion article gave me a little bit of an existential crisis.
The weight gain is really the big sign shit is going down hill. I've been making a series of changes since about age 35, and each time the new diet or exercise routine works for like a year or two and then the weight slowly creeps back up. At this point I literally ride a bike 200 miles per week and I will still gain weight slowly if I eat breakfast. It makes no sense.
It sucks. I like breakfast! On the bright side, two cups of coffee and I am not hungry for the next two hours and by then it is almost lunch time so I guess it works out. Brunch it is!
It's also pretty grim that the people you know are either dying, dead, or have a life altering illness that comes out of nowhere. I feel like there's a funeral in my family once a month, rather than once every decade.
Hot take but I think it’s because people stop having or seeking out novel experiences. Most of people’s lives are repetitive and boring jobs with barely any time to zone out in the evening. And once your kids move out and you’re with a long term partner, hardly anything is dynamic in your life. Or fresh. Or unexpected.
I've been burned enough times in life that it's really easy to just write people off that I shouldn't have let in my life anyway, and I'm much happier in my own little world with my books.
20+ years ago i spent hours each day developing my own lcars interface based on enlightenment; now i just use whatever x-windows environment the distro i'm using at the moment defaults to.
Me too. But I stopped hopping ten years ago and settled down on Alpine, Void, or Gentoo, based on how fancy the hardware is, and the use case.
To me, the hopping part relates more to tinkering and fine-tuning. Today I prefer things just work. I wish no down time on all my devices and servers, because who has time to figure out why my photo doesn't sync to my NAS, or dig up that piece of paper when my password manager does not respond because of the proxy service is down?
That first happened to me at 18 and it was so weird. I was helping out at my old school for an interschool music festival—a week of all sorts of different workshops and rehearsals between different schools, culminating in a concert at the end. During a break I was tinkering around on the piano, and a student came up to me and said "excuse me, sir…[some question about the timetable or something, that I definitely didn't have the level of authority to know the answer to]". I have her the best answer I could and she went on her way, but I was just stuck there feeling way too old.
Lots of things like grey hair, moving more slowly, injuries that I would have bounced away from before instead hurting for weeks or months.
But the one that hit hardest was a breakup I had a little while back. She was the love of my life and I fully intended to marry her, and when she ended it out of nowhere I was sad, but fine. She dumped me, and it sucked, but I also needed to finish a staff report for a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that night. So I moved on.
The thing that upset me most was that I wasn't that upset. There was a time in my life when I would have been a mess. But as I've aged, my emotions have become more regulated.
I miss being capable of that level of joy and pain.
Love definitely hits different in your 20's. Though, the plus side is when something ends I don't obsess over it like I did as a young man.
I remember in the mid-2010's when Guns n Roses decided to reunite and tour, and my first thought was: "Why would I want to watch Axl Rose now that he's old and fat?" That was a sign.
I had a similar experience a few years ago. I haven't even tried dating again because trying to rework my life to incorporate another person at this point just sounds like a giant pain in the ass and I'm old enough now that it seems like everyone I meet around my age who's still single is living a train wreck of a life so it wouldn't be worth the effort anyway.
If you spend most of your teenage and adult years over the weight of 220 pounds you can move your timetable ahead 10 - 15 years. Permanent medication at 30 or 40, debilitating pain especially in the knees at 45, heart problems anytime from 40-60, welcoming death at 80,
That is what I "always" thought, motorcycling will get me and I wouldn't want to live without being able to ride ... but then it happens, you don't and you get to live with what you never though you would be. ...
Some friend came along today and had Frank Sinatra "my way" playing for a ring, immediately I searched the tube and found Sid Vicious' "my way" and played it back ... he never got old. I guess they can take our lives away but we get to keep the mind young if we want... and look back to see if we are happy with choices, even the worst mistakes.
The weirdest feeling is that the older you get the more you feel time is accelerating ... you get older faster and faster after a certain age.
It was when I tripped and fell over outside my house. The next day my neighbour said, "I hear you had a Fall."
Yes, when you're old you don't fall over, you "have a Fall". Everyone hearing about your Fall will make concerned noises. (I was perfectly fine! I'm not OLD old!)
I still do but I just don't have time for any serious gaming, so it's only quick or indie games for me. But I think I could see myself get back into an MMO or something when I'm retired.
The rage inside has only ever increased. The older I get the more militant I get. By the time I'm 40 I'll be living in the forest defending my country from fascists with a bow and arrow.
Eyesight is getting worse. It's hard to read in dim light, and driving at night can be rough.
Takes my body longer to recuperate from anything that it doesn't like - injuries, alcohol, upset stomach.
Age spots. I thought they were just freckles but my dermatologist says they're age spots. I'm only 43!
Aging is funny, because there's always someone who thinks you're ancient, and there's always someone who thinks you're still super young. I was at a bar a couple weeks ago, and these two dudes were complaining about how old they were getting.... so I asked, turns out they were the ripe old age of twenty-eight. Which made me laugh a little, because 28 is still pretty young. And when I told them I was 43 they couldn't believe it. I guess in my twenties I didn't have an accurate idea of what people in their forties looked like either. Conversely when I made some comment to my parents about being middle-aged, they laughed at me because "you're in your forties, you're not middle-aged!". So it's all relative. My dad said something that stuck with me: you may feel like you're getting older, but when you're my age (he's 75) you'll realize how young you still were, and how much energy you had. And that's helped me be aware that even though there are some aspects of aging that I really hate, there are plenty of good healthy years left.
Hungovers last longer, so do injuries from sport, easier to put on weight, less patience for bullshit, more selective with whom I spend my time with... There are so many!
It takes exponentially longer to heal from physical injury. That's it so far, except for feeling calmer - older people are exceptional at emotional regulation, which oddly enough is why they are easier to scam, they don't freak out as quickly.
But mostly it's the slow healing. I am still strong and flexible but have to be careful and moderate because getting hurt will set me back much more than it used to.
My mom once made plans to come up here (she lived near Miami) to see Tab Benoit with some of her friends - by the day of the concert two of them were dead! She said "if you want to see your friend when you are old, go see them, don't make plans."
The clothing styles I wore in middle school are cool now, except those damn low rise flares will not work on me at 40 because my mid-section would flab out everywhere. Damn kids.
My shoulder still hurts from last week when I slept funny.
The idea of staying out past 10pm sounds terrible.
I almost set up a breakfast date with a friend for 7am.
I'm really excited for a larger capacity water heater.
I'm starting to do that thing where I look down to focus on small text right in front of me.
At age 30, I noticed I couldn't skimp on sleep anymore and hangovers were much worse than in my 20's.
In my mid-30's my eyesight started to blur and I had to start wearing glasses.
At 40, my digestion isn't as good as it used to be and I take supplements. Also, it's harder to memorize things now, and I no longer have the option of missing workouts or daily stretching, because I notice it much more if I haven't done these things.
Past 25 I started to realise I couldn't remember everything that everyone had said to me. This was also around the time I developed a social life, so it could just be that my brain had more to manage socially.
Past 30, I stopped caring about appearances so much and started working on developing mental skills. I was able to defend my beliefs better, make more on-the-spur jokes.
Past 35, I no longer care about anything. I have bouts where I'm in interested in building things, or conversing. But now? Eh, work/sleep is enough.
I was in a mosh pit for the first time in 7 years last year. I got fucking destroyed and was sore for about 2 weeks. I also slipped walking my dog during a big snow we had a few weeks ago and took me a little bit longer to get up than I used too. I am not old by any means and working on getting back in shape, but its starting :(
Not me, but my dad and his gf were at a headshop to get a new bowl/slide for their bong. They texted me and my wife to see "what the kids were calling them now a days" after a guess or two I said slide. They then went on a tangent how the people had no idea what they meant and kept trying to sell them a downstem lol. A few younger guys at my last job gave me shit for calling a banger a nail. Weed lingo sucks lol
Same here!! Why don't they dim with the rest of the dashboard lights??
It's almost to the point I'm putting some electrical tape over them. Can't wait to have a car with self dimming lights, then I'll tape over it and keep them toggled on forever without worries
If a terrorist held a gun to my head and ordered me to get on my knees, I would simply have to let them blow my head off because that is no longer possible. Also I have that slight wrinkle at the top of my cleavage, which apparently I can get Botox for. But I'm not going to.
I had perfect vision for decades and then it suddenly went to shit. Found out there's no preventing it, no lifestyle changes to make it better. It's just gone. Presbyopia can't be prevented or fixed. Feels bad, man.
It's interesting to me that I don't see myself aging in the bathroom mirror…until I put on my glasses. Then it's obvious. Also, I didn't used to need glasses. But nature's gaussian blur filter is awesome. My wife looks as good as the day I met her too!
Your former school teachers die. At this point, I think the majority of mine is gone.
Your gum recedes, and there's nothing you can do about it except to stop smoking. On a larger scale, your circulation gets worse because your erythrocytes become less elastic, for reasons still unknown. Add to this the most damaging impact of UV light and our atmosphere's oxygen - an objectively very aggressive chemical - and you start shriveling, just withering away from the outside. Molecular bonds are simply getting broken faster than they get repaired. Your insides last a bit longer, but their days are numbered, too.
On the plus side, you'll get to learn new words for body parts you didn't even know you had.
Can't relate to the whole listening to oldies radio stuff but listening to new music from fantastic young bands and realizing you are probably never going to another live gig in your life is a bit unsettling. Also realizing you should have learned stuff like musical instruments decades earlier when you had more flexibility and it felt like learning was faster.
Yeah I felt I dated myself by talking about listening to the radio. I don't know if this is of any help to you: I started taking guitar lessons at 50 and although I may never perform publicy, I enjoy just playing alone or with a few jam buddies. Around the same time I started going to punk shows again and after a little time made friends with some of the regulars (just like old times). Covid and inflation derailed that but I still make it out a few times a year. We all have our own personal obstacles though
My wife and I get excited every time we come across articles about exoskeleton tech. Can we expedite this a little? I want a mech suit—not a fucking wheelchair—when I reach that age.
Also, a note to the designers: make sure you can use the toilet with it. Extrapolating current trends, I suspect this will become one of my primary activities.
I tore the fuck out of my shoulder and had to have extensive repair surgery done. When I was talking to my physical therapist about a specific aspect of the repair, he said that they tended to do that with "older" people.
Ouch.
Also, I guess that my goal of looking like 2016 Rich Piana has now morphed to looking like 2018 Rich Piana. :(
I worked construction from 14-20. Nowadays I work a cushy desk job. Still whenever we need something sone in our house (which is a lot, my house is a degrading shack) if it's something I'm comfortable doing I do it myself. Every once in a while there's a job that just kills me and I feel like I need a week to recover from.
Last weekend I put new drywall up on my kitchen ceiling. I used to do it all the time with ease, by myself, light work. Nowadays I'm glad my wife wasn't home to see me struggling. I had to pull out all my tricks and it was still fucking rough.
You start grasping for the past again. You may have at one point when you were younger, have gotten tired of people telling stories of their past and how things were in the day. But before you know it, you will do it too. A lot of people already are doing it and they're in stages of their lives that the older people once were who also did it.
You feel like the world becomes greyer and greyer when you read the news about some celebrity that played a role you remembered them in be it a show or movie that passed away. This also applies to knowing about the individuals through the cracks that don't get as much coverage, like pioneers that helped make things you take for granted, knowing of people that took part of something that made you realize that they were what made something work and not who you thought did.
You get increasingly annoyed at just noise. Dogs barking. Children loudly playing. Babies crying. People shouting. People clumsily doing things that make something break or whatever. You yearn for periods of silence.
You could become isolated by choice, like caught in a web of indecision as to what hobby you want to enjoy. You're getting older, not younger, so you feel like you have to try to enjoy what you can before you really can't anymore.
And above all else, you grow more and more distant from the connections you once called your best. There will be a point in your life much later on, where you will be in a nursing home or whatever and you may not have a way to stay in touch with your friends. All of you are on a course of this same life and the sad part is all of you are also racing to your ends.
I just turned 50. I have an extremely good memory for events long ago, like I remember parts of being 2 years old even without difficulty. This is the first year in my life that all those things seem so very long ago though. I don't know how to describe it, but the fact I was alive before we got answering machines suddenly makes me feel very ancient when it didn't before. I also try to describe how horrible 1980s parenting was and nobody really gets that, like how casually you were molested or sexually pestered by adult men and nobody cared, or girls at my high school having adult boyfriends, or my teacher dating Tanya Memme when she was underage, and briefly being suspended for it because it was Catholic school, but she graduated and they went right back to it. (Tanya is a good egg though). It seems very alien to anyone I've talked to about it who are younger, but it really was like that, your parents did not give one fuck about your safety. That makes me feel suddenly a lot older, because nobody else seems to understand or have forgotten how bad it was.
Using any tool that vibrate much like a string trimmer will irritate where my spine is pinched and I'll regret it for months. It makes me feel useless. Fusing 4 discs in my upper back or neck would almost guaranteed make me feel more useless.
I definitely can't pretend I'm young anymore. It isn't just pain, and when it is pain it's not the worst pain. It makes me unable to feel my arm. I had to get an epidural of steroids to get the inflammation down to get feeling back, and I seem to be at least mildly allergic to that .
Scattered gray hairs on head and beard. At this point, they look kinda good because I’m mostly retaining my natural color.
Used to be super skinny. Metabolism slowed and I have a beer gut.
Far less interested in pursuing hobbies into the wee hours of the morning. I like to go to bed by around 1030pm and wake early even on weekends. I woke naturally at 6am today (Saturday).
Feel out of place in some younger crowds like concerts for young artists. We were definitely some of the oldest people at a 100 Gecs show.
In my teens and early 20s I used to enjoy snowboarding. I was never any good at it, but at least I could make it down the mountain. Tried again in my 30s, and I could barely even stand on the board. Never made it off the practice hill.
Getting in and out of cars is painful now. Especially since I drive 90s and 2000s Japanese sports cars, which have a tendency to sit so low that it feels like your ass is dragging on the pavement when you drive them. I have no idea how I'm going to be able to continue driving them 20, 30, 40 years from now. I don't want a giant modern car. Even sedans are SUV-sized these days.
Currently a 350Z Roadster Touring. But in the past I've had a Genesis Coupe 3.8 BK1, an RSX Type-S, a 3rd gen Eclipse Spyder GT, a second gen 240SX, and an eighth gen Mitsubishi Lancer Ralliart. All with a manual, of course.
Ain't it brutal? They say if you haven't started balding at age 40, you probably never will, but I've known several people with a full head of lush hair at 40, and in their early fifties, it's all gone to hell.
Im not old but general lack of energy compared to when I was younger. Likely a symptom of both age and more responsibilities. And this pain in my leg I’ve had for months.