Poll: what's the worst part of getting old?

I guess that works unless you realize you're not nearly as good at anything as you'd like to be. And everything hurts. xxxp

oh hush mr beats-himself-up, I've read your writing on film, you know you're good

seriously you guys? do some of you legitimately feel like you are not smarter now than you used to be? isn't that of massive value?…

i do, but it's torturous. i feel like all it's accomplished is to open my eyes to how ignorant and stupid so much of this planet is.
i'm not saying I wish I was dumb (or more so); but there seems to be an emotional drawback to understanding the world better, I guess.

see, the more I learn, the more I realize that I am still widely ignorant and capable of stupid things, some of which I will only realize were stupid when I'm older still

I'm part of this planet, too

I guess that works unless you realize you're not nearly as good at anything as you'd like to be. And everything hurts. xxxp

oh hush mr beats-himself-up, I've read your writing on film, you know you're good

― steven fucking tyler (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Tuesday, 14 August 2012 18:31 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

momentarily excited by misreading this as i've read you're writing a film, a hypothetical i'm mourning the loss of, but yeah i mean the-existence-of-morbs OTM

seriously you guys? do some of you legitimately feel like you are not smarter now than you used to be? isn't that of massive value?

no. i know a lot more than i used to and am a bit wiser i suppose (not that you'd really notice), but i used to be a hell of a lot sharper. cognitive tasks that were once easy for me, like the construction of elegant sentences, have become laborious and often ultimately impossible tasks. i can't remember shit. i struggle with dense texts. i was never the sharpest tool in the shed, but my thinking seems so hobbled now.

I'll tell you what's cool about being old: being an uncle.

otm

I was just thinking this morning that I expect to look back on my mid-30s as a time when I threw off a lot of ideas that weren't helping me and really, deeply UNDERSTOOD more things. I can't wait to look back and see that this is where my life changed--if not in actual happenings, at least in interior ways.

yeah, learning to do less, better

I'm sad about the death of my younger physical self as I've droned on about before, but otoh my body is still so capable and I'm getting prouder and prouder of it, paradoxically as it gets less "desirable."

Adults always told and showed me in a lot of ways that if you got old ("old") as a single person, you'd become set in your ways and inflexible and selfishly unable to sustain loving relationships, and I just want to smh @ all of them and marvel at how hard they worked to undermine the whole idea of finding your boundaries and asking for what you need and making sure you get it and not just re-molding yourself into any old shape that comes along.

I'll tell you what's cool about being old: being an uncle.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, August 14, 2012 10:54 AM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Maybe I just haven't reached the tipping point where getting more old gets less awesome, but personally I'm thrilled with it in almost all ways.

Laurel otm.

Also:

the construction of elegant sentences

Elegance is almost entirely a matter of fitting the expression to the thought, as if it were a glove. Such elegance is not always easy to see or appreciate, when it comes attached to a thought which nettles one, or seems overly simple. Your sentences do not seem either labored or opaque to me, contenderizer.

When I grow older I hope to have a garden, huge garden, eat great homegrown produce and tend to chickens and goats.

...and rabbits.

rabbits are pretty good, yeah

Getting old is kind of sucky when there are no children around, and will be no children around, but hey, they're all gonna hate your guts and by the time you hit 60 so call me up then and we'll play some shuffleboard

We can play shuffleboard now, it's fun! And it only takes one hand, so you can keep a firm grip on your drink with the other one. Another benefit of there being no kids around is that you can drink without worrying about presenting a bad example, no matter what time of day.

You can do everything you want without worrying about presenting a bad example! It's like being under constant surveillance.

we'll play some shuffleboard

curling, imo

by the time you hit 60 call me up then and we'll play some shuffleboard

well fuck man I'll see you next week I guess

lol i wasn't talking 'bout you that kid is gonna be home every Sunday dinner

Radio: We're going ALL THE WAY BACK... to 1998!
Me: Eat every single square inch of my ass, motherfucker *plays M83, dies a little inside*

― Lil Swayne of Pie (DJP)

radio station I sometimes listen to for a few minutes while getting dressed plays a "classic track" around that time. one day recently, it was This Year by The Mơuntain Gơats.

radio station I sometimes listen to for a few minutes while getting dressed

sentence fragment of the year imo

while getting dressed radio station I sometimes for a few minutes listen to

seriously you guys? do some of you legitimately feel like you are not smarter now than you used to be? isn't that of massive value?

As a wise man once said "the more I know, the less I understand".

Also, booze.

Paul Weller, wasn't it?

Ha, I was thinking some monk. But probably.

I am not menopausal :( dammit.

Hah! My wife constantly explains bad attitudes from middle-aged women as being due to menopause. Say I complain about a female supervisor at work or a female clerk at the DMV: "oh that bitch, she's probably menopausal". Whenever I get skeptical about these diagnoses, she's like "you wouldn't know. it's not going to happen to you!" My wife the female misogynist. : ) I don't think I'm going too have much fun when she hits menopause herself.

It's the perimenopause that's a drag.

Starting blood pressure medication today -- for the rest of my life, I assume.

there is now exactly one player* left in major north american team sports who is older than me: teemu selanne

a good time to start comparing your age to the coaches, innit?

nah. i didn't grow up wanting to be a coach

ok, a good time to eat the bitterness of your childhood dreams unfulfilled

long since nothing left tbh

As I approach 40 in a couple of months I've started to realize that for the rest of my life some part of me will always be sore or hurting. Not terribly, not always the same thing, but something is always going to be off in some way.

yep, that's me right now

I know I'm feeling better when a different chronic ache or pain distracts me from the previously-foremost chronic ache or pain

most of this is related to working out all the time to mitigate some of the effects of aging ... in spite of being sore most days, I feel a lot better than I would without the exercise

sometimes i'm bummed to think about how when my kid is 18 i'm going to be 54

54 is very salvageable, if you take decent care of yourself between now and then. 54 can even be pretty sweet if you've attained some mental, financial and social stability, without devolving into stasis.

fear of "stasis" otm- I'm kinda concerned about a rising emotional tide of what might be the opposite of the much vaunted "wisdom" that is supposed to come with age- namely sentimentality, self-pity, nostalgia and vanity. I mean, yeah, you can suffer from most of those at many ages (twenty somethings who are nostalgic for childhood, for example) but it seems like as you age the risk of collapsing into some kind of isolated, depressive and repetitious posture goes up if you aren't challenging yourself about your own views / comforts / opinions. I mean a good thing about getting older is figuring out what you care about and ignoring / dropping stuff you don't- but the flipside of that is that you can get stuck in a rut as a result, or create a narrow and self-confirming cycle. I also fear that couple-dom tends to amplify this- the shrinking island of "Things We Can Both Agree On" that contracts as either member turns against stuff without finding new stuff to be into.

I'll be 54 when my kid is 18 too. I plan on being in the best shape of my life then. Better start working on that.

I also fear that couple-dom tends to amplify this- the shrinking island of "Things We Can Both Agree On" that contracts as either member turns against stuff without finding new stuff to be into.

Painfully otm.

I've found that some connection and contact with young(er) people helps combat that tendency to shrink or narrow down, but creative outlets help even more. Figuring out how to project an engaging idea into an engaging external form is a thorny enough problem that it helps to keep you awake and alert.

I'll be 54 when my kid is 18 too. I plan on being in the best shape of my life then. Better start working on that.

this will be easier to accomplish if you slack off for the next decade or so

You'll never be as fast (or quick) at 54 as you are at 24 or jump as high, but it's a good age for endurance. You learn how to conserve energy and pay out exactly as much as you need to. Coping poorly with stress through their middle years ruins a lot of people.

namely sentimentality, self-pity, nostalgia and vanity

that stuff is cool