This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

Oof. Hello.

Whassup fellow elders!

Two months to go then I'm hitting the next thread up, bye-bye 40s it was (not) fun

Three years and two months for me still, so let's see how the last quarter of fortydom plays out.

http://blog.mtgprice.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/Pain.jpg

I have 47 months of my 40s left. Wheeeee!

on the plus side - I've felt so jaded in my 40's, that rather than worrying about illness and mortality, I started thinking: let's not be so reductive about death here.

one month left for me.
~ sigh ~

Same. Thirty-one days exactly!

See y'all in a few months!

I feel like I should throw a party but I have hearing damage and it would basically involve me having a five-hour migraine and hiding from people. I do want to celebrate, though. Just trying to figure out how.

post that effortlessly sum up being in your forties tbh.

and lol at calzino. eventual death doesn’t seem nearly so much of a bad deal as it once did.

Seriously, sadly.

Just realized even though they just started that my 40s are already 1/40th over. Guess I need to hurry up and write that book or whatever it is I'm doing with this stupid 'life' thing before I'm a brittle dusty mummy.

My own (hopefully distant) death, although unwelcome, has much less fear and anxiety for me now compared to the not-that-far-off deaths of certain people around me. I know I'll cope when they pass on, but being 18 and not having to think about any of that seems like it happened to a different person in a different century (oh wait that last part is true). OTOH all of that is usually blocked out by the constant front-and-centre problem of not having any money.

Old Lunch get busy ! Stumbling forward pretending you know what you’re doing is fun

40s not working out so far

9 more glorious months

just under 12 months left gods willing

I think I learned a lot of stuff this decade, unfortunately a lot of it was learned the hard way but at least I learned.

unless personal growth is a sick trick our brains play on us to disguise the march towards oblivion

“God wiling” is right. One of the things I’ve realized is that I can be struck down any day now.

unless personal growth is a sick trick our brains play on us to disguise the march towards oblivion

it’s this

i recently became one of these :(

My own (hopefully distant) death, although unwelcome, has much less fear and anxiety for me now compared to the not-that-far-off deaths of certain people around me.

yeah :( ... I feel like the past year has been a consistent stream of people I know dying, some older, some fellow 40-somethings, some much younger. Apart from that, my 40s are so much better than my 30s.

I remember someone telling me that 40 is the cut-off point for "promising". By then, you've either delivered on your promise or you haven't.

But enjoy your 40s, people. I'm in my early 50s, and I can report it's worse.

I remember someone telling me that 40 is the cut-off point for "promising". By then, you've either delivered on your promise or you haven't.

But enjoy your 40s, people. I'm in my early 50s, and I can report it's worse.

posts very much in character

agree about the inadequacy of "potential" and "failure" as concepts - they're just wrong ways of seeing the world, and super-especially wrong ways of seeing oneself. one of the things i've been working on with my counselor. my potential was always some shit other people were trying to lay on me, until the point where it internalized. but i don't think i care about most of that tbh. the paths i cd've taken would have had their own quiddities and agonies, and i don't believe any of them would have taken me any closer to who i want to be.

acceptance isn't acquiescence. i think i'm beginning to understand the satisfaction of that bare high-wattage bulb. think it throws a lot of unnecessary baggage into the shadows where it belongs.

You would think at this age people would stop telling me "oh, you're young, you've got plenty of time" when I tell them I don't have children.

(Never mind the assumption that I want them!)

Or that people would stop asking if I've finished with school YES NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AGO.

acceptance isn't acquiescence. i think i'm beginning to understand the satisfaction of that bare high-wattage bulb. think it throws a lot of unnecessary baggage into the shadows where it belongs.

yes this is rly well put and what i think i was trying to reach towards.

Enjoy your 40s like you enjoy every day that you can.

What you see much more in your 40s is people leaving you permanently. You appreciate the fragility of life much more in your 40s, particularly as you near 50.

When someone tells you that you are in "the fall of your life" it carries so much more weight.

posts very much in character

agree about the inadequacy of "potential" and "failure" as concepts - they're just wrong ways of seeing the world

Around age 40 I wrote a poem I titled "Killing My Potential". The gist was that my 'potential' was always an unhelpful imposition by others, which I neither wanted nor asked for, and disencumbering myself of it was a wise and necessary move.

Or that people would stop asking if I've finished with school YES NEARLY TWENTY YEARS AGO.

It is usually asked at work most often by security guards or customers making small talk, I guess. (See also the guard whose second question to me was where did my boyfriend work.) Although the VP asked it once, and I just wanted to ask, did you even read any of our resumes that I know are on file?

40 has been an ok year. I've had a more active social life than I've had in awhile and have been meeting new people and making new friends.

one time when i learned how direly old tokyo r was i exclaimed 'wow, you look much younger!' and she said 'i know!'

i always enjoy your longposts, fizzles.

40.5 rn, so far not so bad

Forties have been pretty good to me! More perspective, less lack of clarity, more acceptance of what i need and where i can accept not excelling. Definitely a half step up from the thirties so far.
One caveat: i am now in pain all the time. So there is that.

one time when i learned how direly old tokyo r was i exclaimed 'wow, you look much younger!' and she said 'i know!'

This is true.

I'm closing in on 41. Not sure if it's been the best of years, but it's definitely... making aspects of life more real somehow, and making me more aware of time's passage, that there's stuff I HAVE to deal with before long, etc.

there's not much time left before i am sentenced to a decade of hard time in this thread

what cool stuff should i do before then to milk my thirties for all they're worth

nothing man

40s are the new 30s anyway

There isn't a fifties thread.

I had an OK 40s. In my 40s, I'd squarely reached middle age, and yet the worst of middle age had yet to hit me. I felt in the midst of life, bringing up a child, doing enough of the creative things I'd always wanted to do not to feel too bitter and twisted. The idea of my own death had yet to take too much of a hold on me, and physically all was not too bad. Now in my early 50s, my body is not playing ball so much, I'm taking pills for cholesterol and hypertension, a bad knee has stopped me from jogging for the past year, and mortality feels so much closer. My parents are ailing, my Dad is sliding into dementia. There's a real feeling of "this is it, this is the life you've made, you had your chance and this is what you did with it". I mean it's not all bad, but I feel a kind of fatalism about things...

There isn't a fifties thread.

it’s inevitable

See you all on the ILXor fifties thread in six and a bit years. Hopefully I won't be flat broke by then.

I'm only beginning to not be the youngest person in my line of work, aside from grad students. I am moving into the middle period of this thread's subject. It is strange to watch the world turn to amber around you.

this will make me sound about 90 but i’m consistently impressed by the younger people coming through. they are focused, switched on, sexually frank, even cynical and uninhibited, aware, “woke” if you like, hard working, professional and competent. i’m sure they’re not all like this but it feels like the next-gen is like “next gen” is sometimes used in a technology sense - better, cleverer, smarter. hopefully recouping some of that “coastal shelf” discussed in the this be the verse thread.

moving into my forties - and this is partly because of the state of the u.k. at the moment - i feel i’m doing far more of my learning from people younger than me than i am from people older than me. this is good.

See you all on the ILXor fifties thread in six and a bit years. Hopefully I won't be flat broke by then.

haha ditto