This is the inevitable thread for ILxors in their forties

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

There isn't a fifties thread.

it’s inevitable

I'll break out a sixties thread in 2021, if someone else doesn't do it first.

I like Fizzles post. I don't necessarily agree--primarily because of demographic gap; between the kids in my school (14 and under) and the youngest teachers I work with (basically, 30), I don't know really know anyone 15-30--but it's a nice change from the usual whining from people like me.

I'm 46 and have generally enjoyed my forties. It's been a good time for me in terms of general well-being / happiness / stability. Marriage, children, music-making, and work are all going fine. I have a mix of childhood friends and new ones, my family doesn't drive me nuts, I have low-key interests and few needs.

My body is definitely feeling it, though. Nothing dire, but a steady stream of minor complaints. Unexplained pains here and nagging aches there. Needing different glasses for the computer vs. reading vs. distance. I'm trying to take all this with good humor.

My body is getting to a state like that of a beloved car with a lot of mileage on it. Things are starting to wear out, some bits just fell off somewhere and haven't been replaced. At some point something major is going to need to be repaired, and it won't be worth it; my wife will have me towed off to the junkyard. But not today. Not yet.

My forties have been absolutely shit so far and this year doesn't look like it's going to be any better.

username checks out

I'll break out a sixties thread in 2021, if someone else doesn't do it first.

I could start one now, but it would be fairly lonesome in there. I've seen strong hints that there are a few other over-60 ilxors, but they tend not to flaunt their age. Even if they did out themselves, I'm not sure there'd be very much to say.

Medicare providers S/D C/D

What, end up getting escorted to the Hoffman pages?

My sense was that you were already there, Aimless, but didn't want to be presumptuous.

Had to shoehorn myself into the forties thread and you gave me the opening.

My forties have been a calamity. Did some good work at the beginning that pointed me in some interesting new directions, but starting midway through 42, there was a loud gear shift into a slow crawl of misfortunes which continues to deliver at least one new insupportable weight per annum. Am at this point just a collection of maladaptive tics, bottled-up resentment stories, counterproductive self-soothing strategies that walks like a person. I always knew I should never be a parent because the enormity of the responsibility would drive me insane, but I’ve ended up more or less right in that place without kids anyway, and lo and behold it’s ruined my mind. Occasionally I am able to confirm that the prior, useful me is still in there under debris. Am glad that’s the case. I’ll turn 50 in mid-2020.

Feel you bro

Turned 46 two weeks ago. On the career side, I feel great - the last time I had a regular office job was in May 2016, and we (25th wedding anniversary coming up in June!) are still living in middle-class comfort based solely on freelance work. Health-wise, well, I'm diabetic, but other than that things are fine - I've always been remarkably lucky with stuff like that, never even broke a limb growing up.

As far as life ambitions, I have a single big idea I'm working on: escaping the US. I think I can pull it off. Beyond that, I'm just gonna keep working and doing things I enjoy - my website and the podcast I launched in October - and maybe write another book in 2018.

I don't care about young people at all anymore. If you're under 30 (35, if I'm being honest), your opinion means nothing to me, basically. I just assume you're an idiot and wait for someone who's actually lived in the world for a while to speak up.

Not feeling this bro tho

Some of the nicest people I've met in the last five years have been Millennials.

Unperson, move to one of these countries. https://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-youngest-populations-in-the-world.html

Nah - I'm headed for that Mediterranean island where everybody lives to be 110.

thought you meant the Isle of Wight for a minute

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/28/magazine/the-island-where-people-forget-to-die.html

Whenever I'm tempted to think or say something like "you'll understand when you're older," I try to remember how that felt when people said it to me when I was 27.

My parents-in-law came to visit last week. I did some mathing and realized that when they met me (I was 27), they were my current age (46). They thought they knew a lot about the world and that I was a callow youth who didn't deserve their precious daughter. Now that I'm here (age-wise, at least) I realize that probably everybody's improvising to some extent. Faking it to some extent. "Performing" adulthood to some extent.

I have vivid memories of my parents in their forties. They seemed like they knew what they were doing, they seemed like they had shit figured out. They didn't. They probably got just as lost and confused and scared as I get sometimes, but they didn't show it.

THAT SAID, sometimes I wonder how much of this is perception and how much of it is real cultural change. In the 60s/70s, at least some people married younger and started childbearing younger. They were expected to grow up pretty fast by today's standards. ("Today's standards" includes 30-year-old men whose moms still fold their underwear.)

My eldest sibling was born in the University of Missouri's Married Student Housing. I don't think most contemporary colleges have "Married Student Housing," let alone with children. The very idea might seem absurd. How the fuck are two 22-year-old English/Philosophy majors married and having a baby?

Now that I'm here (age-wise, at least) I realize that probably everybody's improvising to some extent. Faking it to some extent. "Performing" adulthood to some extent.

I have vivid memories of my parents in their forties. They seemed like they knew what they were doing, they seemed like they had shit figured out. They didn't. They probably got just as lost and confused and scared as I get sometimes, but they didn't show it.

This x10000

I'm 44

Not sure when "wise" is supposed to happen. 50? 80? Never?

I saw Guided By Voices last night (they were great), but they made me remember that back when the band was hitting its out of the underground peak, around 1994, the two big takeaways were that the singer was 1) a former school teacher and 2) old. Robert Pollard just turned 60, which means back in 1994 that "old" guy was considerably younger than I am now (almost 43).

there are still some MLB players who are older than me, which gives me comfort. but since the players are Bartolo Colon, Ichiro, and R.A. Dickey it's cold comfort.

once i wanted to be the greatest (greatest greatest greatest!)

• I used to keep tabs on my age and the age JFK was elected. Now I'm counting down the days until I pass whatever age he was on 11/22/63.

• The junior U.S. Senator from my state is four years younger than me. Fuckin' junior.

• Listened to the Doors recently, and for the first time, I was just all "Ha, just listen to this kid. He thinks he's got it all worked out, doesn't he?"

• On the same side of the coin, I listened to the Doors recently and whaddya know, they fuckin' rock.

• I lifted a rock the other day and placed it about four feet away from where it had been. I couldn't stand up without pain for about three days.

My great-uncle died this year at 85, so I keep thinking, hey, I might not even be halfway there yet. In some ways, that's exciting. In other ways, well, I certainly envy JFK and Jim Morrison every once in awhile, especially after I've been picking up rocks.

I was just thinking about my first concert which is still fresh in my memory, and how going forward the same amount of time I'll be 70 years old. Still younger than Harrison Ford is today!

My dad died at 72 but my mom is still cruising along at 89 so I’m hoping I’ve got a few decades to reread some shit.

i have a mentor who's like twice as old as me, so knowing him is kind of like seeing a preview of my possible future, but even still it kind of boggles my mind that i could live another forty years - like, what the hell are you supposed to do for forty years??

Still younger than Harrison Ford is today!

Ford is 75 now, I'll be that age in 2049. So I'm the same age as Rick Deckard.