This is a thread for ILXors in their 30's!!! yo yo yo breakdancing etc...

We used to make an artform out of addressing envelopes. It become a problem when they started getting returned by the post office as illegible. How we'd pass along clippings from music magazines, with letters written on the back of them. I do miss that.

The only bit I managed to translate was that she didn't like Europe, because they were offensive.

I would volunteer that we should start an ILX0r penpal service to send spangly letters to one another... but, being in my 30s, I don't really have the time to send letters any more. Life doesn't come with a study hall period to waste decorating envelopes any more. :-(

The decade's been great aside from the bits that weren't (small in number, happily). I dunno, I'm just kinda relaxed about it all.

My sentiments exactly. I'm turning 38 in a couple weeks, and I don't really have a sense of "age" these days. Sure, getting close to 40 and not being married/with kids is on my mind, but it's not really bothersome, and I feel as comfortable in my own skin as I ever have.

I have some 10" records too! And I still have my Intellivision console somewhere :/

Sure, getting close to 40 and not being married/with kids is on my mind, but it's not really bothersome

Same here, the occasional twinge but I think that's more due to societal conditioning and expectation. (See also house ownership as a purported sign of maturity -- not out here, I think!)

But Ned, how can you pass on spending all of your money on home improvements instead of CDs and obsessively watching HGTV?

I feel better already.

Have any of you noticed a slight... difference between this thread and the 40s thread?

Um... what happens to ILX females after they hit 39? Do we DIE or something? Or just turn invisible? I'm a-scared. Somebody hold me!

http://img2.timeinc.net/people/i/2008/stylewatch/gallery/onsetstyle/kim_cattrall.jpg

oh well.

...or just start lying and carry on posting in this thread?

^^^ that's the ticket

My biggest fear is that I won't be able to think of myself as a sad young man for much longer.

angry young man => => => bitter old man! Hurrah!

I'm in my mid thirties, and it's so funny to hear other mid 30s folks say "oh I am so old", because I'm still the youngest person I work with, and my professional friends are all in their 50s and 60s. So I feel very young, and think of aging as a good thing, since it means that you'll have learned more (supposing that you want to learn).

one of the fun things about growing up is getting to watch certain once-admired personality types age right along with you and look more sad and desperate the less they change.

and finding out that fortysomethings can be hot

hey guys... i'm new to your club...
... fuck you guys ihateyouall!

ok. ok. i'm sorry. didn't mean to lash out there.
this being old thing is sort of taking it's toll on me here.

all my friends are turning into that 30 something pic, sadly.

i was at a bbq on saturday, and while i've been long used to being one of the sole single people there it looks like i'm going to have to get used to be being one of the few childless people in my peer group.

bummer.

is it possible you have some bastard children somewhere?

well, i view it as a mixed blessing.

xpost (i give myself 50/50 odds on that one)

god, even the type treatment of "thirty something" makes me want to barf.

i remember my parents watching it when i was a kid and wondering why they would watch a show about such miserable people.

i mean, they already had the news for that kind of shit!

You ever play that game to see how much closer one year is to ancient history than to the present?

For example, 9/11/01 is now closer in history to the OKC bombing than it is to today. MLK's "I Have A Dream" speech is closer to the end of WWI than it is to now.

Anyway, my birthyear 1973 is closer to Pearl Harbor, FDR's third term, and the opening of Gone With the Wind and the Wizard of Oz than it is to the present-day.

that seems like not the funnest game

it looks like i'm going to have to get used to be being one of the few childless people in my peer group.

I'm actually pretty fortunate in that respect, as I have many friends around my age without kids. Almost half/half, I think!

everyone who hasn't cranked up production on the baby making machines seems to have moved away this year.

is it possible you have some bastard children somewhere?

possible, though highly unlikely that they wouldn't have asked for child support.

Alternatively you can think about whether you're closer to the day of your death than you are to the day of your birth!

that version sounds a bit like glass half full/half empty

if genetics and an extened misspent youth/early adulthood are any indication i'm way closer to one than the other.

You ever play that game to see how much closer one year is to ancient history than to the present?

-- Pleasant Plains, Wednesday, August 27, 2008 7:45 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Link

I depress myself by working out whether people I meet are close to my kids age than mine. As of now, anyone under 21 is closer to my son than me, and I will refuse to speak to them because of the generation gap.

I am in my 30s. I like it okay. It seems like a good period of life. There's some of the energy and health of youth, but you also know a bit more about what you're doing, have the experience to do it confidently and effectively, and no longer have to feel fraudulent about presenting yourself as an adult person. This all seems okay by me. I buy Oxford shirts instead of hoodies, and pants with creases that require ironing. (Thus far the clothes are the best part of being in the 30s, really.) I haven't bought a cup of coffee with dimes in quite a while. I don't feel the least bit unreasonable over calling the crappy new bar at the end of the block and telling them their PA system is too loud, and why do they have a PA system anyway -- because I'm older and no longer assume that I'm the odd one out for objecting to something. I have a story or comment about most topics people might mention, but I'm not so old that my story is dated and boring and has to include parenthetical comments about what technology we did or did not have back when the story was taking place. I know most of the problems that will present themselves to me, day to day, and I know the best way to solve them. I feel less risk, like if I've managed to be myself this long then it's unlikely that I will be ruined and changed into someone else. It no longer feels bothersome or burdensome or hard to remember to take care of myself; I can do things like exercise every day, not because I'm subjecting myself to it to accomplish something, but because it actually feels satisfying and worthwhile to have the habit. I no longer have to think of anyone as being of a wildly separate age group from me; even with very old men, well, they are just standing over at the other end of the process of becoming an old man I'm undertaking, but there's no big set mountain of change between us. It's only been a year, really, but I don't mind the thirties yet; they seem pretty okay.

l;r

My version of that game is that we're now just as far from 1988 as we were from 1968 in 1988. That just doesn't seem right. '68 and that whole era was already mythologized and its heroes were dead and the footage of it was all grainy and saturated and it was ANCIENT HISTORY. Hell, the late 70s seemed like ancient history. People wore funny clothes and had funny hairstyles. I can't imagine a 10 year old in 2008 looking back at '88 or '98 and having a similar feeling about as 10 yr old me did about '68 or '78.

L is 10 in a couple of months. we were watching footage of the '88 Olympics together and I can easily imagine that would have looked to him like Mexico '68 looks to me.

All my kids are aghast that there was a world before Wikipedia.

that whole era was already mythologized

http://365bestdays.files.wordpress.com/2007/05/wedding-singer.gif

and its heroes were dead

http://images.usatoday.com/weather/_photos/2006/05/17/inside2-appeoplepilatus.jpg

and the footage of it was all grainy and saturated

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZZEGHnAxEpo

and it was ANCIENT HISTORY

http://i101.photobucket.com/albums/m76/DrewziG71/eighties.jpg

hahaha Ned. yeah it's easier to compare 88 to 68 than 98 to 78 w/r/t this game.

I mainly just struggled to get my head around the fact that "the sixties" were pretty recent history when I was a kid.

Now that I'm 37 it's odd to see what I already have in common with people in their 40s, and also disorienting to have conversations about music or art or politics with lots of people in their 20s. Not a huge gap, but not nothing either. Often we reach the same conclusions but from opposite ends, and the points of reference keep getting cumulatively richer for me but it's a conversational obstacle if you bring too many references up with much younger people. I guess the best thing about talking to people far older and far younger than you is that your own presumptions get tested quickly and frequently (if you let it sink in- won't happen if you're just ranting and spouting, which, of course, goes for them too).

nabisco thinks about his thirties like he's already fifty

I'm excited about the end of this decade. XXX9 years are always some sort of weird mix of the two decades they fall between.

Sunny had the old school rap channel on our cable the other day, where they play music on top of still photographs of the artist with dumb trivia underneath it ("LL Cool J stood for 'Ladies Love Cool James'.")

Kool Moe Dee was on there with his leather cap and oversized shades, and it was so not-80's, but not-90's either.

Also see episodes of "WKRP in Cincinnati", Led Zeppelin II, and Harry S. Truman's second term.

And yeah, I remember what a big deal it was for Sgt. Pepper being released for the first time on CD in 1987 ("It was twenty years ago today...")

And last summer, it was twenty years ago that it was twenty years ago.

I expect a lot more than that from my 50s, Tombot! If it took me to my 50s to learn how to exercise and iron my pants and make good small talk, I'd feel like something had gone slightly wrong with my life.

(xxpost) not 80's, not quite 90's either...
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/a/a1/Nirvana-Bleach.jpg/200px-Nirvana-Bleach.jpg
Not so much the album, more their look at the time. I can't find that group picture where Kurt has really long hair, but you know what I mean?

xp haha nabisco makes everybody feel like something has gone slightly wrong with their lives.

cheers.

no no nabisco I meant that your ruminations on your thirties struck me as if you'd already lived through them

Not this picture either, but this is pretty much what I mean...
http://www.solarnavigator.net/music/music_images/Nirvana_band_members.jpg

btw if you have to iron your pants you're either buying the wrong kind or storing them incorrectly