- My knee still doesn’t feel right after that hiking trip two weeks ago.
- I started listening to really old music.
Have I crossed the threshold?
Nope, you’re describing not being young, that’s nothing like being actually old. Growing old has a bunch of stages:
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joint pain
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can no longer dance all night
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hangovers last all day
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dentists start talking to you about your gums
But then you get to the phase of
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skin losing elasticity
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liking dinner parties
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marijuana is now a medicine
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developed distinct preferences about stuff like threadcount
And then after that the next phase is more like
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a lot of time worrying about your parents
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all body fat migrates to one or two of its favourite spots
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seriously consider putting everything on lanyards
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your favourite singers are all dead
And so on, you get the picture. That’s as far as I’ve traveled but as far as I can see the phases after that involve things like bladder leakage and losing friends to alzheimers.
I’m getting toward the last, my favorite singers are dying. My wife and I just saw the B-52s in concert. They are in their mid seventies. They were in their thirties when I started listening to them. Ugh.
Good god I have tickets to see AC DC next month…
Shook me early in the evening long.
Highway to (Nursing) Home
Downpayment Blues (but yes really)
😁,Because they are younge!
Multiple of your friends have cancer, died of cancer, or of other illnesses. But mostly the cancer.
You wonder if your bowels are OK. They are not.
Seeing a lot of my dad’s friends starting to drop off has hit me and made me prize my own relationships more. Every day is a choice you make for what you prioritize.
fuck, this is accurate. i recognized myself in everything you wrote. (age 50ies)
Glad it’s not just me!
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Some things I’ve noticed in my early 40s:
- You talk about things like property taxes and 401k contributions more often than you ever thought would be possible
- You seriously weigh whether a drink is worth the bad sleep and headache it’ll cause you
- Your pop-culture references are lost on younger folks
- You start referring to college-aged people as “kids”
- You need reading glasses but you’re in denial about it
- Injuries take longer to heal
- Those of your peers who haven’t taken care of themselves are starting to have serious health issues
- You care more about flossing, skincare, fiber, and hydration
- You still rock bottom eyeliner like you did in high school
- You’ve seen fashion from your high school years go out of style and then come back as “retro”
- You see the utter confusion on your nephew’s face when you explain that you used to keep a quarter in your bike pouch in case you needed to call someone, because he doesn’t remember a time before cell phones and his generation isn’t allowed to just roam around unsupervised on their bikes
- You have strong opinions about things like laundry detergent brands
- Birds become fascinating
- You have no problem spending a few hundred dollars on a new kayak paddle, but the price of cold cuts these days is just unacceptable
You may fascinate the elderly with a bird
cold cuts? Have you seen the price of a bag of chips? Ridiculous. I don’t need to spend 5 bucks to hate myself later after I’ve eaten too many.
$30 to buy an old mechanical pencil on ebay you remember having in highschool? No problemo.
Eyes, motivation, you can’t drink all night and only sleep for three hours, and in general it’s better to drink at home, it’s better to lie on the couch, lack of interest in many things… taking care of children’s health is above your own etc.
What’s really old music? Like Greenday?
I mostly listen to music from my parents’ youth. Growing up I listened to the oldies station a whole lot (Oldies 98.1 used to be so good!). I’m Gen X, they’re boomers. So classic rock is definitely in the mix, but also artists like Petula Clark, the Supremes, Tommy James and the Shondells, etc. There’s a great station on SiriusXM called '60s Gold that I listen to pretty much every day.
And then when I need a change, I switch to New Wave / post-punk or Grunge.
Oh you mean music from the 1900s?
You are a menace and must be stopped.
So, you mean music composed before 1800? Bach and Mozart should be fine, whereas Beethoven is way too modern.
I’m late Gen X but I’m really enjoying Gen Z music. Some of it’s so chill.
I start my day on 1960s English prog and ska, and end my day on 1970s Italian and Turkish prog and pop. I dunno what’s out there
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Getting a new phone is annoying rather than exciting
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I thought Fairphone would solve this for me, but the thing is too damn chonky.
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Well, of course it does with no proper universal backup system.
The change itself is pretty straightforward if you use Google services
Well, I thought so. Unfortunately it only backs up the minimum, and only for supported apps.
They can pry the headphone jack from my cold dead hands
- A general feeling of alienation from society. Particularly younger people.
- Dislike of ‘modern’ music.
- Nostalgia over the way things used to be as you have lived long enough to witness the enshittification.
I like the enshittification one. Old(er) people say how much better things were back in the day, but we just say that’s rose tinted glasses because actually e.g. violent crime was much higher.
Then we tell the younger generation that the web used to be so much better and they are all “yes, grandpa, that’s great grandpa”.
But it was better! I swear it was!
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Except you feel this even if you’re in your 20s. It’s not exactly an old thing lol
Hell, even over the last 3 years it’s super obvious
Hmm, I think back to say the early 2000s, before digg and reddit but after static websites. I never got the opportunity to use Usenet but random forums all running on PHPBB and later, Invision Power Board, with some other software thrown in.
Ok, that might be rose tinted glasses, as that was the first experience of user-led content rather than static sites (unless you count geocities).
Digg, and later Reddit, was a sort of bringing together of these different forums into one platform. It was great at the time, but so was 1GB of free email when other free email providers were doing 5MB and we all know how that turned out…
Man, I’m feeling half nostalgic and half old talking about seeing the birth of Gmail and the first mainstream social media and the first iPhone. My kids hear my stories about the days before smart phones and the days before aeroplanes and think of them as the same kinda time frame.
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Same. I’ve had shit joints since I was a kid. Sometimes I feel like I got a head start on aging 😛
I dunno, I think a second “not dead” condition needs to be added.
The radio station that plays the old hits has started playing newer hits. Spoiler: they’re not new.
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- Can’t use my phone for more than 10 minutes because it makes my eyes hurt
- Understanding the mechanics of new games feels harder than it used to be
- Can’t easily remember the names of characters in a game/movie I’m watching
- Can’t remember the names of functions for programming languages I’ve learned recently, always need to keep the documentation handy
- I find it absolutely counterintuitive to use “modern” functions in programming like lambdas (and functional programming in general can’t get into my head)
- I almost always HATE changes in the OS and programs I use, while I used to love beta-testing stuff
- Can’t get into new hobbies and interests
- Still listen to the same genres I used to listen to 10 years ago
- 2019 feels like a few months ago, not half a decade ago
- Getting worse and worse at rhythm games
I’m 33.
Do you need corrective lenses?
Not yet, I just have dry eyes
Lambdas make no sense on 1D data. Change my mind.
You’ll start growing hair in even weirder places than you did during puberty.
I have one weird hair that grows out of my neck. Why on earth?!
nose hair trimmer attachment works well around the ears I’ve found (but it’s loud!)
Yes I also listen to a lot of mid 2000s songs.
This is a joke, right?
I’m in my 30s and one of the big things I’ve noticed recently is that hangovers are way worse than they were in my 20s. I think I’ve noticed it especially because I quit drinking for about 4 years or so and when I came back to it I noticed it seemed much worse than my early 20s. These days I’ll have like 3 or 4 beers and start feeling hung over before I even go to bed. On the plus side it has really helped me moderate my drinking, cuz I sure don’t feel like feeling like shit before I’m even done drinking and for most of the next day!
Most of the other stuff I hear (“Your metabolism slows way down!!!” “Your body starts falling apart!!!”) seems to me to be mostly because people stop exercising and eat like shit. You do slow down but taking care of your body can really reduce the losses. I’m a cyclist and ride with guys in their 60s who are probably fitter than a lot of 20 and 30 year olds that I work with.
weird. In my 30s, I think I’ve gotten better at drinking. I used to hate the taste of beer in my 20s and would often vom after a night out.
Now I’m sampling ale’s and wine’s in the same night like a right douchey cunt, and loving it
When you go onto a website with one of those cheesy self assessment age restrictions boxes and you’re still scrolling to get to your year.
As far as any of those sites are concerned, I was born January first, [the earliest year they allow].
But have you begun yelling at clouds yet?
No but sometimes I grunt when I get up from the couch.
Oh to be young again. I remember questioning whether I was old or not. Embrace your youth, it’s nearly gone…
That was my first thought. I’m past 30 now so my body makes a noise when I crouch down and my throat makes a noise when I get up again.
