Lots of things like grey hair, moving more slowly, injuries that I would have bounced away from before instead hurting for weeks or months.
But the one that hit hardest was a breakup I had a little while back. She was the love of my life and I fully intended to marry her, and when she ended it out of nowhere I was sad, but fine. She dumped me, and it sucked, but I also needed to finish a staff report for a Planning and Zoning Commission meeting that night. So I moved on.
The thing that upset me most was that I wasn’t that upset. There was a time in my life when I would have been a mess. But as I’ve aged, my emotions have become more regulated.
I miss being capable of that level of joy and pain.
Love definitely hits different in your 20’s. Though, the plus side is when something ends I don’t obsess over it like I did as a young man.
I remember in the mid-2010’s when Guns n Roses decided to reunite and tour, and my first thought was: “Why would I want to watch Axl Rose now that he’s old and fat?” That was a sign.
I had a similar experience a few years ago. I haven’t even tried dating again because trying to rework my life to incorporate another person at this point just sounds like a giant pain in the ass and I’m old enough now that it seems like everyone I meet around my age who’s still single is living a train wreck of a life so it wouldn’t be worth the effort anyway.
my fucks slowly run out
Honestly I’ve been getting much happier the less fucks I give.
Inverse correlation
This has become my theme song.
This is the plus side of being older.
I’ve been burned enough times in life that it’s really easy to just write people off that I shouldn’t have let in my life anyway, and I’m much happier in my own little world with my books.
it does get marginally better once you do run out.
I don’t distrohop or tinker with my Linux install anymore. I just install Linux Mint XFCE edition and don’t even bother changing the background.
20+ years ago i spent hours each day developing my own lcars interface based on enlightenment; now i just use whatever x-windows environment the distro i’m using at the moment defaults to.
we must be twins separated at birth. lol
Tech also just isn’t advancing and changing as much as it was when we were younger so it’s not as exciting anymore
And when it does change it’s to enshittify it. It’s been a decade since I was excited about any new technology. I used to love it too.
I don’t get that at all. To me it feels like there’s so much progress happening right now.
I don’t think this is true.
It’s not exciting to me any more because I hate the way it’s changing the world.
In the 2010s it felt like tech would save us.
I think it is stagnating. people having more access to technology based gadgets but the only thing that changed is earth abuse to support production of gadgets. So not only is it not saving us, it is literally killing us.
Me too. But I stopped hopping ten years ago and settled down on Alpine, Void, or Gentoo, based on how fancy the hardware is, and the use case.
To me, the hopping part relates more to tinkering and fine-tuning. Today I prefer things just work. I wish no down time on all my devices and servers, because who has time to figure out why my photo doesn’t sync to my NAS, or dig up that piece of paper when my password manager does not respond because of the proxy service is down?
Holidays are a blur. I don’t remember individual years anymore, and every year I’m started at how quickly it became Christmas already.
Ffs we’re halfway through February already. I was just putting up the tree like 3 days ago.
Too real. Not just holidays, weeks and months go by and it’s like “shit when did it get to 2025??”
Covid made it especially bad. Covid started five years ago. Started, like we first heard the term “Covid”
It’s still March… 2020
COVID really did destroy the flow of time for me.
Are you also in your 30s? Haha
Children, which to me is everyone born in the 2005+ are already turning 20. Hell, the iPhone can already vote.
Btw I was born in 2004 and I’m 20
Also, Gangnam style. 13 years ago.
A girl that stopped me on the street to ask directions concluded the exchange with “Thank you sir.”
Also, the waiters now automatically bring the bill to me when I have lunch with coworkers.
In the south that’s just being nice, not age
I think they mean specifically to them, and not their coworkers
Yes, all my coworkers, including my managers are now younger than me. So when a manager takes everyone out, the waiters assume that I’m the one treating everyone to lunch.
Yes, I’ve had that a few times. Although being substantially older than your manager is externally no big deal unless you make it so, in the cold dark recesses of your own mind it can really start to grind some gears if you let it.
That first happened to me at 18 and it was so weird. I was helping out at my old school for an interschool music festival—a week of all sorts of different workshops and rehearsals between different schools, culminating in a concert at the end. During a break I was tinkering around on the piano, and a student came up to me and said “excuse me, sir…[some question about the timetable or something, that I definitely didn’t have the level of authority to know the answer to]”. I have her the best answer I could and she went on her way, but I was just stuck there feeling way too old.
I no longer feel a sense of unrealised potential for myself I guess. That’s it, I’ve got what I’ve got.
Waking up with a new pain and having to make it the new normal.
So very much this. Waking up now includes logging what does and does not hurt. It sucks.
My knee hurts when it’s raining.
And Your Living in the UK.
Not being able to see at night when the lights turn off
Injuries take longer to recover from
Headlights in the opposite direction cause troubles
Dashboard indicators (like high beams) are much brighter, annoyingly so.
Hehe. On mine the cruise, high beam and fog light indicators don’t dim with the rest of the dash board.
Luckily they’re all along the top row in the centre, so I drape the glasses cleaning cloth over the dashboard to form a little curtain.
I’m in a rural area.
Same here!! Why don’t they dim with the rest of the dashboard lights??
It’s almost to the point I’m putting some electrical tape over them. Can’t wait to have a car with self dimming lights, then I’ll tape over it and keep them toggled on forever without worries
Oh man I hear ya in headlights and dashboard lights. NIght driving is getting to be pretty rough for me.
- Eyesight is getting worse. It’s hard to read in dim light, and driving at night can be rough.
- Takes my body longer to recuperate from anything that it doesn’t like - injuries, alcohol, upset stomach.
- Age spots. I thought they were just freckles but my dermatologist says they’re age spots. I’m only 43!
Aging is funny, because there’s always someone who thinks you’re ancient, and there’s always someone who thinks you’re still super young. I was at a bar a couple weeks ago, and these two dudes were complaining about how old they were getting… so I asked, turns out they were the ripe old age of twenty-eight. Which made me laugh a little, because 28 is still pretty young. And when I told them I was 43 they couldn’t believe it. I guess in my twenties I didn’t have an accurate idea of what people in their forties looked like either. Conversely when I made some comment to my parents about being middle-aged, they laughed at me because “you’re in your forties, you’re not middle-aged!”. So it’s all relative. My dad said something that stuck with me: you may feel like you’re getting older, but when you’re my age (he’s 75) you’ll realize how young you still were, and how much energy you had. And that’s helped me be aware that even though there are some aspects of aging that I really hate, there are plenty of good healthy years left.
I like this comment the best. These points are all true, undeniable. Aging is funny cause you never can tell how old someone is.
I work at a liquor store with a college feel and holy shit I card everyone!!
Male pattern baldness sucks, esp as a trans girl
Injuries take longer to heal and recovery from the gym is slower
Hangovers now take two days
Skin dries out much faster (though this might be due to E)
diminished eyesight, especially at night.
oh, and of course, making some references that some of the youngsters don’t understand.
(also, using the term “youngsters”)
At age 30, I noticed I couldn’t skimp on sleep anymore and hangovers were much worse than in my 20’s.
In my mid-30’s my eyesight started to blur and I had to start wearing glasses.
At 40, my digestion isn’t as good as it used to be and I take supplements. Also, it’s harder to memorize things now, and I no longer have the option of missing workouts or daily stretching, because I notice it much more if I haven’t done these things.
It takes exponentially longer to heal from physical injury. That’s it so far, except for feeling calmer - older people are exceptional at emotional regulation, which oddly enough is why they are easier to scam, they don’t freak out as quickly.
But mostly it’s the slow healing. I am still strong and flexible but have to be careful and moderate because getting hurt will set me back much more than it used to.
My mom once made plans to come up here (she lived near Miami) to see Tab Benoit with some of her friends - by the day of the concert two of them were dead! She said “if you want to see your friend when you are old, go see them, don’t make plans.”
Eyesight started going in mid 40s. Still not happy about it.
I had perfect vision for decades and then it suddenly went to shit. Found out there’s no preventing it, no lifestyle changes to make it better. It’s just gone. Presbyopia can’t be prevented or fixed. Feels bad, man.
Damn, that’s a long run!
