I experienced the same set of irrational emotions around my fortieth birthday. I began, for the first time in my life, to think about dying. But then, yes, it did pass. I'm pretty sure it took about six months, though, and I didn't enjoy the angst in the interim.
I already own an inappropriately tiny red vehicle, so that's done.
When I reach my fortieth birthday I will still be, by some definition, a college student. We'll see how that goes.
When I reach my 40th birthday, I'll start leaving inappropriate comments on the internet.
I dunno, LB, sounds like you're already a professional juggler.
Round-number birthdays haven't particularly affected me. There have been a couple of significant ones along the way, but for mostly personal reasons. E.g., took me a while to figure out what I was reacting to when I turned the age my mother was when she had me.
Anyway, I hope someone is making you a ridiculously elaborate cake. Or at least buying you one.
Happy birthday.
And yes, it'll pass. Juggling is totally not hard to learn how to do, by the way.
Actually, I'm still in the middle of making Newt's -- his birthday was last week, but the birthday cake was put off until Thursday.
I turned 38 last winter and all the angst of extended adolescence hit me at once. My life was quite pleasant but had no real forward momentum and none guaranteed to come. Luckily, I now have a baby on the way and my wife and I both start professional jobs in a week(!). I'm sure turning 40 in a year and a half will bring exciting new freakouts (though mortality terrors is an old story with me), but I feel like I've got a nice baseline to feel like I've accomplished something by.
When I reached 40, I was experiencing some difficult times. But they weren't about turning 40. On that item, I was OK with being alive.
Oh, wait, you've gone back to capitalization. Happy 40th, LB.
Thinking a bit more about this, I think what you're describing is a relatively common variant of the umc midlife crisis. Having spent many, many years pointing to the future, striving for this or that, some time around the fortieth birthday, especially lucky umc people realize that they've achieved almost all of their longstanding goals: good marriage, good job, good kids, good dog, good house, etc. And that realization is, for reasons that pass understanding, disconcerting (at least it was for me). There's not much left to strive for. Or at least one needs to choose new goals for which to strive. Now, surely, this is a bit like alameida's issues with orgasms: not exactly the worst problem in the world to have. Still, it was a bummer, and I wish you well with finding those new goals or new ways to juggle or whatever it will be that will fill the spaces in your psyche so that the angst doesn't creep in and make a home there instead.
Also, happy birthday. And many more. I hope the coming year is filled with joy and good health for you and yours.
I knew she was light weight, but only now reaching her 40th lb?
Responsibility and spontaneity are hard to manage at the same time, and it's hard to set responsibility aside for a nice six week bender. This feeling hasn't passed for me. I tell myself that it's a sign of paying attention, but suspect that's too generous.
Happy birthday! I know what you mean. But, if you stop wanting to run away and join the circus, you become kinda dead and complacent.
I watched some of the masters athletes (60+) at the Crossfit Games two weeks ago and they were totally buff badasses, which I found somewhat inspiring in thinking about aging (when I'm 60+, I'm sure I will find those guys depressing, but still).
Happy Birthday, LB. I want to be you when I grow up. (Considering you're barely a decade older, this is particularly funny to me.)
And congrats on the baby, Jimmy Pongo!
Happy birthday!
I will teach you to juggle at the next meetup.
14 may be on to something. For many people, things get steadily better up to some point where you look around and say "so this is it." That's (hopefully) false, there's more, or different stuff ahead, but what's to come is less predictable, harder to work towards. And many happy returns.
Here's a video of some old badasses,
things get steadily better up to some point where you look around and say "so this is it."
Like it or not, and for better or for worse, that's never, ever it.
18: If you're worried about turning 60, you could eat bread. No one who eats bread will live that long.
around my fortieth birthday. I began, for the first time in my life, to think about dying.
My father died when he was 40, so I can't help but associate the two. I'll turn 43 this fall and god almighty but I know a lot of people who are no longer alive. Way more than I feel I should already, anyhow.
Happy Birthday, almost-twin! When I turned 30 I was fairly freaked about it, partly because I was in grad school going into debt, unhappily single, living in a town that never agreed with me. People had funny, disparate, helpful reactions. My friend D said, not unkindly, "well of course. It's about death. Isn't it?"*
My mother told me about turning 30 while she was teaching at a little nowhere regional university in Oklahoma that happened to get this huge influx of immigrants who needed ESL. She was down about turning 30 and then thought: well, these people just left everything they know. Turning 30 is maybe not such a big thing.
*It was, of course. Von Wafer how could you not spend tons of time thinking about your mortality? Aren't you a member of the tribe? In a grad school class, psychoanalytic something-or-other, we were discussing people's fear of death and I was shocked to find that there are people who don't think about it every day. I am maybe after all the love child of Gustav Mahler and someone. Dunkel ist das Leben, ist der Tod.
especially lucky umc people realize that they've achieved almost all of their longstanding goals: good marriage, good job, good kids, good dog, good house, etc.
Not to get all self-pitying, but I've been thinking recently about the fact that not only have I not achieved any of those thing, the prospects of me achieving them anytime soon (well, except for the job bit) are not exactly awesome. It kind of makes me feel like I should take advantage of that fact and pitch it all in for something completely different, but I have no idea what that might be.
26: a few months after my dad turned forty, he had a massive heart attack that should have killed him (he was in the hospital for six months -- which, in retrospect, is completely nuts). I suppose his illness had something to do with my freakout, but I think it was more a function of middle class malaise.
Anyway, I, too, have had a bunch of friends and acquaintances die over the past couple of years, not to mention witnessing an avalanche of divorces recently. Growing up isn't all that much fun, I guess. But as someone said recently, I can have as many flashlights (just don't, apo) as I want, so there's that.
Happy Birthday LB! It's weird to think you're still that young, given all of your attainments. Oh well, at least I don't have to wear dentures yet.
Von Wafer how could you not spend tons of time thinking about your mortality?
I'm more of a seize-the-day kind of Jew! (We are not legion.) Kidding aside, I obsess about other things: work, whether my kids will be happy, etc. I don't know. Maybe it's that my dad's illnesses (there were and are many) have inured me to some of that Woody Allenesque anxiety about death.
I met my first process-server tonight! And I truthfully told him I had no idea where the person he was looking for lived!
...how could you not spend tons of time thinking about your mortality? Aren't you a member of the tribe?
Do you guys have a holiday where every spring you stand in line to be told you are going to die?
25: Just be careful not to eat too much bread.
I have no idea what that might be
You could ask the mineshaft. Honestly, I have days where I think about leaving my job and becoming a firefighter. But: a) I'm too old and not fit enough and b) I'm a Jew, and we don't fight fires. Really, though, the key variable is the kids. Once we had kids, all of the circus-joining fantasies evaporated (along with, I should say, any thought of accepting residential fellowships or teaching abroad for a year or really doing anything at all that might in any way disrupt their routines*). Which is to say, your freedom is pretty darned enviable.
* This is stupid, I know. But it is what it is.
where s/b when
And now I'm going to chill on the commenting for awhile. I blame my loquaciousness on a sugar high.
Do you guys have a holiday where every spring you stand in line to be told you are going to die?
We don't limit it to a single day, piker.
I turned 38 last winter and all the angst of extended adolescence hit me at once.
This happened to me except with all the angst of a wasted, pointlessly truncated adolescence.
Which is to say, your freedom is pretty darned enviable.
This is totally a grass-is-greener thing. Just as you envy me my freedom, I envy you all of your trappings of adulthood.
Christ, my life is awesome. Fuck all of you.
43 is pretty much what I see on Facebook now that's I've figured out how to block Farmville and unfriended the white supremacist guy.
Happy birthday!
I can't believe anyone would deny their kids a chance of a traveling circus life.
Anyway, happy birthday, LB!
We don't limit it to a single day, piker.
Hey, I think I'm clinically Jewish.
things get steadily better up to some point where you look around and say "so this is it."
Just as you envy me my freedom, I envy you all of your trappings of adulthood.
I was serious about 23 -- Like it or not, and for better or for worse, you never, ever get to a place that's "it" until you die. I think 14 does represent a common form of a particular middle aged depression, one has attained some kind of generic plateau of stability, finds it attractive in some ways but somewhat empty and constraining in others, but feels trapped in it.
But the underlying depression is basically based on an illusion. The trappings of adulthood are no more stable or unchanging than anything else in this human life, and like it or not they're going to be subject to change. Jobs, relationships, kids, whatever, they're all changing quickly underneath you even if you can't feel that immediately. You may think you have nothing to strive for today and be fighting desperately to survive (metaphorically speaking) tomorrow.
I wonder if that makes any sense.
My good fortune in life is not merely, like Von, that I know how good I've got it, but rather, that I genuinely feel as though I've had great luck in life. No mid-life crisis for me.
On the other hand, I do have a strong sense that everything could come crashing down any day. But that just makes me more grateful that it hasn't happened yet.
36: Aaaaaahhh!!! My freakin eyes!!!
The problem is that you're so jaded now that you have to freebase ground up moonrocks just to get to normal.
My good fortune in life is not merely, like Von, that I know how good I've got it, but rather, that I genuinely feel as though I've had great luck in life.
See, so do I. But it's very very hard not to focus on the ways in which even my objectively awesome (like, world-historically awesome) life falls short.
Josh, you could get a dog, couldn't you?
They don't have dog delivery services where you live?
They make dogs that come when they're called.
56: that'd leave him with a vague sense of emptiness and the pleasant responsibility of regularly picking up something else's poop. Zugzwang?
The trappings of adulthood are no more stable or unchanging than anything else in this human life
Yup. I don't even remember 40.
The pain and pleasures of extraordinary events, deaths, loves, places those I remember. The daily hassles, small pleasures, and existential worries, how it felt to be twenty or forty seem much harder to recall. And that's the good stuff, the mortar of life. Shame.
HB, LB
I think I'm temperamentally like politicalfootball, above. But I haven't been tested yet, being midway through a heady series of acquisitions of life markers.
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My desktop computer is broken AGAIN.
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They're having intermezzo life crises over here.
In my far away youth, programming automatically generated medical information booklets, a friend and colleague of mine, after the text, "Menopause, sometimes known as 'The Change'", inserted ", or 'Running Away with the Circus',". It is my earnest hope that this.survived QA and entered some small part of American vernacular.
HBLB!
There's always 50 for chucking it all.
I haven't reached any of these milestones yet, of course, but I'm feeling pretty happy about my life right now because it turns out that the hotel I'm staying in has a guest laundry, which I desperately needed since I've been on the road for over a week. Also, I figured out how to mix myself a pretty good rum and coke. So yeah, things are good.
I sort of chucked things around 30 and went off to try some other things and ended up unemployed for months and then ended up sort of coming back to kind of what I'd been doing, but better (also, worse, but the worse part has better employment prospects which is good because also, debt).
Anyway, my advice for people of all ages is to have savings before you chuck everything. Or, if your savings run out and you're still on the chuck and haven't settled on a change, then settle before rather than after the economy goes to shit. Also, buy stocks when low, sell when high.
71 -> 69.
70: fa clearly understands the concept of the nest egg.
Allow me to be the first to wish you a very happy birthday, LB.
The circus needs legal counsel, too. I'm also certain they'd appreciate your Boston Cream Pie cakes.
Just spitballin' here. Happy Birthday.
Funny, I didn't think turning forty was going to bother me either, and I still do because as of today I still got exactly three years to worry about it.[1]
I juggle: the secret is to stop before you drop a ball.
[1] For elder viewers, yes, born exactly one day after Nixon resigned
Anyway LB, happy birthday. One thing that always cheers me up when thinking about how I haven't become a world class athlete or something is that most of them will already have had to retire by their mid thirties so now have to find something else to do with the four-five decades they got left, while a good desk job can see you through to your mid sixties.
So, you are exactly 20 years younger than me. Happy birthday.
29 It kind of makes me feel like I should take advantage of that fact and pitch it all in for something completely different, but I have no idea what that might be.
I've been having a lot of thoughts along those lines lately. Even with some plausible thoughts about new things I might like to do. I think I'm too lazy to follow through, although the combination of my fast-approaching thirtieth birthday and the utter lack of evidence of any of the expected new exciting things in my field are making the prospect of switching to something completely different seem exhilarating. The social barriers to getting established in a different kind of job seem really intimidating to me, though.
Happy Birthday LB, Smearcase, Martin, Chris and anyone else who needs birthday wishes.
40 is treating me well so far. Back in January 2010, when C turned 40, the kids put up posters and banners and messages and balloons all over the house, and I deliberately left them up so I would see all these 40's everyday and get used to it by my fortieth in December. I think it worked, I wasn't bothered at all by my birthday.
When I was 30, I had a 4 year old, a 2 year old, and a 2 month old baby. Didn't really have any time for fretting. I will be 50 3 months after my youngest turns 18 - have to say I am looking forward to that one.
29 It kind of makes me feel like I should take advantage of that fact and pitch it all in for something completely different, but I have no idea what that might be.
I don't think it's too late for you to join the French Foreign Legion, Josh.
Happy Birthday, LB. I hope I'm a tenth as together as you when I turn 40. Need to work on that upward curve. Hope you got some delicious cake.
Happy Birthday LB, and others.
I'm 40 next year. It's not particularly bothersome, I don't think. Although spending over a decade getting doctored up, and then not not using it is a bit of a PITA. The things that bother me, like going bald, started happening years ago, so the actual numerical change isn't much. I'd like more money and a more interesting job, and to live closer to more of my friends, but other than that, things could be worse.
The social barriers to getting established in a different kind of job seem really intimidating
Anybody can give handjobs behind the bus station, essear.
59- And you thought Alameida had a problem.
Have a wonderful birthday, Liz!
Happy birthday. I am happy to report to you that the forties are mostly good.
Opposing counsel still suck though. Sorry to break that one to you.
Happy birthday.
40 was pretty much a non-event for me. I suspect that's because I was precocious in the angst department and got most of it out of the way on previous birthdays. Post 40 life (all 8 months of it) have been pretty good so far.
If you really want to depress yourself you could tally up the percent of your life that's been spent reading and commenting at unfogged.
A FB friend of mine recently was lamenting because he realized he would probably never give a TED talk.
I suppose the odds finding oneself giving a TED talk late in life are much greater than finding oneself scoring a goal for England. It is kinda more depressing to think about, however, because there was a time when that sort of thing did seem like something I could hope for.
One problem is that the categories on the left for TED talks are all things like "inspiring" "funny" "ingenious" and "courageous." There's no "bitter" or "despairing."
92. Some time ago I and a couple of other drunk people developed the concept of a company called "Job's Comforters" whose business would be to go around the country delivering talks to paying audiences explaining that they were fucked and we were fucked and everything was fucked, so they could stop worrying and just get on with it as best they could. Our working company slogan was, "We feel like shit so you don't have to".
I still think there may be some mileage in this.
@94
Speaking of "we're fucked", I can't decide how depressed to be about the result in Wisconsin. On the one hand, they succeeded with 2 recalls in deep red districts, which is a pretty difficult thing to do. On the other hand, no majority.
95. Count it as a win. The good guys got the recall, and, as you say, turned over two of the bastards. Not easy, wouldn't have happened a year ago.
My political mood is strange. I feel that the signs and portents suggest that, given time, we could be riding a huge wave. But we're starting from a very low baseline, and I have no idea how to ensure that we get that time
You can find out how old Google thinks you are, along with other fund stuff by going here
Google thinks I'm ten years younger than I am!
96: I wouldn't count it as a win until after next week when the two Democrats have to defend.
Happy Birthday, LB!
My wife and I say to each other, "It's not too late to go to Clown School."
And, Parenthetical, I've been haunted by guilt ever since I got you to out yourself and didn't out myself. It was me that posted as "Jane Bingum".
(I also killed the pawnbroker and her sister, but that's another story)
Happy birthday, LB. 40 is the new... Okay, it's still 40. You've done good so far. Just another four decades or so to go -- keep up the good work!
97: Hey, Google thinks I'm younger, too!
"I grow old, I grow old.
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled feed bears peanut butter sandwiches because why the fuck not."
Google thinks I'm old enough to join the Tea Party.
103: "They stumbled on what was essentially an animal hippie commune and shack-out pad".
A shack-out pad? Is that even a word?
106: Me too, but I think my score is from medical searches.
I can't see how to get google to tell me my age. However, from the link in 97, I did learn that I am interested in reggae music. I learn new things about myself every day.
Google doesn't seem to have an opinion about my age, or at least I didn't see one on the linked page. Just topical categories.
Google doesn't seem to have an opinion about my age, or at least I didn't see one on the linked page. Just topical categories.
Double posting is, of course, a sign of early onset Altzheimers.
A friend of mine has a 50-50 chance of developing early onset Altzheimers. I've had an opening to ask nosy questions once or twice, but haven't yet gotten to the questions about how it plays out on her emotional life, which I'm super curious about.
I am happy to report to you that the forties are mostly good.
True! (And I don't think my judgment on this is clouded by nostalgia.)
113: Jesus fucking Christ. I can't think of anything worse than that -- spending your entire life wondering if you were in the process of losing your mind?
113: Sounds like they have a relative with Early Onset Alzheimer's and haven't done the genetic test to see if they inherited it.
Happy Birthday, LB. I'm materially in a similar place to the description in the OP, but my response (like 52) is to worry that it will all be taken away from me, leading to my spending the rest of my life alone and muttering to myself while pushing around a shopping trolley filled with hoarded rubbish. So it seems that the choice is mild ennui vs. tramp-dread.
Also, I think it's hard to argue that the post title doesn't deserve a tie-in with Hey, Nineteen:
So, Fort-y
You got a hankerin'
To do some tinkerin' with your soul,
Some overhaulin',
(Like a) soul MacGyver;
Come on, that's crazy
You're really not that o-o-old
Damn, that should be Familial Alzheimer's.
Easy to say, but I would much rather get tested and know.
113. I totally sympathise and feel for them. It must be horrible. I have no family history of Alzheimers, but I am a pump-head, having spent 4 hours on a machine a while back and recognising that I am totally stupid and forgetful by my prior standards. I simply haven't the courage to find out if it gets worse, it's too scary. Don't try to make them do it if they can't.
Her dad has it, and I believe he was diagnosed in his 50s, although in hindsight they may now recognize earlier signs. She hasn't been tested. I'm not sure that he's been genetically tested to determine if he even has a kind with a known marker - I think only some of them are currently known.
IANAAE, but I think if they gave her a 50-50 chance, then they know it's Familial, and there is a test (also, many people who would like to look at her brain).
After-effects from openheart surgery, isn't it? The long anesthesia and something literally about the heart-lung machine sometimes has mental effects. But, man, Chris, if you've lost anything mentally your baseline must have been terrifying -- were you blasting evildoers to rubble with the sheer power of your brain?
I'm fairly sure my mother has some symptoms of early-onset Alzheimer's (just turned 60, but with clearly diminished memory functions since her 40s) and she won't get tested. Her father had Alzheimer's starting before age 70 and several of her siblings are in a study for children of Alzheimer's patients, but I don't think any have been tested. I'm terrified that it might happen to me, and in fact my other grandfather probably did end up with Alzheimer's by the end, though his dementia may have been more related to Parkinson's and the drugs he was on for it. I hate thinking about this, though I may get tested as I get closer to 40.
123. No I was pissing around and dropping out of college. This is actually something I try not to think about, because I hate it, but sometimes it comes home to roost. I shouldn't complain, I know I'm tolerably bright, but I just hate it.
I worry about my mother, who's awfully scattered seeming lately. On the other hand, she's always been kind of scattered, in a way that I am as well (losing keys, that sort of thing). So I'm not sure if she's changing, or if her baseline level of goofiness just looks scarier on a seventy-something.
112: Google is pretty accurate , with the bizarre exception of thinking I am interested in hip-hop.
I don't think you can definitively diagnose Alzheimer's without an autopsy. You can only test whether you have a gene that increases your chances of inheriting it.
I wish this thread didn't make me keep thinking of Alice's Restaurant (the movie). It seems disrespectful.
126: My mother was just diagnosed (she's past 70). It is very different from "scattered" thinking, at least it was before we asked the doctor about it.
Happy birthday, LB and everyone else to whom it's appropriate. I turned 29 on this past Saturday myself. It was a very low-key thing, but next year's round number will be more fêted.
As for gloom about age, I've really never had a good handle on deep thoughts about my place in life and all that stuff. When should I be studying/married/mortgaged/breeding/vested/etc. For the past two years I've handled angst about the big questions much better than I did for the 10 before that, but that's just because I have a great life these days (great apartment, great girlfriend, relatively healthy lifestyle, job's not great but it does pay well and is low-pressure), not because I have any clearer answers to that stuff. I still don't know if I care about the extended adolescence lifestyle, what about kids, how bad it would be to still be at this job a year from now, and so on.
Obviously, this is not complaining (like I said, great life), but as long as people are chiming in about these questions, I may as well (1) add my two cents, (2) reassure people that lots of people think about stuff like that, and (3) start preparing for next year's potential crisis, since that birthday is a milestone.
130: That's a comfort. Mom's not different than she ever was, just possibly more so.
And I'm so sorry about your mother.
It's possible that there is more than one relative with it, and that they were able to perform a diagnostic autopsy on that other relative.
133: Thanks. It's still very mild and she's at home.
128: True of almost all AD. There is a subtype that is completely predictable from genetics.
I have 30 coming up on Monday and feel pretty similar to what Cyrus said about why he's good with 29, esp. the "great apartment, great girlfriend, relatively healthy lifestyle," part, except my career isn't going as expected and I'm not really seeing the way to fix it, though I'm trying.
Now that I am 41, I am taking enormous pleasure in the amount of $$$ I am costing my insurance company. After decades of costing them zero.
Happy birthday LB - just set a reasonable goal for doing something new in the next decade (the Havana-to-Key-West swim is still up for grabs).
And sympathies/best wishes to MH's mom.
And, Parenthetical, I've been haunted by guilt ever since I got you to out yourself and didn't out myself. It was me that posted as "Jane Bingum".
I went to sleep last night thinking about that! You should have felt guilty! I'm just glad to know I'm not the only one that watches that show not normally in the Lifetime demographic.
141: I told myself you had probably already forgotten about it. Or that you would probably be happier not knowing it was me, because then you could imagine it was one of the high-status Unfoggetarians that was keeping this dark secret.
But my conscience would not let me remain silent.
143: But, but, you are high-status. However, I would have been really amused if it had turned out to be like, LizardBreath.
Also, Moby, I'm really sorry to hear that your mother has been diagnosed. That sucks. Best of luck to your family in the coming years, and I'm glad that you caught it early.
My sympathies Moby. My grandmother had Alzheimer's, and it's one of those things that is just deeply sad and awful for everyone involved with no silver lining. Try to take good care of yourself.
Thanks everybody. We do have a biggish family and a fair bit of time to adjust.
Mermaids? I have mermaid panties!
Just to throw some (depressing) Science! into things, we work with a researcher who has a theory that you're essentially either get Alzheimer's or cancer- the idea being that if your protein misfolding regulation is good your cells are better able to survive and grow out of control, while if you have poor protein misfolding regulation you end up with lumps of crap in your brain cells. Anecdotally, do people often hear of Alzheimer's patients who get cancer?
Does skin cancer count? My maternal grandmother had Alzheimer's (lived with major symptoms for probably seven years) and recurrent skin cancers.
Lots of birthday mojitos have softened the blow a bit. Life's looking reasonable.
Happy birthday, LB.
I'm sorry for your mother's diagnosis, MH. That's really rough.
Reasonable enough for some table dancing?
Happy Birthday (now belated b/c of reading the comments) LB. Hope it was a good one. And very sorry about MH's mum.
151- I suppose so, although I'd guess that's the type most heavily influenced by environmental factors.