to think the older you get the less you can give a feck to fight it

[mercurymaze]

i am nearly 50, it's just all too hard now. i can't be arsed with it.

no-one understands or cares how much you fought to get to the position you have in life.

no-one listens to you, no-one wants to hear how you saw the pixies live numerous times or that you saw depeche mode in 1985

no-one cares that the job you do now would be dam near impossible without wordprocessing or at least a typewriter that had auto correct

no-one cares that that bands you once listed to were so supercool than music nowadays

that clothes just weren't available as they are now, we actually had to make clothing we liked.

etc

Mercury, I feel your pain. And I started my tech life on Word Star then Word Perfect, oh the memories! I don’t know, it feels like a lot of people rolled over in the 80s due to Thatcher and her greed mantra of capitalism and grab everything you can for yourself and fuck everybody else, I genuinely think people cared more about each other before that

Ooh. I care that you saw The Pixies. Very jealous.

Mercury Our skills aren't defunct, and I can give you three years. We can map read (always useful when the satnav dies), mend seams, sew on buttons, cook, make cakes; we know how to do things from scratch. We can sort things out without it turning into a full blown crisis....if the power goes out, we have candles. We know how to read a meter ( ds had to phone me from uni for a lesson in that); I also had to explain where on the water rates bill it showed how to pay. We have the common sense that many of those younger seem to lack, and can apply it.

Experience is a skill set all of its own, embrace it, own it, and use it.

Ruby 30 was a daze as I'd had ds about three months earlier. 40 was OK. Was dreading 50 and had shingles on the day. However, I like being in my 50s. I give less of a fuck than I did about lots of things; I am comfortable with who I am; and am enjoying life. I don't have to prove anything to anyone, and they can take it or leave it. The only bit I don't like is the increasing grey hair, but that is why hair dye was invented!!!!

I don't understand it when people say they feel the same inside at 20 and 50. I'm nearly 50 and I don't but I'm not sure if I wish I did. I felt much more passionate about many things when I was younger but the negative emotions were also a lot more pronounced. Now I feel very much on an even keel and the things I care about are more on on a rational thought out basis but it can feel quite boring at times. I miss those stronger feelings, even though I hated the negative feelings at the time.

I like that cartoon I have seen on face book. 40 year old woman says - I feel just like I did when I was 20. Then socialises with 20 year olds. Nope I am 40.
We do change, we just don't always see it because it is gradual.

I do agree with the old cliche that youth is wasted on the young. Would love to live life over knowing what I know now.

Scary I think for me I have trouble embracing the new decade, whatever it is. I was ok with 20 though!

Flora I see what you’re saying. I’m
not the same as when I was younger, but I’m still ‘me’ inside. With an older face looking back at me in the mirror. I know I’m not explaining myself very well :)

Yes Ruby I know what you mean. I still feel like myself and I sometimes still think of the me that saw the Beastie Boys in 1987 (31 years ago!) as well as other bands. But I definitely don't feel the same as I did then.

I used to work in a restaurant / bar and when I was early 20s and a couple would come in often for lunch. They often had very old fashioned cocktails like Manhattans and Gimlets (before cocktail revivals) which I made very poorly. They were in their late 70s/80s and the man had had a stroke so he could not speak very well. I used to serve them and feel sorry for them that they were so old and I couldn't really understand what he said most of the time. One time I went to them and the woman told me her husband was just saying that he wouldn't want to be young again. I was shocked so much I can still remember it many years later. I thought I was living the life - young, gorgeous-ish - having a great time. Why would he not want to be in my shoes rather than where he was then? I understand it now though. They clearly had a great relationship and were happy together. They were doing alright financially and he felt good about the life he had. I feel like a bit of a bastard (and idiot) now when I think about how I thought of them then.

I’m going to see Depeche Mode in Berlin in July ...nearly 50 and cool as fuck 😁

'snowflakes'?

I saw Depeche Mode live on their Exciter tour. But I was a massive fan from my early teens and Violator. All the music I loved I was simply too young to go see at the time it was all happening in early to mid nineties (having uptight strict parents didn't help). I always wanted to be older than I am, so happy to be getting older too. Always made friends with somewhat older people and my only long term relationships have been with 12 and 15 years older men. Having said that, when I was last single two years ago, I educated a much younger guy on the genre he loved and I'd grown up with (jungle/d&b). Felt good to be looked up to... Haha!

Looking forward to being 40 soon, bit only my greying hair betrays my age, as I still regularly get asked for ID in shops...

I wouldn't call younger people snowflakes, though, as that's a bit unfair. They have grown up in a different world with different challenges. E.g. my DS will never know a world without constant (social) media bombardment/constant smartphone presence or have the freedoms many of us took for granted (walking to places alone at a young age etc.).

Oh bless you, I feel your pain. I'm 50 and I've lost my frame of reference entirely.

My dh looks great wearing trainers and a vintage shirt but I can't seem to look edgy without looking unkempt. (He is also quite heavy in middle age but it suits him, while I am the same weight I was when young but I look like an unmade bed.) I don't know that I consciously used the actual word 'edgy' in my head, but I had a way of making myself feel/look very rock and roll and I've lost it. It makes me ache for who I knew myself to be.

I had the thought that I could shave my head as a style reset, but at my age people would think I was ill.

I saw Brix Smith open for the Wedding Present last summer, and my friend said 'Meh, it's all too try-hard' and I thought, who can you compare her to though, who is the template for the 50-something female rock star? (Oh, Debbie Harry I guess, but she is her own thing entirely.) I mean, I'm not a huge fan but I felt for her, carving out this role at this age when you remind people of their mum.

I'm going to see Morrissey in March!

Flora I like your story about the people in the bar. Maybe its a natural progression for all of us; I'm glad I'm not a teenager nowadays. All the intrusion, the expectation to conquer the world, selfies, pouting and eyebrows. I dunno.

arousing yes something that would have looked a bit cool once upon a time, now could easily translate into the batty old biddy look.

I am 51. I am sure my DDs think I am ancient.

It is true that we have seen a lot of change in our lifetimes, and the pace of technology has been particularly staggering.

I think you have to embrace it a fair bit though, as it is here to stay and will only move forwards. Unlike my parents who will never touch technology with a barge pole. They would have everything going back to pen and paper if they could.

I liked Depeche Mode. I liked the Who, Status Quo, Queen and Bryan Adams.

In my student days (the mid eighties) everything was written out with pen and paper, barely a computer to be seen.

It all seems like so long ago now that it could almost be another lifetime.

I don't care though. I am fairly happy as we are today.

I am better balanced now I am older. Happier in some ways, stronger, wiser, and have more perspective. I also know no-one cares who I used to be.

I saw bands too, (Clash, Dire Straits, Jam, and many more) - and went on marches, (Right to Work, the anti-racism marches in Paris in the early 80s, Reclaim the Night - from the late 70s,) I marched and collected for the Miners in the 80s- and fought for the right to wear trousers in the office in the 1970s. I did wonderful, wild things and travelled and had foreign boyfriends including a lovely man from Damascus in 1977.

Now people look at me and see a boring old woman. I am still politically active, I still volunteer for charities but I am dull and greying and my face has a set expression which looks grumpy and my clothes look frumpy or trying too hard.

People are just dying to call me sexist or racist or accuse me of living in the 1950s when they know nothing about the fifties, (neither do I)

I suppose it is biology - we need to dismiss the older generation as irrelevant in order to carve our own path - but it hurts when it happens to you.

Re the essays - I was talking to my perfectionist daughter who re-writes her essays over and over on her laptop, about writing on paper - cutting with scissors and sticking with sellotape. I would have bits of paper all over the floor and stuck on the wall with BluTac. I would write sections of the essay and lay them all out like a jigsaw on the floor. In the end we had to hand in what we could (often slipping it under the door at 6am hoping it would still count as having made the deadline the day before)

That was easier than it is now. Now there is no excuse for not being perfect. And it is terrible. They have an infinite number of sources (we had the books in the library), they have the tools for perfect editing and perfect presentation. They have the whole world as competition. In my view it is harder than what I did.

Did you care about what your parents did as teenagers? About the bands they saw, the causes they fought for and the clothes they wore?

Oddly enough I did. My dad was very politically active and hugely inspirational. He stood for election several times.

My Mum was a bit wild and as for my grandparents both, as teens, real revolutionaries. But I couldn't identify with it , no - they were just my family

lets face it, those of us in our 50's cant moan that the youth of today sees us a largely irrelevant and they don't see the issues we stood for/marched for etc

I bet we don't see 80 year olds as relevant either and if we actually spent time with an 80 year old we might be amazed at what we would learn

its just life, every generation only sees itself as important