You still have over half of your life expectancy left. You're not "old"... But you're definitely not young either.
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is over 34, Old?
- Thread starter Lunchbox-
- Start date
Seems relative to me. Old and young always seem to depend on who is doing the catagorizing. The only exceptions are the extreme ends of age spectrume since I doubt anyone is going to seriously consider a baby old or someone 90+ young.
No, this is totally new information to me!
(My less sarcastic response is: many, though obviously not all, people who go to grad school right out of college are often moving along a track of minimal resistance and fall into a sort of extended adolescence where they avoid setting long-term goals and priorities. My comment applies to this subpopulation, of which I was (am!?) a member. People who upend their lives to go back to school later in life are usually more clear-eyed and goal-directed about it!)
I'm 38, yes, it's old.
And ESPECIALLY in the context of that Musk thread talking about social media apps, 34 is old. If we're talking about internet zeitgeist, that 18-25 demographic is always the ones people are chasing.
Boomers had a tough time getting old and not being important anymore, echo boomers -- millennials -- need to accept our fate as well.
There's nothing wrong with being old. My life has basically only gotten better from when I turned 24 and on. ~23 was really the last "kinda lousy" year of my life. When you put more and more miles on you sort of stop remembering what year versus the last, like age 16 and 17 and 18 ... to 21 were all important contained years for me with important milestones. And then everything kinda gloms together past 22, fewer set milestones based on year. There's shit that is worse these days, health stuff is annoying, I wish I had more time for leisure activities than I do, I'd fucking love to go to bed at 230am and not stress out about it (knowing I'll be exhausted and beat down waking up at ~630-7 for my 3.5 year old 😄), love to be able to go fishing from 430-8 without worrying about my wife being stressed doing parental duties on her own, but those are all minor inconveniences, all and all it's steadily gotten better for me even into my 30s and now approaching 40.
And ESPECIALLY in the context of that Musk thread talking about social media apps, 34 is old. If we're talking about internet zeitgeist, that 18-25 demographic is always the ones people are chasing.
Boomers had a tough time getting old and not being important anymore, echo boomers -- millennials -- need to accept our fate as well.
There's nothing wrong with being old. My life has basically only gotten better from when I turned 24 and on. ~23 was really the last "kinda lousy" year of my life. When you put more and more miles on you sort of stop remembering what year versus the last, like age 16 and 17 and 18 ... to 21 were all important contained years for me with important milestones. And then everything kinda gloms together past 22, fewer set milestones based on year. There's shit that is worse these days, health stuff is annoying, I wish I had more time for leisure activities than I do, I'd fucking love to go to bed at 230am and not stress out about it (knowing I'll be exhausted and beat down waking up at ~630-7 for my 3.5 year old 😄), love to be able to go fishing from 430-8 without worrying about my wife being stressed doing parental duties on her own, but those are all minor inconveniences, all and all it's steadily gotten better for me even into my 30s and now approaching 40.
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To my grandmother who is 93, early-mid 30s is very young.
To my mother who is in her 60s, early-mid 30s is young.
When I hit 50, early-mid 30s will seem young too.
To teenagers it will seem old, but once they blink and arrive their themselves it will feel very different.
35 isn't old, it is relatively young and these days - lifestyle/privlege dependent of course - you can retain your youth a lot longer than people used to.
People who are around 30-40 who think it is old are maybe the more out of touch people who feel old in their minds?
To my mother who is in her 60s, early-mid 30s is young.
When I hit 50, early-mid 30s will seem young too.
To teenagers it will seem old, but once they blink and arrive their themselves it will feel very different.
35 isn't old, it is relatively young and these days - lifestyle/privlege dependent of course - you can retain your youth a lot longer than people used to.
People who are around 30-40 who think it is old are maybe the more out of touch people who feel old in their minds?
I get it, I really do.
Professionally you're more or less judged by your level of success since you were 23 - regardless if you graduated college at that age or not. Because the assumption is that you graduated on time and knew exactly what you wanted to do at that age. Even outside your profession, people will assume that if you're 40 then you must have 15+ years of experience. It makes finding a job more difficult when you show up and they're puzzled by the lack of experience on your resume versus your apparent age.
Dating over 30 is rough because you're officially too old for some of the people that can legally drink (people that go to bars). God help you if you're over 40. The only exceptions here are if you're wealthy and/or have the good fortune of being a natural 9 or 10 in looks but then you're Leonardo DiCaprio and that's kinda weird. The point is that there's an acceptance of a loss of attractiveness solely due to age that has to be processed. There's a loss of ego to admit that you've aged out of one dating bracket into another dating bracket where everyone naturally has substantially more baggage. So you're not old - but in dating terms you kinda are?
It's also disheartening to read financial advice that says you should have "X" saved by the time you're "Y" age and if you don't you're fucked despite all of the events of the past 20 some odd years.
So there's a lot going on there despite the fact that you're not truly "old".
Kinda, but it depends on where you live/your job. I'm about average, I guess? Could do worse, could've also done much better!
I feel age also skews a bit. Folks live longer (or so they say), so many also do things later in life (kids, house, etc).
I'mma judgie git when I see 30 year olds still clubbing and getting wasted though.
Hey welcome to the club!
Yep, in the late 40s, it's divorced people with kids. And that comes with a lot of preconceived notions of relationships and parenting philosophies, baggage as you said.
But hey, older gym ladies and soccer moms can be very attractive too.
Just want to say, there's no "should" when it comes to things like career. Many people are late bloomers here for many valid reasons. I know someone who worked dead end jobs until their 40s who then studied for a few years and started their own company.
It's never too late if anyone is reading this and feels like it is.
Yeah there's a lot of stuff socially where a lot of traditional life milestones have gradually and gradually moved later and later specifically because of this. People live at home with their parents way later, people marry later, have kids later (or frequently not at all), often return to school to retool their entire lives/careers in their 30s and 40s, getting a home takes orders of magnitude more effort than it did in decades past, etc. Age and how old people feel is a very relative thing as people here have said and in a time when traditionally "youth" coded lifestyles have dragged on much later in life than they ever used to, it feels especially ridiculous to say someone is genuinely, unironically old in their 30s. People's lives have barely gotten started by then these days, unless they live extremely blessed lives.
I'm 38 and I consider it somewhat old. I'd never want to relive my 20s though. I'm comfortable with my place, having a split experience of the 90s pre-internet and what there is now. I don't FEEL old and the gap between my gen and younger people is a lot less intense as compared to my gen vs boomers.
We are all watching anime, catching Pokemon, whoopin each other's asses in multiplayer games etc whereas my parents were like into cowboys and (native Americans) and Howdy doody or whatever else antiquated boomer shit I can't relate to.
We are all watching anime, catching Pokemon, whoopin each other's asses in multiplayer games etc whereas my parents were like into cowboys and (native Americans) and Howdy doody or whatever else antiquated boomer shit I can't relate to.
I remember some 18 year old calling me old when I turned 22 and everyone in their 40s is telling me that as someone in their 30s, I am young.
It's all relative. An 80 year old would probably laugh if I told them I was old.
I'm 41 and I feel like my life just started. I never want to be 24 or 25 again. Our financials are in a great place. My health is good and I finally have a good handle on what I want to do with the rest of my life. Nah, 34 is young as well as 55.
Tell me, how does a 34 year old supposed to act and carry themselves? Are you supposed to buy a rocking chair with a knitted blanket? You stop playing video games in favor of prunes collecting.
Tell me, how does a 34 year old supposed to act and carry themselves? Are you supposed to buy a rocking chair with a knitted blanket? You stop playing video games in favor of prunes collecting.
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I'm 35. My nights out when i was in my late teens to mid-late 20's was the pub. Was never a club person, hated the bass and clud-esq music. Still prefer a quiet pub these days, but if there's jukebox music or a live band, i'm more than happy with that.
Being 35, i feel like i can do more stuff, but now and again my body goes "lol, nope". Have started getting aches as you do around this age.
Being 35, i feel like i can do more stuff, but now and again my body goes "lol, nope". Have started getting aches as you do around this age.
i resent this. i am a millennial and my parents are gen x, not boomers. not that it matters, since generational identities are meaningless.
Like, it's all relative. If I was in a thread with zoomers and insisting 35+ wasn't old, it'd feel a little creepy. If I was in the office and insisting it WAS old, then actual older people would be like wtf is this guy on about?
I'm 39 and this is the first year that I've felt like body is wearing down and I'm worried about injuring it because I don't know how long it would take to heal. I had hurt my shoulder and it took like 6 months to heal. Now my wrist is sore (when I try to open a jar or lift something heavy with just that hand) and it's been like that for 2 months.
now this is a real take.
as a 34 year old who is (1) finishing her college degree, (2) in the best physical shape of her life, and (3) actively reconnecting with friends and other social outings: being "old" is a mindset often brought upon a person by their circumstances. kids, home ownership, letting your health slip, caring too much about money, etc. at this point, old is a synonym for "boomer" in the sense that it is a mindset more than it is a descriptor of Literal Age.
To a younger person, yes, to anyone older, no. Age is relative. I still feel like a kid in a lot of ways and just starting my life in many ways. When I'm 35 compared to someone who is in their teens or early to mid 20s that's like double or 1.5 times their life so far. Even more as a lot of people don't really develop and mature into their identity until they are in the mid to late teens, so the amount of time they've been fully active and in control of their life is in relation to me is miniscule. Plus there's the whole aspect of how we experience time changes. When we're younger a year feels like forever, but as you grow older a year goes by likes it's nothing. So to someone younger they hear ~30 years and that seems like eons to them, but to sometime in that age range or older that's a pretty small time scale.
It is funny that 34 was picked because that is exactly how old I am. 34 is not old even though my body sometimes tells me it is. Old is at least your late 60's to 70's.
No, it's not old. Based on your job, however, it may be viewed as "old". Or even too young.
For example, a 34 year old professional athlete is viewed as pretty old by most people and is usually on the verge of retirement.
But a 40 year old doctor is generally considered to be incredibly young. My grandma needed to have surgery a few years ago and the surgeon was 41 years old - so she delayed the surgery so she could have it done by a 64 year old surgeon because she felt the 41 year old surgeon was just way too young.
For example, a 34 year old professional athlete is viewed as pretty old by most people and is usually on the verge of retirement.
But a 40 year old doctor is generally considered to be incredibly young. My grandma needed to have surgery a few years ago and the surgeon was 41 years old - so she delayed the surgery so she could have it done by a 64 year old surgeon because she felt the 41 year old surgeon was just way too young.
It's the beginning of the end. About 35 is when you really notice some deterioration in your physical functions no matter how fit you are (ask any pro athlete). It's also when you have to start making some cosmetic alterations - whether it's clothing, hair, etc. - if you want to give the impression that you're still young.
I'm 42, and I at least feel old much of the time. The usual wear and tear associated with aging is more pronounced with my because of my muscular dystrophy. I'm constantly hurting and tired and have difficulty moving. I'm having increasing difficulty with stairs and can barely do yard work anymore. Basically, I'm 42, look like I'm 32, but feel like I'm 62.
Also, popular culture changes at such a breakneck pace that I have no idea what most of the stuff kids & 20-somethings enjoy even is. Every time I hear about some supposedly famous musician, my first response is usually "Who?" I stopped paying close attention to Top 40 music over 20 years ago and don't like most of the popular mainstream stuff that's come out since the turn of the century, so I was already that curmudgeonly old "Today's popular music sucks" guy in my early 20s.
Also, popular culture changes at such a breakneck pace that I have no idea what most of the stuff kids & 20-somethings enjoy even is. Every time I hear about some supposedly famous musician, my first response is usually "Who?" I stopped paying close attention to Top 40 music over 20 years ago and don't like most of the popular mainstream stuff that's come out since the turn of the century, so I was already that curmudgeonly old "Today's popular music sucks" guy in my early 20s.
True. I'm 33 but look 18 so I don't need to act young lol. People just assume it.
I'm over 34, had to google "Nike Monarchs", have a thing for AJ1s and Air Max 90s, and would love to be able to afford a Corvette. It's old to internet kids but anything over 25 is to them. In real life, it's considered young to actual old people.
Either way, I embrace it. I look younger than my age and am in better shape than some people in their 20s.
Either way, I embrace it. I look younger than my age and am in better shape than some people in their 20s.
