Do you feel old?

[Coriolanus]

I imagine most of us aren't spring chickens, but have you had the feeling that you are old yet? Has the spring left your step? Do you groan as you stand and straighten up? Do you see the end of your days closer than your birth?

When did that feeling start for you?

 

[Scotttheking]

Oh yes

 

[MichaelC]

my knees have seen better days. I was fine but about a year ago... year and half maybe? I fell in a hole I did not see one day and ever since one of my knees has been finicky. x-rays haven't turned up anything and doctors just gave me some bs about a bruised bone that will heal eventually. still waiting for that day.

and my back ain't what it used to be.

i am on my feet all day at work, so some days I feel it more than others.

 

[garrobon]

I don't feel old, but the way some parts of my body occasionally feel definitely has me going what the hell did I do to you.

 

[snotnose]

It's weird being the same age as old people.

 

[Karnak]

No, not really. Needing to get glasses 3 years ago after having gone 49 years without them is annoying though,

 

[ProphetM]

My God yes. I have worn myself out. Driving for work for 6 years did a number on my back. And I need reading glasses now for stuff closer than a foot away.

 

[dust]

I turned forty last year.

Mentally I feel like I hit twenty-six and stayed there. Physically I feel I'm thirty-five. My vision actually got better when I stopped wearing my contacts and got a job that had an unobstructed view out to 500 yards. I'm pretty dang strong, and thanks to almost two decades of mechanic work I have an extremely strong upper back. I can do dumb bell rows with 100 pounders in each hand for reps.

My only real issues are my glutes and hamstrings have tightened up to the point where it's hard to put on socks without stretching beforehand, my digestion has gotten a bit worse, I'm thirty pounds overweight, and I have some face wrinkles and gray hairs. Currently working on all of that.

Testosterone therapy, peptides, a healthy amount of direct sunlight, an active job, and above all believing I'm young have kept me feeling young. I intend on being a hot ninety year old bagging twenty year olds off the California beaches.

 

[dust]

my knees have seen better days. I was fine but about a year ago... year and half maybe? I fell in a hole I did not see one day and ever since one of my knees has been finicky. x-rays haven't turned up anything and doctors just gave me some bs about a bruised bone that will heal eventually. still waiting for that day.

and my back ain't what it used to be.

i am on my feet all day at work, so some days I feel it more than others.

You may want to look into TB-500 and BPC-157 injectable peptides. Or even the oral liquid BPC-157. I almost completely healed a two-year long shoulder and elbow injury with the liquid stuff and moderate weight training.

 

[vassago]

No, I feel young (mentally). One of my knees was really bad/painful and had problems years ago. I started stretching regularly and doing karate and now it feels fine (I got my black belt in karate at 40).

Though, I'm feeling a bit mid life crisis-y now. My kids are getting older and a lot of my dreams are pretty fully dead so there may be some depression and loss of a sense of self building up... but that's what my fast car and all this music equipment I've been buying is for.

 

[dust]

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r0Rm8K00g7M


Lyrics

Spoiler

Come on babe you got to let it all out,
just for once you have to free your mind
See how you can make another new beginning,
just don't count the many times you've tried

Release the tension from your heart,
start the inner revolution
Make all your nagging worries dissolve
in bright white light

I know you think the end of youth will be the end of everything
Tides of time will always bear the greatest mystery (for you)
And still I'm here, yet still I wanna hear you sing
Shine a light to them all, don't need to turn your back at me

Take this leap of faith is all you need to do

 

[Tijger]

I turned 60 last year, an age that I thought, when I was young, signified "old"...I dont feel any different then at 50. Or 40.

Ok, physically things move a little less fluidly but other than that, mentally, I most definitely dont feel old, the only time that I have this "OMG I'm old" feeling is when I say something like "Well, that didnt used to be like that" and then it transpires that was nearly 50 years ago the case

 

[Demento]

I feel it, but I'm in decent enough shape for 50 and frequently get taken for younger. Having hair and not-grey hair on top of it helps.

The aches and pains, on the other hand, and having to hold things at a distance to read them... sigh. But I was born middle-aged, so plus ça change.

 

[Jeff J]

My church had children making Valentine gift baskets for widows and shut-ins this week. I felt old in the room full of four-year-olds, but young when I took baskets to a nursing home.

 

[heySkippy]

Not especially.

 

[crombie]

Not until the last year. I fell off the weight loss and drinking wagon hard in Feb 2024. Then in the spring I did something to my knee. I had been holding out around 320ish lbs, and once I hit the 350s in July I stopped weighing myself.

Then almost seven years to the day when I started last time I began working to lose weight. Except this time it hasn't been nearly as fast, and everything I do is hard. Usually with strength I rebound pretty quick, but this time I just hit the 135lb range (two plates and a bar).

Even just two years ago that used to be my warm-up. Now it is my 2nd to last set. I do worry that this time I won't progress past a certain point, and the roll of the dice will take me out before I ever see my goals met.

 

[JasterMereel]

Sometimes, I wonder if I am in good shape for my age. Then, I go to physical activity with people similar to my age. It then confirms that I am in good shape for my age.

I don't feel old yet, but I can tell I am getting older. I also put in a decent amount of effort to take care of myself. I am in my mid 40s and I can do a standing pike stretch with my palms on the floor for context.

 

[Diabolical]

Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, no.

It really depends on the context.

Sometimes both at once. When someone recently told me that I looked like David Bowie.


Completely different aside:
Also, why isn't basically just :yagisama: at this point? I mean, it's basically the @Yagisama default smiley, right?

 

[Vince-RA]

Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, no.

It really depends on the context.

Sometimes both at once.

++

Things that make me feel most old: hurting myself while sleeping, having to hold stuff far away from my face to focus on it.

 

[waqar]

Only when I'm touching you.

 

[wallinbl]

I used to, but much less so in the last few years. I'm much stronger now, though less cardio.

 

[Shavano]

I imagine most of us aren't spring chickens, but have you had the feeling that you are old yet? Has the spring left your step? Do you groan as you stand and straighten up? Do you see the end of your days closer than your birth?

When did that feeling start for you?

Not only that, but some days I wish I was already dead. Occuring with increasing regularity in this news cycle.

 

[rtrefz]

It depends on the day and what I'm doing. If it's a physical day, or if I didn't get a lot of sleep then yes, I feel old. There's also been a lot of life events (a major health scare for my wife, her parents declining) that makes me feel old as well.

I know I look my age. I started greying when I was 15, and I started shaving my head in my early 30's, due to baldness. My wife gets mistaken for being in her 40s although she's 56.

 

[yd]

No

But the ankle fracture a year ago has me a smidge stiffer and grumpy about an ankle in cold temps

 

[MacBrave]

I turn 58 in a couple of weeks, and lately have had some back/sciatica issues that have seemingly popped up out of the blue, so year right now I feel old.

 

[FinallyAnAccount]

I don't feel old, largely because being single with no kids, nothing really changes around me. And then I see my friends' babies graduating high school.
"What grade are you in now?"
"... university?"

Things that make me feel old:
I no longer get carded at the liquor store, and that happened until I was about 40.
The discussion in the lunch room the other day was "how old do you think he is? can you believe that?" Thanks folks lol.

 

[HydraShok]

No, not really. Usually only when we have company events and the like where all the folks that are 20+ years younger than me show up en masse that I really realize I'm not the young one in the group anymore, but I don't feel old, per se. Just older than them. You know?

 

[CrackFraggle]

Generally, it's less that I "feel old" and more that I realize I am no longer young. I'm slower, I squint more, multi-tasking is less optimal, my sleep cycle has shifted, etc. Brain and body just keep reminding me I'm no longer 20, nor even 40. Psychologically, I am completely ready to retire and put a rocking chair out on the porch, but not due to feeling old.

 

[meisanerd]

Depends on context. I don't generally feel all that old, except for the back issues due to way too much computer work. But every so often, like when I am helping a younger friend figure something out on computers, and they say something like "wow, you are so smart, how did you learn all this stuff?", and I look back, and realize that I have been doing computer programming for longer than they have been alive...

 

[jbode]

In a couple of weeks I'll have made three score trips around the Sun, and I'm feeling every inch of it at the moment. Starting to have the stereotypical "old man" problems, but with the emotional maturity of a 12-year-old.

 

[ProphetM]

I feel it, but I'm in decent enough shape for 50 and frequently get taken for younger. Having hair and not-grey hair on top of it helps.

I started getting grey hair in my 30s. Now at 50 it's mostly grey. My parents were both like that. My mom could drop 10 years to look at, just by coloring her hair.

 

[Yagisama]

Sometimes, yes.
Sometimes, no.

It really depends on the context.

Sometimes both at once. When someone recently told me that I looked like David Bowie.


Completely different aside:
Also, why isn't basically just :yagisama: at this point? I mean, it's basically the @Yagisama default smiley, right?

I DO get lots of mileage from that smiley, and not just here.

 

[r0twhylr]

Hitting my 50s more than a couple years ago made me feel it. I can't do physical yard work at the same level I did 10 or 20 years ago. Sleep sucks. My shoulders and knees hurt.

Growing my beard out really showed how much gray was in there. It made me look a lot older in the mirror. OTOH, I like the beard, and my granddaughter likes the beard.

Which is the other thing ... when you can finally say "my grandkids", you know you have arrived.

Mentally? Mostly still a kid.

 

[un]

It was the day I was holding something away from my face to read it, and my wife kindly pointed out I had a pair of reading glasses in every room of my house, and was walking around with glasses on my head that I could have used.

That was when I remembered my Grandma complaining about things being printed in tiny letters nowadays.

 

[caffeinated]

After putting in a ton of hard work several years ago, I weigh about the same as I did when I was a freshman in high school (~155lbs.). I'm also arguably in the best physical condition of my life. And, like several others here, I don't feel old at all, mentally.

But, my eyesight says I'm old as shit, and early-morning arthritis in my hands corroborate that story.

So, old-ish?

 

[spacekobra]

I grumbled at a song that came on one of my playlists because of the lyrics containing the word skibidi.

I feel justified but I also sounded exactly like my dad who always said "I'm too old for this junk please change it"

 

[sword_9mm]

Mentally every single day I wake up and have to go to work.

Physically not too bad. I can feel the age but it's not too crazy yet.

 

[Auguste_Fivaz]

Fuck yea - I'm at the stage (73) where people of my age and era are dying, the big C is a common diagnosis and getting the flu could be a death sentence. We're waiting for a pal who's 75 to get back from a diagnosis between flu, RSA, pneumonia (and which kind) or covid. I can only shake my head and hope he doesn't go down. And he probably got it at the gym FFS, poor bastard.

So, you clip along a few days in a row doing great, a few not so good, then the shit piles up and the emotional baggage of near death experiences compares to our political outlook. Fuck, I feel old.

Thanks for asking -

 

[cmannes]

When I look in a mirror, sometimes. At work, I often still think the "senior" people are going to dislike my ideas. Except... I'm a senior person, so...

Also, I'm still waiting on that "How to be Grown Up" handbook. I swear it should show up any day now...

 

[電気人]

After reading the other posts, I feel like I don't have room to comment at 27. But, over the past year or so I've definitely been having my first real brush with the notion that I'm not in the springtime of my youth anymore. 30 is hurtling towards me faster than I can scream and cry in the opposite direction, which is weird because I just turned 20 last week, or so I thought.
That Simpsons "I Used To Be With It" gag doesn't feel as much like a gag either. Hell, I made this account when I was a junior in high school, and now I see "10y" next to the username and I'm wondering where the hell the time's gone.

One thing I notice now is how my perception of people much older than me has changed. It sounds a bit churlish but when I was younger, the fact that other people lived on a continuum of ages never really clicked. If I met someone who was in their 60s, it would never subconsciously click that that person also lived through their 50s, 40s, 30s, 20s, 10s, etc, just as I'm doing right now. They had evidently just forever been in their 60s.

Now I force myself to try and see people at different points in their lives, and how those periods in their life contributed to who they are as I know them. I mean, hell, I don't feel much different than when I was 20. Now it strikes me that that must be how people in their 30s, 40s, (...) must feel too. Mentally we're no different, though physically we may be; and that's likely how it'll feel to me in the future.

Thankfully I feel as if I'm more aware of my position in the universe than others my age, and I'm trying to prepare myself to age gracefully. I know I'm still quite young and still able to do broad course corrections before I'm sidelined into any one path. I'm trying to take advantage of it to the best of my ability.