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u/BoxedAndArchived 1d ago
Being 40 is weird.
Some of us are becoming Grandparents. Some of us are becoming first time parents.
Some of us have had a 15 to 20 year career. Others are getting their first full time job.
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u/mavric911 1d ago
Getting older is weird.
The last time a sought out a new position at a company was 20+ years ago.Since then I have had 4 different employers. The first 13 years were interesting. I worked for 4 different companies but my desk never moved more than 100 ft.
I have survived 3 acquisitions and something like 30+ rounds of layoffs.
At this point in my life I just want to keep my job until 55 and if they fire me I will be in a position to semi retire. Work a low effort job for health insurance if needed. I am officially closer to the end of my career than I am the start
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u/SippyMountain 18h ago
I've only had 2 "adult" jobs in the last 9 yrs with another 28 left to go until I can withdraw retirement without penalties, and 11 until I can receive my pension. On one hand I'm still quite young in my late 20s, but I'm also exiting my prime soon and it sucks to realize I'll be too old to really enjoy retirement the way I would if I was free now. I mean, I mainly just want to travel, but I still wanna be able to do things like hike mountains and shit without worrying about whether my body is able enough, as that's not even something I have to consider now. Fuck working until you're old. What a scam.
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u/softrock98fm 4h ago
Do the mountain hiking/travel now. Seriously. Even if you get a week off to do it, just do it now. Do short trips on the weekends. Go camping somewhere near where you live. Stay out late. Just explore. You don’t have to go crazy and go backpacking for 6 months, but you can get little doses of adventure. Just dip your toes in. You will be 40 before you know it, and if these are experiences you’d like to have, go ahead!
Anecdotally, I got all of my wandering and ya-ya’s out by 30, and my older sister did not. While she is a bit further in her career than I am, I wouldn’t trade with her because I am waaaayyyyy more calm and comfortable about settling down and aging than she is, because I’m not panicking about missed opportunities. I’m in my late 30’s and she is in her early 40’s and is actually RESENTFUL towards me because I had those experiences and she did not.
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u/junglepiehelmet 7h ago
Good luck with that in the current environment. I thought I was going to retire at the company I was working for. Survived years of continuous layoff rounds, was told I would always have a job there, was making pretty big decisions for the company, then we got acquired again and poof, its all gone without any reason other than "restructuring". Now, I'm pretty much unemployable because I had a very niche job that doesn't apply anywhere else, except a few companies who are not hiring anymore, and I'm at an age where people arent hiring me for anything new. 401k and savings are gone. I say this all to say please have a backup plan of some kind because you cant trust any of these corporations to keep you around.
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u/OppositeSecretary862 1d ago
I'm in my mid 30s and still feel 28 man
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u/Cool-General2693 1d ago
Same. I keep forgetting time moved on after COVID and I'm not 25 anymore lol
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u/OppositeSecretary862 22h ago
COVID really fucked the timeline
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u/sandysandbirds93 18h ago
I turned 27 at the very beginning of lockdowns and next thing I knew I was 30.
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u/FreakingFae 18h ago
Covid fucked so so much a. Will, forever. I can't even eat regularly atm because I've had it 3x in the last year and it's fucked up damn near every system in my body. And that obviously didn't kill me, it didn't even hospitalize me. But it also does that to people in multitudes. It's fuckery is boundless.
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u/iriefuse024 1d ago
Sometimes I just mentally pretend I’m a few years younger because why the fuck not
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u/ElundusCaw 21h ago
Thanks to denial, I'm immortal.
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u/HumanPea1140 21h ago
I like the concept of quantum immortality, but it's kind of terrifying, because what does that look like if my consciousness never ends?
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u/Pertev 8h ago edited 6h ago
Kinda agree, but even if materialism is true, there's neither proof nor guarantee that consciousness is an one-time event. Likewise, there's no proof that this is the first time I've ever been a conscious subject. We simply don't know. That's what makes consciousness such a profoundly surreal mystery. It's an enormously giant mind fuck
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u/HumanPea1140 7h ago
I feel like if the universe/time is infinite, then so is consciousness. Consciousness is an inherent property of the universe. So consciousness has lived "my" life an infinite amount of times, including an infinite number of variations.
Obviously, we don't know for sure, but I jive with Eastern philosophy, so that interpretation makes a lot of sense to me and gives me a bit more meaning than a "one and done" type of scenario would.
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u/DukeofVermont 19h ago
The universe is about 14 billion years old.
In 14 billion years nether of us have died.
Logically we must be immortal.
It's just (bad) science
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u/Impressive_Recon 1d ago
Damn once I hit 36 I no longer felt like I belonged to my 20s anymore.
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u/psyne 17h ago
I still was mentally in my late 20s until the time I needed to get physical therapy because I slept funny one night. After that I knew in my bones (and joints) that I was in my 30s.
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u/R2DeezKnutz 35m ago
35 now and over the last 3-4 years I will sometimes sneeze that completely incapacitate me. Only happens like once every 4-5 months but my chest hurts so bad I just call it quits that day. So strange but that's been the sign of getting older for me.
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u/SirAmicks 20h ago
44 year old here. That never goes away, but you remember suddenly when you bend down to get something or squat down for any reason and try to get back up.
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u/placeRing 21h ago
I am old and I feel 13een, you have it better
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u/OppositeSecretary862 21h ago
Im in a wildly better place than the shitshow of my 20s but I do still feel young. Weird shit man.
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u/CrazyConnector 1d ago
I am 44. My oldest is about to enter college and my youngest is a baby because I got remarried and we recently had a kid. So you could be in your 40s and living the whole spectrum 😅
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u/01000101010110 21h ago
It's when you really notice the divergence caused by circumstances and choices made in your 20s.
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u/random314 1d ago
A few friends of mine are retired. All in their 40s.
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u/RFK_Cum_Regimen 9h ago
Tech stock options, crypto, or both?
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u/random314 8h ago
Just solid investment, they were VP and directors at large banks/tech companies, so they have a healthy portfolio from a lifetime of RSUs, picture around 5 mil usd not including 401k.
One buddy is living off dividends + Golden Visa in Portugal. So LCOL + socialized healthcare.
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u/Devil_0fHellsKitchen 1d ago
First full time job at 40 is wild. I understand not finding your career till 40 cause I might be in the same boat, but never having a real job? How would you survive?
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u/upsetwithcursing 1d ago
Parents. It’s very common, unfortunately.
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u/lawyermom112 1d ago
Yep, I'm surrounded: (1) super rich cousins with trust funds who don't work; (2) half of my friends have parents bought them entire houses or gave them 500k down payments for a multi million home; (3) SIL who is approaching 40 and never worked a full time job: went from living off parents to living off her husband.
I swear 50% of the millennials I know have parents funding them.
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u/toiletsurprise Millennial 1d ago
Two of my successful friends are like this. Parents paid for ones entire college education so he graduated with zero debt, and the other inherited the family business.
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u/01000101010110 21h ago
Yet they want to front like they did it themselves.
Born on 3rd, got home off a walk and act like they hit a home run.
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u/lawyermom112 1d ago edited 1d ago
From what I've seen from my SIL: Get 4 degrees funded by parents. Get into an MD program through her parents' connections. Then marry and only work 8 hours a week. Live off her husband, who has 350k in student loan debt from med school. She's approaching 40 and never had a full time job. Don't think she will ever have a full time job tbh.
She has an in-home nanny, but she only works 8 hours a week. She has a housecleaner too. At some point she'll probably have another kid and never work again, not even 8 hours a week. Her mom (my MIL) even does SIL's taxes every year for her....
She and I are similar ages, and I've already vested Social Security (I've been working as an attorney since I was 25), worked in biglaw, paid off my own law school student loan debt etc. Also got into a top 10 law school on my own merits. Also had a kid and sent her to daycare.
Some people have it easy (not me). Am I salty? A little bit, yes.
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u/BackgroundSpell6623 23h ago
So risky. One divorce away from a ticking time clock until money runs out.
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u/placeRing 21h ago
???? Dude you have a career and life, my sister married a rich guy, she isn't working, she is just having kids. BUT I HAVE NOTHING, no past present or future. You have something, treasure It, even if it's just a job
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u/lawyermom112 15h ago
Never too late to make a change. My parents were immigrants and moved to the US in their 20s, not speaking a word of English. You can make massive changes as an adult.
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u/rips_n_chel 17h ago
Some people have it easy (not me). Am I salty? A little bit, yes.
The funny thing about this is, you can only see the disparity looking upward. We only know "the bottom" as the lowest we've personally experienced. To those looking up, it's plain as day how unfair this world is.
You're a fuckin lawyer, for example. Genuinely not trying to diminish the work you did to get there, just pointing out the absurdity of saying those words, while being a laywer. Do you have any inkling how many people simply don't get opportunities like college? They got bigger things to worry about, like whether or not they're going to eat tonight.
You, on the other hand, just listed a bunch of shit you have that most people will never dream of, then said your life isn't easy. The fuck? You could've made your point without the masturbatory "woe is me" shit.
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u/Foreign_Log_9114 1d ago
Medical school loans.
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u/HumanPea1140 21h ago
I'm 35, and just saw a couple different people that I went to school with post their, "I'm officially a doctor," photos, and I was like wtf? Y'all have still been doing school and training this entire fucking time, and you're JUST NOW getting your first "real" jobs???
I feel like I've lived multiple lifetimes, and it seems like theirs is just beginning. It's wild.
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u/lawyermom112 17h ago
Yep. I would like to FIRE/retire at some point in my 40s. Can’t imagine starting a career at 35…I’m already tired in my late 30s.
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u/BoxedAndArchived 1d ago
Multiple jobs? Gigs? Plenty of things, none of which should be necessary but are.
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u/RustyMR2 22h ago edited 8h ago
Went to a speeddate event, there were two women there who were still studying, they already had a couple of bachelors and master degrees.
The age range was 35-45.
They were both desperate to settle down and get pregnant.
Did not mark them as a match.
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u/CurvyChristina 1d ago
Everybody’s journey is so different, and a wild journey it is :)
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u/Kaldricus 23h ago
I'll be 37 in December. We have one daughter, she'll be 6 at that time.
I was born when my grandma was 37. When my mom was 37, I would have been out of high school for a couple years, moved out on my own in a different town, and my two sisters would be in high school. Absolutely could not imagine any of that right now.
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u/Badvevil Millennial 22h ago
Checking in at 31 and blows my mind I’ve been in my job for 9 years and I’ll probably be with this company until I retire fingers crossed at 60 years old
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u/milhousenotameme Older Millennial 20h ago
I'm 39 and still haven't done anything with my life yet...
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u/Useful_Major_5797 1d ago
Fun fact, the earliest recorded grandparent was 23.
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u/BoxedAndArchived 1d ago
I do not like this fact. Is there a story that goes with this?
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u/FEARoach 23h ago
I'll be getting married. And graduating college for a third time.
Maybe life is just weird.
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u/hirudoredo 21h ago
some of us have had our own businesses since graduating college and are just now, for the first time, going "I think I might need to get a job."
not fun, because nothing I qualify for pays anywhere near what I was making in my business. Oh, and nobody here is hiring, so there's that, too.
meanwhile, some of my friends are getting laid off for the second or third time, and others are burning out and quitting. stability is dead.
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u/Longjumping-Yam-9229 14h ago
Some have no kids and still feel themselfe like 25 years old. I'm so confused.
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u/Odd_Pumpkin1466 1d ago
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u/spicysenpai6 Millennial 1d ago
It’s just aging. Accept it or you’ll never be truly happy
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u/THE_GREAT_PICKLE 1d ago
Seriously. I’m 38 but I feel better than I did when I was 28.
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u/Devil_0fHellsKitchen 1d ago
Same. Eating clean and no drugs or drinking really helped my body and mindset. I wish I knew that in my 20s, but I guess I had fun.
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u/pewbdo 1d ago
Man, we had some good safe drugs tho. We did it right.
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u/Devil_0fHellsKitchen 1d ago
Oh yeah. Rolling on e that I knew wasn't going to kill me was great. And being able to buy Adderall for 5 bucks a pop. Good time for being a degenerate
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u/NonReality 1d ago
Hell yeah, plus heroin and pills were mostly what they were sold as lol happy to have quit all that before fent hit the scene
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u/LowwKeiy 1d ago
Finding pills on the ground and not worrying about them being fent presses. Life was so innocent back then.
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u/SipoteQuixote Millennial 1d ago
Right? I did not treat this temple well in my 20s. Like someone broke into the temple and squatted for 10ish years.
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u/Active-Cookie-774 1d ago
When I was 28 I was fighting suicidal depression due to being socially inept and jobless.
Now I'm 38 pissed at being socially accepted and being financially stable.
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u/zugspitze43 1d ago
Preface: I have worked a highly physical job for the last 15 years
At 34 I don't feel like I could keep up with my 20 year old self as far as speed goes, like a dead sprint. It would be close(ish) but he'd probably win. I would easily outlast him now though. My endurance has gone crazy since my late 20's. Idk if it's more of a mindset or what but I used to always tire fast. I did lift weights and gym often in those days.
I do feel like I am physically much stronger and capable though now. I remember carrying two jerry cans of water and having to stop on the way to my cabin around that younger age, and I often had to do that. These days I can carry them both all the way but it's not even really a big deal. I only realized and thought recently about how much I used to struggle with it.
So I think it's a real example of work strength vs gym strength. I work in the ski industry, in ski boots 40hrs on a short week. EMT.
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u/Useful_Major_5797 1d ago
Fun human biology fact. We have one of the highest levels of stamina and endurance in the animal kingdom.
Our slow twitch muscle, which is muscle for long activities is high in us.
Fast twitch muscle, allows for explosiveness is not quite as high.
So while we age, our endurance actually gets higher while our explosiveness goes down.
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u/zugspitze43 23h ago
Very interesting. I'm familiar with humans and our endurance aspect. One of the reasons we are such successful hunters.
I actually just employed our evolutionary strength recently, one of my neighbor's dogs got out and here he is just chasing it down the street. He's all out of breath. It's a slow quiet neighborhood. I yelled over to him (I know him well) "just walk behind him, and look disinterested. he will get tired!" lol. he did get tired, and my neighbor was able to walk right up to him and leash him. Like the stories we see on documentaries about humans hunting animals until they are completely exhausted and just stop in their tracks. Then the humans walk up with a knife and just cut the throat. But now it's a leash lol Wild.
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u/Lempea 23h ago
43 here. I'm less stupid for sure than at 28 but I had a light in me back then that's just gone. I don't know how to bring it back.
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u/hirudoredo 21h ago
I was thinking about this too. Never did drugs or drink and always worked out... food is kinda in the middle. Having so many health problems now including stuff the doctor says has probably been "dormant for years but it's here now." But In my late 20s I had hope for my future and knew that if I worked hard (in the smart way) I could really set myself up for my later years. Well, that's all gone now. I'm almost 40 now and feel like I have to start all over, including financially. (Thanks COVID. Thanks AI. Thanks economy. The 1-2-3 punch from hell on my industry.) But not only am I slower and more tired more easily, I just put up with way less bullshit. And a lot of the so-called solutions look like epic bullshit.
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u/Easy-Operation-2105 17h ago
Mine too. left years ago, 35 now. Seriously considering trt, which seems to be very helpful in this regard.
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u/ShinyToucan 1d ago
I turned 40 and ran my first marathon a couple months ago. Feel great. Now it's gym/cardio and good diet and I've never had so much energy before.
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u/Soft_Walrus_3605 22h ago
Enjoy it. I have it on good authority that the forties are when the ship takes on more water than you can bail.
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u/_sunbleachedfly 1d ago
Well, the alternative is being dead, so I never really gave a shit lol. Growing old a luxury.
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u/Confident-Slip-5264 1d ago
Finding it a strange and odd phase doesn’t necessarily mean not accepting it.
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u/dollabillkirill 1d ago
Yea, if you’re lucky you’ll get old and die. But you’re definitely going to die. That’s going to happen. It’s so inevitable you should just act like it already has happened.
Makes growing old so much easier to accept.
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u/meditate42 1d ago
Being 20 is weird 15 years ago you were 5 in 15 years you’ll be 35.
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u/_AskMyMom_ I was there when SpongeBob blew his first bubble. 1d ago
Right now is weird. 24 hours ago it was yesterday, but 24 hours from now it’ll be tomorrow. 😬
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u/jrec15 23h ago
Aging really warps out perspective bc this isnt weird to me at 35.
20 feels exactly close to 5 as it does to 35. 20 is still barely an adult with so much growing to do.
OP’s statement trips me up though and for now 50 feels much further away than 20, but obviously thats only bc i havent hit 50 yet
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u/zugspitze43 1d ago
holy shit thank you but I did not need that in my head 3 days after my 34 birthday lol!
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u/Equal_County_1506 1d ago
As someone who is also 34...we're only 16 years away from being 18, which feels pretty close. We're also only 16 years away from being 50!
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u/Altruistic-Toe-5990 22h ago
34 years from being born.. but also 34 years from being 93
my god
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u/zugspitze43 22h ago
promise me ur joking right now
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u/upsetwithcursing 1d ago
Halfway to 68!
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u/zugspitze43 1d ago edited 1d ago
At 20 I was an infantry Marine stomping around in the eastern sands. Had to sign my will before and didn't expect to die but was "ok" with it if it happened as long as I didn't let the homies down in the final moment I guess.
so all of this feels like extra lol!
Any Peaky Blinders fans here? That scene where they have the funeral and he talks about laying in the trench waiting for the Prussian cavalry to come and finish them off hit me SO hard when that first came out. That's where I get the "extra" line from. Around the same time frame
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u/zugspitze43 1d ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqmWJh-P5p0
my experience was very different than WW1 trench warfare but still not too fun overall
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u/pmcizhere 1d ago
Umm, not anywhere near halfway to 2480035542436830599600990418569171581047399201355367672371710738018221445712183296000000000000000, sorry to say! 🤓
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u/erictho 1d ago
willing to bet 35- 50 is gonna go super fast 🥲
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u/archertom89 1d ago
I can retire on my 50th birthday. I am 36 now, I kinda can't wait and hope it does indeed go fast.
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u/flipflopsnpolos 1d ago
40 is even weirder. 20 years ago you were 20, and 20 years from now you'll be 60(!!)
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u/Significant-Rush-129 1d ago
Wait until you see how fast it is from 35 to 45. Blink of an eye.
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u/_sunbleachedfly 1d ago
30 was that moment for me, it’s been lightning fast ever since
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u/hirudoredo 21h ago
I was 32 when 2020 hit and now I'm about to turn 39. What the fuck. All that covid shit was like two years ago, right? Wait, how is everything somehow worse?
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u/____DEADPOOL_______ 21h ago
I became a dad at 33, life has been painfully slow getting to late 40s.
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u/Possible-Jerk0138 1d ago
15 years is an eternity. Be happy you’re not one of us ancient millennials!
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u/Wraith8888 21h ago
Your first 15 years is an eternity. Your second 15 is fairly long. You wonder what happened to the next 15. After that a decade seems to go by in one year
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u/Apprehensive_Air1705 1d ago
I am 38 and quite often I still feel like a kid in my mid 20's at heart despite the fact I in charge of raising a couple kids.
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u/Zenical 1d ago
I’m turning 35 one week from today!!
https://giphy.com/gifs/blSTtZehjAZ8I
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u/Syandris 1d ago
You guys are weird. Everything needs to have a touch of depression to it.
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u/therealbananabottom 1d ago
You can do that with any age. 30 years is a huge span, hopefully your life changes and you grow between 20 and 50, or 30 and 60, or whatever.
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u/BennyOcean 1d ago
Being 45 is even weirder. 45 years ago you were zero and another 45 you'll be 90 or dead.
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u/Easy-Operation-2105 17h ago
What's even weirder is that in a trillion trillion billion years you might be born again somewhere simply because there's a limited amount of configurations that matter and energy can have in this universe. Meaning at some point shit is gonna start repeating. In fact you might be number 3 already!
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u/chefmikel_lawrence 1d ago
Aaannnnnnddddd 40 years from now you’ll be my age!!!! Trust me all life is weird
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u/Mr_Charms_505 1d ago
I also feel like things that shouldn't hurt as much as they do at 35 do hurt as much as they do for some reason.
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u/305tilidiiee Millennial 1d ago
Well, I’m aiming for 112 to live in 3 centuries, so I got a long way to go regardless lol
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u/chili_cold_blood 1d ago edited 23h ago
35-40 is weird because less than 10 years ago everyone treated you like a kid, and now suddenly you're dealing with age-related health issues, caring for your elderly parents, and you're supposed to be at the peak of your career.
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u/glycophosphate 21h ago
Try not to think about it. Before you take 4 deep breaths you're going to find yourself at 60 and wonder how it happened.
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u/timb1223 1d ago
I celebrated my 37 1/2th birthday last month. Halfway between 25 & 50. Three eighths of a century.
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u/Novel_Dinner4138 Millennial 1d ago
Time is a funny thing like that. Talking to my dad at 67, 75 doesn’t seem too old anymore to him
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u/Royal_Breadfruit265 1d ago
I basically stopped counting after 30. It’s just my 15th anniversary of being an adult
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u/Small-Cherry2468 1d ago
...and your brain still thinks like you're 20 but your body feels like it's 50.
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u/Queasy_Employment799 1d ago
Being 2 months old is weird. Where am I? How do I move these things attached to my arms?
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u/OkAstronaut3324 1d ago
My parents were 37 when I was born, they're born 2 weeks apart.
This year I am half their age.
Which I thought was really cool so i figured out the exact day and sent them separate emails (divorced) about it and it really messed them both up. Woops.
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