For Those Thirty and Up

[Wes Mantooth]

Fwiw, the thread on 92.5 kinda got me thinking about getting older so I'm starting this. I have two questions, depending on your age:

----------------

1.) Do you think/feel that time has begun to move faster and faster as you age or did it seem to plateau at all?

2.) And for those who are 50 and older, has time continued to go by at an increased speed? Meaning, does it seem like your 40's or 50's or 60's are/were going faster than your 30's? Or is everything past, say, 30, seem like one equal rate?

-----------------

Curious to hear the responses. I've read a little bit about why time does indeed seem to pass quicker as we age. The idea that we develop routines, and our brain kind of goes into standby mode while we're stuck in the monotony of traffic jams, grocery shopping, paying bills, mowing the lawn, watching the clock in a cubicle, etc. seems to me like the best explanation.

That coupled with the lack of an equal amount of age appropriate milestones: Junior High, High School, College, First Girlfriend, First Kiss, First Blumpkin, Marriage, Driver's License, First Job, First Apartment, etc. means there simply aren't as many firsts as you age.

What are your thoughts?

Fwiw, I have to say that, for me, as a 37 year old these last 7 years have flown by. Once I hit 30 it's been a bit of a blur. Each year seems to have been quicker than the last. And I'm kinda hoping this levels off at some point because at this rate I'll be 50 in a blink of an eye. Also, my disgust with modern music and pop culture is now teetering on the brink of angrily shaking my fist levels. Things like skinny jeans make me irrationally angry. What the hell is happening to me?

[basballguy]

i think so. But i'm embracing it. 5 more years and i'm kid free. I can finally live the 20s and 30s that i missed!

Checking in at 34 here.

[Tiger Teeth]

I'm 52, almost 53. And for me, it does seem like the older I get the faster time goes. Weird thing is, I feel and think like I'm in my mid 30's still.

EDIT: My wife just pointed out that I'm 51 soon to be 52. I guess the mind starts to go sooner for some.

[SunsetBengal]

I'm soon to be 47, and I can attest that the time does seem to go by faster and faster. Ironically enough though, days like today, it's like time is standing still. Work cancelled due to unsafe working conditions (weather), AND the gym is closed until the ice is off the roads. I'm so used to being constantly busy, that I'm practically beside myself..

[*rfaulk34*]

I'll be 50 next month and it seems like my 40s took about 6 months to get through. It literally feels like time is on fast forward anymore. I get to work on Monday (looking forward to Friday and another weekend off), blink a couple times, and it's Friday already. It works for me though. I sleep about 3-4 hours a night (for the last 22-23 years) so i feel like i've chronologically been around about 70 years (part of that is having lots of vivid memories going back to when i was 3 years old). Mentally though, i've always felt like i was about 27.

[Benton]

37 next month (I'm registered at JC Penny and KMart, hint hint). I don't think it goes faster, but there's less time of it.

Two kids, 50 hour work week (when I'm lucky and get off early), rental property on the side, administrator for the best message board in footballdom. When I was 18, a full day was working six hours or school, then spending the other 10 hours before bed trying to get laid. In my 20s, career started to creep up, so I worked 10+ hours a day, but I still had the weekend, or a couple hours at night (since I only slept 4-5 hours). But now those weekends are spent with the kids, working on the house, etc.

[*wildcats forever*]

(02-15-2016, 10:34 AM)Tiger Teeth Wrote: I'm 52, almost 53.  And for me, it does seem like the older I get the faster time goes.  Weird thing is, I feel and think like I'm in my mid 30's still.

52 seemed like last year to me, and at 66 now I still feel and think as I did when in my 30's. I'm not just saying that. That truly is how fast time has elapsed for me.

It's kind of hard to put into descriptive words actually, but this aging business is surreal at best. I look in the mirror and don't recognize the face staring back at me, though I do see the family resemblance 

A request for the younger crowd - please be mindful of every person you encounter that you feel is old, that they are likely feeling more in common with you than you do with them. That's because of what I described above. Older people are just trying to figure out what in the Hell happened !!

[Nebuchadnezzar]

Time has slowed down for me but that's because I have nothing to do.

This is to basballguy, you will never be "Kid Free"... They never EVER LEAVE!

[xxlt]

One songwriter put it this way:

The days get shorter every year
For me to get drunk it takes a lot more beer
The things people say, I don't really hear
And I don't really know what to say

----------------------------------

I tend to think poets/songwriters say it best, so I hesitate to comment further, but since I didn't write the above assessment...

I tell everyone I see with a child not to blink - it is astonishing how fast a child grows up. Which reminds me of another lyric -

http://people.wku.edu/charles.smith/MALVINA/mr175.htm


You can see all of Malvina's wonderful song at the link above but the words I was thinking of were:

Turn around and your two, turn around and your four
Turn around and your a young man going out my front door
----------------------------------

Again, it is astonishing how fast a child you are raising reaches adulthood - at least it was for me. From the child's perspective I think it is more exciting because so much is a novelty - and thus time my seem to never drag. Even things that I find rather boring now, like watching a baseball game, were exciting for me as a kid because of the novelty of each pitch. While every pitch still holds multiple possible outcomes, somewhere along the line I hit a saturation point where it just wasn't as exciting anymore - and I guess I sort of envy the people who can still watch a game on he edge of their seat. It is paradoxical how when we are bored, times seems to drag, and as an adult we have seen and done so much more so it is hard to find novel experiences, and yet as an adult time seems not to pass more slowly with this boredom but more quickly. The just completed passage of time from October 15 to Feb 15 was as rapid as any I can remember in spite of the fact that I had relatively few new experiences, wasn't terribly busy, and was not raising a child. My life is, honestly, rather dull at the moment, and yet it sails by seemingly faster than ever. Very puzzling...
(Oh, and I am 50.)

[SunsetBengal]

(02-15-2016, 02:57 PM)wildcats forever Wrote: 52 seemed like last year to me, and at 66 now I still feel and think as I did when in my 30's. I'm not just saying that. That truly is how fast time has elapsed for me.

It's kind of hard to put into descriptive words actually, but this aging business is surreal at best. I look in the mirror and don't recognize the face staring back at me, though I do see the family resemblance 

A request for the younger crowd - please be mindful of every person you encounter that you feel is old, that they are likely feeling more in common with you than you do with them. That's because of what I described above. Older people are just trying to figure out what in the Hell happened !!

I hear ya.  I think I've lost 40% of the hair I used to have, in the past couple years.  Now, I look in the mirror and think "Who's that handsome, balding guy staring at me?".

[BengalHawk62]

(02-15-2016, 03:56 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I hear ya.  I think I've lost 40% of the hair I used to have, in the past couple years.  Now, I look in the mirror and think "Who's that handsome, balding guy staring at me?".

I didn't really lose any hair per sae, my hair has just been relocated further south down my back.  

[*jason*]

I think time seems to go by faster the older that we get because of perspective.  When you are 5, a year is 20% of your life.  At 41, it is next to nothing.  Life does go by fast.  I was 20 just the other day.






If you want to slow it down a little, just go to prison...  Time just drags on there.

[Rotobeast]

46 here....

Time seemed to speed up for me, after marriage and a child.
I didn't get married until 40 and the child came 2 years later.
I think time moves faster, because more of it is dedicated to someone other than yourself.
Sure, I enjoy time with family, but we all have that list of things that we put off and I feel that leads to the loss of time.
We also become more aware of things in the world, which in turn gives us more to complain about, and then removes more from the finite amount of our free time.

I suppose I could forget these boards and free up some time, but that would eliminate the outlet for my daily frustrations, and my family would encounter a much grumpier version of myself.

[*wildcats forever*]

(02-15-2016, 03:56 PM)SunsetBengal Wrote: I hear ya.  I think I've lost 40% of the hair I used to have, in the past couple years.  Now, I look in the mirror and think "Who's that handsome, balding guy staring at me?".

Don't even talk to me about hair - you've seen my Facebook photos of days gone by    Try convincing me that God doesn't have a warped sense of humour. It's why I keep the hat stores in business .....

[fredtoast]

I don't know about time speeding up. With me some things that happened 20 years ago feels like last week while something 10 years ago seem like a whole lifetime ago.

biut here is one thing I have noticed about getting older. When I was in college maybe a third of the girls were good looking. Now it seems like every college age girl who is not fat is good looking. Youth is a strong attraction.

[CKwi88]

I'm 27, so sorry for crashing the party, but y'all got me hella worried

I feel like 22 to 27 flew by in an instant, I guess I'll look out for post 30s.

[Beaker]

Life is like a roll of toilet paper...the closer you get to the end, the faster it goes.

[Benton]

(02-15-2016, 06:51 PM)CKwi88 Wrote: I'm 27, so sorry for crashing the party, but y'all got me hella worried

I feel like 22 to 27 flew by in an instant, I guess I'll look out for post 30s.

You may already be there, but — at least for me — kids made the biggest difference. I think that's why people in their 30-40s have time disappear.

Like tonight. I get off work in a few minutes. I'll go pick my daughter up, go home and start cooking, then we'd normally do homework, hang out for an hour, then it's bath and bed. It'll be 9-10 o'clock before parent stuff is taken care of.

[CKwi88]

(02-15-2016, 06:57 PM)Benton Wrote: You may already be there, but — at least for me — kids made the biggest difference. I think that's why people in their 30-40s have time disappear.

Like tonight. I get off work in a few minutes. I'll go pick my daughter up, go home and start cooking, then we'd normally do homework, hang out for an hour, then it's bath and bed. It'll be 9-10 o'clock before parent stuff is taken care of.

That makes a lot of sense. While I don't have kids, work certainly took up plenty of nine to nines before I calmed down last year. Kids are undoubtedly more time consuming than work. 

[jfkbengals]

The reason the years go by faster and faster is because you have less and less opportunity to stop and enjoy it all due to our business obligations.

If we didn't have to make a living and only had to lay in the sand knocking back cocktails, we'd be amazed at how long a year is.

I'm closing in on the double 4s, and years fly by, except for the weeks like last June in New Orleans. That week was a long one!