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Why do I feel old at 26?

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R

Rindain

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And I look like 5 years younger too!

I guess it's because I'm closer to 30 than I am to 20, and because I feel some kind of weird societal pressure to act "mature"--lots of friends from high school have friggin KIDS! It's freaking me out.

But **** maturity, I say! I just got out of a traumatic 5 year, marriage-like relationshgip, so I should be able to act like I'm 21 again. Right? I should live up to no one's expectations of myself but my own, right?

I want to party, drink, smoke weed, act immature, bar hop, meet random people, and generally re-live the early 20s that I never got to live due to being with my girlfriend pretty much 24-7.

I guess I'm going through what is known in common parlance as the "quarter-life crisis"--although I'll be lucky to live to 100.

Just as bad as my self-inflicted guilt at not being ready to "settle down" is the existential angst...like realzing I'll be 40 in 14 years, then 50, then 60...everywhere I go I think about death and the ultimate futility of existence. I don't know what I can do to snap out of it.

Anyone else in their mid-20's feeling this existential angst?
 
i'll be 28 this November. i sorta feel it since my friends are getting married and/or have kids. It feels like everyone's growing up but me in a sense. But i'm having fun doing my thing, so i'm not worried.
 
I really don't think 26 is old.

As graduate education becomes the norm and things like education and housing become more expensive, I really do think that 30's is the new 20's.
 
tnw said:
I really don't think 26 is old.

As graduate education becomes the norm and things like education and housing become more expensive, I really do think that 30's is the new 20's.
Click to expand...

Yeah, I know people with law degrees from Harvard who started over completely around 30/31 after realizing that they went to law school because they couldn't make up their minds about what to do in their lives.
 
Rindain said:
Yeah, I know people with law degrees from Harvard who started over completely around 30/31 after realizing that they went to law school because they couldn't make up their minds about what to do in their lives.
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I have friends who went to HLS too. They took one year off after undergrad to do some admission committee appealing internship.

So you have a law degree at 25. What are you going to do for the next 60 or so years of your life?

Granted at 28, I am starting to get fidgets not having gone back to grad school yet.
 
tnw said:
Granted at 28, I am starting to get fidgets not having gone back to grad school yet.
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Look at the bright side.

You've got some education under your belt, and you've done some travelling.

I've been our of high school for. . . *thinks** 14 years now; and my only options to get out of this ghetto are to knock off liquor stores, dollar stores, and drug pushers.

Oh yeah, I could try stealing copper pipe, copper wire, and aluminum siding to sell at the scrap yard too!

If this is the heartland of America - then like most Americans it's succumbing to cardiac arrest. :)
 
tnw said:
I have friends who went to HLS too. They took one year off after undergrad to do some admission committee appealing internship.

So you have a law degree at 25. What are you going to do for the next 60 or so years of your life?

Granted at 28, I am starting to get fidgets not having gone back to grad school yet.
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Yeah, I haven't gone to grad school yet, and feel "obligated" to--I run in very edumacated circles, so I find myself socializing with people in med, business, or law school, and I feel insecure that I am not up to that level yet.

I think life is really easy when you're in school--it's like a video game--just get to the next level. Everything's all planned out for you.
 
When I was 7, I thought 10 was old.

When I was 10, I thought teenagers were old.

When I was a teen, I thought college students were old.

It's like some ocd obsession I have. I know 26 is young in the scheme of things, and that when I'm 40 I'll think I was retarded, but I'm still having trouble stopping these thoughts.
 
Rindain said:
Yeah, I haven't gone to grad school yet, and feel "obligated" to--I run in very edumacated circles, so I find myself socializing with people in med, business, or law school, and I feel insecure that I am not up to that level yet.

I think life is really easy when you're in school--it's like a video game--just get to the next level. Everything's all planned out for you.
Click to expand...

I don't really feel obligated. I have a list of things I want to do.

....it's just that nobody wants me :.(

What I thought was really funny is talking to my friend in grad school. We were talking about the 18 months he spent living in NYC, which he, at the age of 26, described as 'two school years'. It just made me laugh, especially the way he made it sound like a universal standard. My mind is so seperated from my time in the US education system that it just seemed such an....odd desciption.

I've been our of high school for. . . *thinks** 14 years now; and my only options to get out of this ghetto are to knock off liquor stores, dollar stores, and drug pushers.
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I'm sure you have lots of options. Just got to have something you want to do.
 
tnw said:
I'm sure you have lots of options. Just got to have something you want to do.
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Oh I've got something I want to do. I get the feeling having a better support network (family, friends, etc.) also provides a better outlook on life.

God knows I can't waste another 32 years in this ghetto. Now that's some depressing shit. :P

I dunno. I could be blowing hot air up my own ass, but I think moving to a different city where the arts community is more active, there is more art/technology related work, and the economy isn't in a slow downward spiral (I know it's bad all over America, but there are places where it's worse - Ohio) - then maybe things will start to look up.

I suspect it's also that all my highschool mates have gone off. Gotten jobs. Settled down, got hitched. Spawned. Folks are taking root, and growing old.

Shit, I'm getting old; but I've still got things I want to accomplish. So yeah - it's less about feeling old, and more about giving everything the f@ck you sign and moving on.
 
aoi tsuki said:
i'll be 28 this November. i sorta feel it since my friends are getting married and/or have kids. It feels like everyone's growing up but me in a sense. But i'm having fun doing my thing, so i'm not worried.
Click to expand...

Same type of deal here....I'll be 30 in September....people I know who I went to school with are all married, have kids, etc.... They were all "mature". I saw it all at my 10 year reunion back in '05.

I've been through shit and more shit with women and with the way people are nowadays I try not to let this bother me. The way I look at it is that I'm on my own, have some great friends, great job, no kids at all and can do whatever the **** I want with nobody to answer to.

That is what I refer to as: FREEDOM. :)
 
Move to LA--the City of Angels gives everyone a fresh start. Really--there's so much money in this town it's insane. People get paid like 200k a year for doing basically nothing (agents, producers, etc).

Just make one really good investment, or start some trendy company or something, and you'll never have to work again.

At least that's what I'm still hoping--I'm seeing lots of people get lucky here at any rate.
 
man you guys are a buncha oldies

i bet some of you actually listened to pearl jam when they were on their original run.
 
Rindain said:
Move to LA--the City of Angels gives everyone a fresh start. Really--there's so much money in this town it's insane.
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I've got a friend that relocated to Glendale a couple years back and he loves it. Got a job at a designer toy store, is working on his mini-comics, has hooked up with folks like Coop and Felipe Smith to collaborate on stuff.

Yeah.

I'm eyeing Austin, TX. Cost of living is a bit less insane; and if I need to bail out Arizona is just a stone's throw away.
 
davepoobond said:
man you guys are a buncha oldies

i bet some of you actually listened to pearl jam when they were on their original run.
Click to expand...
Son, I was in middle school when Ten dropped.

MIDDLE SCHOOL.
 
Triumph Dolomite 1300cc said:
Mother****er, I just turned 30. Let me tell you something, I am a drunken mess right now, even by my standards.
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shoot I am 30 in August...
 
bjork said:
I'll be 30 in September, but it's just a number. I still gotta watch Lazytown and play Pokemon and shit.
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I don't feel "old" just I had all these ideas about life at 30 when I was younger.. and man life isn't even close to that now
 
Rindain said:
When I was 7, I thought 10 was old.

When I was 10, I thought teenagers were old.

When I was a teen, I thought college students were old.

It's like some ocd obsession I have. I know 26 is young in the scheme of things, and that when I'm 40 I'll think I was retarded, but I'm still having trouble stopping these thoughts.
Click to expand...

Think the same thing.

Since hitting 18, time's just kind of flown by. 24 was old when I was 21. I remember telling a girl at a club who told me she was 24: "wow, you didn't look that old to me". :lol

My game was smooth. Now I'm fighting back gray hairs as I approach 25 next month. :(
 
Yeah, all my ideas about 30 being "mature" were instilled in me when I was a kid--probably because most people in their 30's I knew were new parents.

Still though, it's really young in the scheme of things. I have a 64 year old relative who still has one night stands and shit.
 
Honestly, I don't terribly mind getting older - Men tend to age pretty gracefully. What scares me is that I'm afraid I won't be attracted to 40-50-60-70 something women when I'm that age.

I guess that's where love and porno come into play.
 
A then-new contractor at work once asked, half-jokingly, if I was "old enough to work [there]." I kind of just gave her a "**** off, bitch" look and continued my conversation about how Akamai caches needed to be flushed.

(To her credit: My extensive t-shirt collection, dangerously-close-to-a-pair-for-each-day-of-the-week Chuck collection, and baggy, faded jeans don't really help matters.)
 
For all the guys here who feel old--it's much worse for women:

from gerr at Yahoo answers:

You might be surprised to learn that people's perception of age whether it's ur own age or someone else's age is not based on the things most of us would guess it is. For example, it's not based on human life expectancy, physical ability, health or attractiveness. Not directly that is. Yes, all these factors come into play but they do ...for a reason you might not expect.
Our perceptions of age originate on an unconscious level. A level influenced more by instinct, gender and genetics than from intelectual reasoning.

The most significant factor that affects our subconscious, instinctual perception of age is... reproductive horizon.
( more commonly understood as our biological clock )
As I've said before, we are organisms. programmed to consume, survive and reproduce. That's nature.
We subconsciously percieve youth or age on the basis of how much time do we have left to continue reproducing. ( reproductive horizon) That's our real biological clock.
Why does a 30+ yr old childless woman feel the same way towards her age as a 45+ yr old childless man might feel about his age? It's because respectively, they each have another 10+ years of child making potential. There is a true gender difference regarding age perception. ( and it has nothing to do with culture ) It's not some sexist bit of propaganda. It's just a fact of nature. It doesn't seem fair. And it isn't fair. Nature just did it that way.
It's about reproduction. This reproductive focus is also the underlying reason that married couples with families may not feel 'as much' anxiety towards aging ...as single childless individuals might. Married couples with children don't have to worry whether they will ever be married with children. They already satisfided that instinctive objective.
Unless married or a parent, a 34 yr old guy feels roughly the same level of comfort as a 22 yr old girl feels about their own age. However, boys and girls at the same age feel quite different. Most girls can remember being 17 in highschool and feeling so much more mature than the boys were. Likewise, a 34 yr old woman is certain to have more anxiety about her age than a 34 yr old man. Men and women age with about a 10 to 15 year age gap that corresponds not to their true life expectancy but, ...to the difference between their reproductive horizons.

This piece of biological software installs right at puberty. Before puberty, boys and girls felt the same age at the same age.
Be aware that it is a hormonaly induced perception on a subconscious level. Interestingly, this preoccupation with age often changes and becomes more ambiguous once again after we pass our reproductive horizon. After women are 45 and men are approaching 60, we lose our previous perception of age and adopt more of a countdown towards the end of life.
Interestingly enough, We become concerned with our children's children......( You get the big picture ? )

Why do you feel old at 32? .. at least part of the answer is because you're a woman. Somewhere inside, you hear that biological clock sooner than we men do.
It's the call of nature.
Click to expand...
 
Rindain said:
Yeah, all my ideas about 30 being "mature" were instilled in me when I was a kid--probably because most people in their 30's I knew were new parents.

Still though, it's really young in the scheme of things. I have a 64 year old relative who still has one night stands and shit.
Click to expand...

That's the thing really. Times are different, or at least my situation is very different from my parents situation. Their parents were wealthy preofessionals with money to pay for college, etc. Housing was relatively cheap (they bought our house for like 20K, sold it for about 500K, we tried to sell it in the late 80's for 125K). Plus education is more expensive and more of it is becoming necessary; a college degree is about equal to a GED from my parents' generation. All of that stuff drags things out much longer.

Still, my college roommate is married, Just got his PhD and full time reserach position and just bought a, albeit shitty, house.

I don't feel pressured to be married, obviously because I can't, but I did expect to be with whoever by now.
 
Rindain said:
Yeah, all my ideas about 30 being "mature" were instilled in me when I was a kid--probably because most people in their 30's I knew were new parents.

Still though, it's really young in the scheme of things. I have a 64 year old relative who still has one night stands and shit.
Click to expand...

Maturity isn't met through age. Some people on this forum think I'm 14 or something, which I suppose says a lot about the quality of my posts, but whatever. I know some people who try so hard to pull off the adult life because they're such and such age, and it just comes across as forced and sad.

I may not own a home, and I may not have some phd, and I may not have a family, and I may not try and keep some extensive collection of literary classics. But I don't think I'm missing out, because I'm living how I want to live. And if me running a hentai shop and hanging on sera's clit doesn't work for someone else, **** them. I gotta do what's right for me, right?
 
It was more or less where I thought I would be in life at 30...compared to where I am in life.. of course starting over in a new country set me back a bit
 
26...that was my 4 years ago. Hitting the big 3-0 this year and I am feeling good and bad about my age. It's like you finally get respected for your age (here in Japan especially) and at the same time, I feel I have not accomplished much in my 20s. Sure, I have a nice paying job and feeling fairly comfortable with my life, but everyone around me is married, having kids, etc. sometimes you feel left out :/ Eh, I should enjoy my single life I guess.
 
Ever since I was 12 or so I would go into these states where I would be overwhelmed with fear at growing old and eventually dying. On my bus trips to camp, anywhere, i would just break down. But then I realized there's nothing you can do but except it and focus on other things and that lamenting your state doesn't help.
 
john tv said:
30 *is* the new 20. Until I hit 40 -- then 40 is the new 20. I'll keep you posted. :)


QFT.
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You laugh, but I think there might be some social truth to that. Occasionally articles pop up in the New York Times/Newsweek/[insert periodical of choice here] about "extended adolescence" that skates well into the 20s.
 
Troidal said:
It's like you finally get respected for your age (here in Japan especially).
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That's true. The American and Canadian in the department next to mine both have a hire rank than I do (although they're still 契約社員 like me), and I think it's mostly do to the fact that both of them are over 30 and are married, the latter will never happen for me even if I do find the right person, so I wonder if I'll ever would be legitimized.

I don't plan on staying here forever anyway, so it doesn't bother me that much.
 
im 23 myself......and i dont feel old but 23 came so fast that i keep thinking "befoer i know it im gonna be 40" and when i start thinking that..i get all bumed out.


i shouldnt have much to worry about though cause i look exactly like my dad and hes 50 now....but he looks like hes 41 or soo....so i know what i kinda have an idea of waht i might look like:D
 
I should also note that I'm a complete ****ing girl when it comes to my age. My usual response when someone asks is "Guess." Of course, that incorrectly implies I'll tell them if they're right or wrong...
 
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