Let me say this about middle age: it sucks. Enjoy being vilified because it is way better than what comes next ... that is to be forsook and forsaken as you push through the "49 and Over" marketing segment. Just you wait until to the scroll for the year of your birth becomes annoyingly long. unintelligible old-man talk finished You, too, will watch the birth years of all those whipper-snappers scroll and scroll and scroll and scroll. And scroll and scroll and scroll until you get to your birth year and WHY are they are in Roman numerals?
40 is the old age of youth; 50 is the youth of old age - Voltaire I worry about death a lot more than I used to. I worry a lot more about legacy. But I worry a hell of a lot less about tangibles. I said something on a forum was "only $400" today - everybody (in that profession) should have one. Man, 15 years ago I fretted over a $35 FX box. The way I look at it, I try to be a fuckload better off, a fuckload healthier, and a fuckload more entertained than most anybody else my age. So far, I'm doing pretty good. Funny thing happened, too - most of my life all my friends have been older. Some time about 2002 they started to all be younger. I think it's the mindset. I've been late '20s/early '30s since I was 14 years old. Why let chronology get in the way of that?
The only thing worse than getting old, is not :-)
When I still smoked cigarettes I was sitting on a curb near a parque central in Hondarus catching some shade and avoiding my motorcycle. As I sat a small, hunched, grey-haired woman wrapped in what seemed like thirty scarves and a small straw fedora-ish hat walked slowly up to spot where I was smoking in the shade. Cane first, then feet. Cane first, then feet. She saw me and my bad habit and looked at me and say, "Ah, la sabroso dolor." That translates roughly into "tasty pain" or so you get the figure of it. My experience with life has been along those lines. Tasty pain. That said I have been beat down to then rise up enough times to feel like I have a small but sturdy soapbox.