VGCollect Forum
General and Gaming => Off Topic => Topic started by: bikingjahuty on June 29, 2025, 01:00:15 am
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I recently had a birthday which puts me in my late 30s. I understand I'm still not old, and by conventional standards I'm not even middle aged yet, but one thing that has been on my mind a lot over the last year or so is how people deal with getting older.
it's a strange thing coming out of your late teens, 20s, and even your early 30s and most things are more or less as you remembered them, but then you realize one day they're not. Your relatives you've had in your minds eye as being around a certain age most of your life are now several decades beyond that, you start to hear more and more about people you knew personally dying, and even you aren't the same person anymore. You don't have the energy you once did, your body has all sorts of random aches and pains you never used to have, and you could have sworn you were just renewing your plates or paying your taxes a few months ago, when it's actually been a whole year already. I guess the passage of time and the reality of how much time has passed is starting to finally catch up with me. Does anyone else have feelings like this or have you dealt with this and somehow come to terms with it?
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Just wait until the day you realise your generation turned into your parents' generation without you knowing it. That happened to me recently (about a week ago) and it was strange realisation since I don't actually consider myself to be part of my generation despite actually being in it. The people I interact with on an almost daily or weekly basis, or the people I hang out with are all generally younger than me, by 10-20 years. Working in an arcade does that I guess. I don't feel my age or look it based on what people tell me. Being an arch meme lord of the internet and a survivor of the great forum wars keeps me in touch with how younger people act and talk and behave. Typically people tend to stay in their age group more due to entering into the work force where you are more likely to interact with people around your age or older.
People naturally settle down in life and become less active. When you get into your 30s you are probably not going partying anymore and do not have as active of a lifestyle. If you are a man, you are less likely to keep up your appearance, especially if you have gotten married and/or had kids, because you are no longer in the social competition space. You end up getting those random aches and pains because your brain doesn't keep up with your lifestyle. Maybe you are not exercising the same way you did, if you played sports or were generally active in one way or another. But your brain will still remember how you could do certain things and you will still try to do things the same way even though your body will have changed. They are an indicator that you need to change a behaviour, either get back into shape or what usually happens, make adjustments to your life to try to prevent those aches and pains.
The best way to come to terms with it is just live your life. Everyone gets to experience getting older, and you have the opportunity to make the best of it.
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Do what makes you happy and take care of your mind and body. I am pushing 50, I work out regularly, I still play and collect video games. I am happily married for 13 years and always make time for my wife and friends. Even though I am almost 50 I don't feel it. Again, Do what makes you happy and take care of your body and mind.
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I recently had a birthday which puts me in my late 30s. I understand I'm still not old, and by conventional standards I'm not even middle aged yet, but one thing that has been on my mind a lot over the last year or so is how people deal with getting older.
it's a strange thing coming out of your late teens, 20s, and even your early 30s and most things are more or less as you remembered them, but then you realize one day they're not. Your relatives you've had in your minds eye as being around a certain age most of your life are now several decades beyond that, you start to hear more and more about people you knew personally dying, and even you aren't the same person anymore. You don't have the energy you once did, your body has all sorts of random aches and pains you never used to have, and you could have sworn you were just renewing your plates or paying your taxes a few months ago, when it's actually been a whole year already. I guess the passage of time and the reality of how much time has passed is starting to finally catch up with me. Does anyone else have feelings like this or have you dealt with this and somehow come to terms with it?
(https://i.postimg.cc/dQdhBPqw/IMG-20250701-181001-450-x-300-pixel.jpg)
I think about it every single day when i'm alone. Damn... this hit the feels for me. I actually been feeling sort of out of body lately. Almost existential crisis. Like sometimes I just sit there and realize how finite life is... it feels like yesterday was y2k. Like monday was ps2 release date. it feels like Majoras mask. Where it's a game, all n64 and life as usual but then you look up and death is just there. When you start the game. That moon is far away. Easy peezy. No urgency or fear. You're a kid! But once you near 30, 40, 50 and I imagine especially 60 and 70. That moon is not exactly where it started anymore. And the reality of that is jarring. And it jars you the more you look up.
And things have radically changed with the advent of internet dependency. Which has not helped matters. It makes us lead very centralized and introverted psuedo lifestyles of speed. I find myself saying "these kids today" like an old grandfather and i'm not even 30 yet lol. It just has changed. Complex stuff like learning how to work a check book. Even something as simple as looking out the window every 30 seconds for a pizza guy. The excitement. Now we have an app to track it. Why wait at a mom and pop store. Amazon will do it quicker. Better. Theirs no effort required so I think life speeds up when theirs less to do. Less to see. It all feels like around 2010 or 2012. We all died at the same time. And everything after 2013 is just a bizarre dream. And this is a new life. Thats how different it is. But I know thats not the case.
Idk if anyone else feels this but does it seem like time moves faster as you age? Seemed like days were 2 days when I was younger. Now it seems like no matter how much time I make. Plans I cancel. It's just wake up. And then its bedtime right after. Theirs this sense of too quick. Idk. Where it comes from.
I guess we just gotta focus more on what is changeable. The quality of the life not the quantity. I know death can only bring us the answers of whats next. But its human nature to ponder it.
Sometimes the quote "dont be sad its over. Be happy it happened" make me feel better.
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embrace change, try not to live in denial, associate with your generation and the older generation as well as the young'uns to find what we have in common and what we can reconcile in a world of change. Make healthy choices and prioritize your time. Yes the days seem to fly by faster, as the compression of running on the hamster wheel as daily responsibilities or life goals, all take time to achieve. Find meaningful work and enjoy the journey. I've tried to apply this to collecting as well, if there is indeed an "end game". I've often fallen to FOMO or taking it too seriously, you can't win em all and sometimes if you can't beat em, you can join them. Remember what goes around comes around. Just be a bit more selective about who you deal with and where you get things. I'm in my mid-40's and often have wondered if the gaming escape and collecting I cling to is purely nostlagia and rose colored glasses, or if it is something more, like mourning the aging process and an active way to resist getting older and stay young. Well, we often associate gaming with our youth and the wonder of imagination and acting out fantasy in games that the real world could never offer. Why would anyone ever want to age out of that, this is a totally healthy way to be young and keep our minds from focusing on the problems associated with aging in a world that won't stop changing. Going back to retro is a healthy form of rebellion and helps us maintain our inner child.
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I don't think that time goes by faster or even seems so. I think it is in relation to how memory and recognition works. We tend to do things systematically (or via habits) that we may not even realise that is the case. Things you do by way of habit can have the effect of "not being remembered" per se when you do them. Think about those times when you ask yourself "Did I lock the door before I left? I remember locking the door or do I remember locking the door in the past?" Similarly memories that you have of your past, such as your childhood, are more likely memories of memories that you had. You remember remembering and do not necessarily remember the actual past.
How this relates to time going by faster is if you are not encountering new experiences, the brain doesn't necesssarily need to store that memory because it is already present. And as a result you only need to functionally remember less and this somehow seems to effect our perception of time.
That's my theory anyways.
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Idk if anyone else feels this but does it seem like time moves faster as you age? Seemed like days were 2 days when I was younger. Now it seems like no matter how much time I make. Plans I cancel. It's just wake up. And then its bedtime right after. Theirs this sense of too quick. Idk. Where it comes from.
It feels faster because the individual time amounts take up less and less of your overall life. Take summer vacation for example. To a 7 year old, that summer vacation is about 4% of their total life and all the memories contained. To a 37 year old, that same time period is now only 0.6% of their life.
Also, it doesn't help how much adulting can take out of your free time. Lawn needs to be mowed, laundry needs to be done, groceries need to be bought, etc., etc. So that 2 days off a week can wind up feeling like only a few hours free depending on how things stack up.
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Idk if anyone else feels this but does it seem like time moves faster as you age? Seemed like days were 2 days when I was younger. Now it seems like no matter how much time I make. Plans I cancel. It's just wake up. And then its bedtime right after. Theirs this sense of too quick. Idk. Where it comes from.
How this relates to time going by faster is if you are not encountering new experiences, the brain doesn't necesssarily need to store that memory because it is already present. And as a result you only need to functionally remember less and this somehow seems to effect our perception of time.
It feels faster because the individual time amounts take up less and less of your overall life. Take summer vacation for example. To a 7 year old, that summer vacation is about 4% of their total life and all the memories contained. To a 37 year old, that same time period is now only 0.6% of their life.
From what I've learned after being introduced to this topic years ago, the passage of time on a general level (so not just tied to personal life experiences) and how we perceive it is correlated to various things including the two listed above: the lack of new experiences as we age and the total amount of time we've experienced throughout life. However, everyone perceives time differently, meaning this principle of time moving more quickly as we age is not universally shared. It's a study rooted in human psychology that's old and widely discussed, and there are numerous academic papers about it, such as this one (https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC4142010/).
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Idk if anyone else feels this but does it seem like time moves faster as you age? Seemed like days were 2 days when I was younger. Now it seems like no matter how much time I make. Plans I cancel. It's just wake up. And then its bedtime right after. Theirs this sense of too quick. Idk. Where it comes from.
It feels faster because the individual time amounts take up less and less of your overall life. Take summer vacation for example. To a 7 year old, that summer vacation is about 4% of their total life and all the memories contained. To a 37 year old, that same time period is now only 0.6% of their life.
Also, it doesn't help how much adulting can take out of your free time. Lawn needs to be mowed, laundry needs to be done, groceries need to be bought, etc., etc. So that 2 days off a week can wind up feeling like only a few hours free depending on how things stack up.
This makes a lot of sense. That 2nd part hits home. I was just saying I feel like I spend more time at Walmart than my home lol. It seems like every 2 days the groceries are gone. And if I buy in bulk then I need something else or it spoils. Then it's laundry. Then it's car care. Then it's doctors, dentist or other health appointments. By the time I actually sit down with a video game at the end of the night my eyes are heavy and i'm falling asleep. Maybe get 2 hours tops.
Perhaps that's the issue im having. The boring parts of life are taking up maybe a good chunk so it feels like the memorable parts are actually small and rushed. I gotta try to time budget better.
But that other age correlation phenomenon is fascinating. It just feels wild lately. I feel like new years was about a week ago. Its that bad. Sorta out of body. I'm gonna try to focus more on the scope of time and less about the movement of it. Just another thing to add about how getting older sucks lol.
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I recently had a birthday which puts me in my late 30s. I understand I'm still not old, and by conventional standards I'm not even middle aged yet, but one thing that has been on my mind a lot over the last year or so is how people deal with getting older.
it's a strange thing coming out of your late teens, 20s, and even your early 30s and most things are more or less as you remembered them, but then you realize one day they're not. Your relatives you've had in your minds eye as being around a certain age most of your life are now several decades beyond that, you start to hear more and more about people you knew personally dying, and even you aren't the same person anymore. You don't have the energy you once did, your body has all sorts of random aches and pains you never used to have, and you could have sworn you were just renewing your plates or paying your taxes a few months ago, when it's actually been a whole year already. I guess the passage of time and the reality of how much time has passed is starting to finally catch up with me. Does anyone else have feelings like this or have you dealt with this and somehow come to terms with it?
(https://i.postimg.cc/dQdhBPqw/IMG-20250701-181001-450-x-300-pixel.jpg)
I think about it every single day when i'm alone. Damn... this hit the feels for me. I actually been feeling sort of out of body lately. Almost existential crisis. Like sometimes I just sit there and realize how finite life is... it feels like yesterday was y2k. Like monday was ps2 release date. it feels like Majoras mask. Where it's a game, all n64 and life as usual but then you look up and death is just there. When you start the game. That moon is far away. Easy peezy. No urgency or fear. You're a kid! But once you near 30, 40, 50 and I imagine especially 60 and 70. That moon is not exactly where it started anymore. And the reality of that is jarring. And it jars you the more you look up.
And things have radically changed with the advent of internet dependency. Which has not helped matters. It makes us lead very centralized and introverted psuedo lifestyles of speed. I find myself saying "these kids today" like an old grandfather and i'm not even 30 yet lol. It just has changed. Complex stuff like learning how to work a check book. Even something as simple as looking out the window every 30 seconds for a pizza guy. The excitement. Now we have an app to track it. Why wait at a mom and pop store. Amazon will do it quicker. Better. Theirs no effort required so I think life speeds up when theirs less to do. Less to see. It all feels like around 2010 or 2012. We all died at the same time. And everything after 2013 is just a bizarre dream. And this is a new life. Thats how different it is. But I know thats not the case.
Idk if anyone else feels this but does it seem like time moves faster as you age? Seemed like days were 2 days when I was younger. Now it seems like no matter how much time I make. Plans I cancel. It's just wake up. And then its bedtime right after. Theirs this sense of too quick. Idk. Where it comes from.
I guess we just gotta focus more on what is changeable. The quality of the life not the quantity. I know death can only bring us the answers of whats next. But its human nature to ponder it.
Sometimes the quote "dont be sad its over. Be happy it happened" make me feel better.
mostly this altough time does realy feel to go by faster and faster the older I get.
and hoenstly i hate getting older if I had the option to stay 20 for 20 years and then die i would take that over getting to 80.
the sad reality is that you cnat change it
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My 20s were lost completely to a black hole of depression, from which I only started emerging in my early 30s, a dented shell of a human being with little life experience. I've just turned 44, have a wife and child, but still have a long way to go in terms of forming, not helped by poor life choices and multiple health problems.
Aging was always terrifying, particularly when in my mid-30s I'd realized how much I'd actually lost, I've come to terms with that now but need to re-focus on my health (quickly) and improve my lifestyle while continuing to adult better and faster.
In relation to aging, which in effect is just time, I'd suggest the following:
1) Live full, long days. Don't run yourself into the floor but try and finish the day in a better position than you started it, get something done.
2) Try new things/media to stay at least slightly in the loop, but accept that what you like is largely 'set' now. In gaming terms this means not trying to force yourself to play RTS games when you just want to shoot things.
3) Also in gaming/entertainment, recognize what you used to like as opposed to what you actually enjoy when left to your own devices.
4) Do what you always told your parents etc., which they didn't want to, look after yourself!
5) If something's not happening, whether it's playing a particular game, decorating a room in a particular way, going to this or that destination etc. recognize it sooner and stop investing time and money in stuff that's not going to bear fruit.
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I've just turned 32 and I'm feeling it as well, so this thread has hit close to home. Keep going, comrades.
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I’m pushing 50, and yeah, I’m having to deal with all the crap that comes with getting older. Dad passed last year, mom is suffering from senility, other family members passing, I have more aches and pains.
One way I deal with it is realizing how fortunate I am to have what I have. My wife and mother-in-law have been absolute rocks through everything. I have a good, stable job. I have 2 INCREDIBLY smart 12-year-old twin boys who like the same geeky stuff I do.
Plus I have my hobbies, like playing games and toy collecting, which might seem strange for a middle-aged man, but they help keep me sharp. Just finished Elden Ring a few weeks back, and that game is no pushover. Constantly learning more about games and consoles I didn’t really experience before, like the Neo Geo and TG16. I definitely don’t feel a mid-life crisis coming any time soon, I have enough going on :)
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Am scratching as well the 50´s but I don´t fell like an old man, because of my job I have to be always active and now even more cause this past week they fired my partner as well because of my parents, they always told me to work faster and that I need to learn how to do many things at the same time, that´s why am always active, I can give three tech supports at a time in two different languages, age for me is just a number as well if you look at my profile you will find that I don´t age, I Level Up 8)
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Let’s be real. Getting old sucks. It’s harder to be fit. You can’t pee as far. Sometimes you wake up and just feel like you’ve been in a car crash because you slept wrong.
Just because your body gets older doesn’t mean you have to be old. Stay active. Dress like a relevant person. (Don’t be a try-hard old guy, but buy you some new clothes). Still play games. Still watch movies. Don’t get caught up in what’s comfortable. Keep trying. Have fun.
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You can’t pee as far.
I can still piss my name in the snow alright and i'm gaming since 1990 ;D Actually we rarely have snow enough for that anymore.
Dress like a relevant person. (Don’t be a try-hard old guy, but buy you some new clothes)
Here in Germany we call them Beigelings, because old people wear beige/brown/grew/earthy colors in general
I think most important: just be true to yourself, don't think you have to change just because you are older. It's something i noticed with americans: "i can't wear sneakers anymore i'm 30" or "i can't wear colorful clothes, i'm an adult", they seem to completely change once they hit around 35 and stop having fun to fit in a weird, outdated, old mold. people here in germany did the same, i mean the 1968 generation that burned down houses and demonstrated for peace and stuff are now old people who dress...beige.
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I recently had a birthday which puts me in my late 30s. I understand I'm still not old, and by conventional standards I'm not even middle aged yet, but one thing that has been on my mind a lot over the last year or so is how people deal with getting older.
it's a strange thing coming out of your late teens, 20s, and even your early 30s and most things are more or less as you remembered them, but then you realize one day they're not. Your relatives you've had in your minds eye as being around a certain age most of your life are now several decades beyond that, you start to hear more and more about people you knew personally dying, and even you aren't the same person anymore. You don't have the energy you once did, your body has all sorts of random aches and pains you never used to have, and you could have sworn you were just renewing your plates or paying your taxes a few months ago, when it's actually been a whole year already. I guess the passage of time and the reality of how much time has passed is starting to finally catch up with me. Does anyone else have feelings like this or have you dealt with this and somehow come to terms with it?
Poorly. It’s been something heavy on my mind for most of my 30s, and it’s something that I’ve struggled with a lot. I’ve become an old man who yells at clouds mostly, I’m a very nostalgic and sentimental person these days. I cope with it by clinging to the last remaining shreds of people, places and things that still resemble what I miss so much about the past.
I have lunch inside of mostly empty irrelevant diners that are barely hanging on and feel like retirement homes, I shop in old school brick & mortar establishments that have neglected to necessitate tech and Internet into their operation, I visit childhood spots like my local parks to go hiking on the trails and just reminisce the whole time, I listen to my music on a CD player without the distraction of other activities, I play retro consoles on my CRT, I watch reruns of classic TV shows with what feels like a brand new set of eyes and ears (it’s the same but with a totally different perspective), listen to other sad millennials relate tales about the good ole days... I often think about people who I mistook for dinosaurs when they were my age and wonder how they felt about their life when they were at this same point, to come of age in the slower, more stable, more simple times. An experience that I can't and will never know. I've taken a greater interest in history as a whole, learning about the way things were before my time.
There’s nothing that I’m more apathetic and cynical towards than present day. All the garbage going on in the world, the politics, the economic system, the unending drama and noise coming from social media that I’m supposed to care about or get sucked into. I don’t want to be a part of it any longer. For the most part, I’m dead to that world. It feels like a waste of my time on this Earth, and everything about the present day system feels designed to make me feel less human and I want none of it. I desperately wanna recapture the way I felt when I was young, or at least how I felt as a young adult. I feel like I’ve seen enough change for a few generations in just the past decade and a half. The harsh reality is, the passage of time is just a process of watching everything you love wither away and eventually die. Anyone who hasn't already realized that is just refusing to pay attention, trying to live insulated inside of a false sense of security. Life is the ultimate tragic story.
As for me, I don’t feel like I’ve changed as a person, not the core of who I am anyway. It’s important to be true to myself, and preserve my principles and values and not let external forces to pressure me into capitulation. In other words, I’ll be insufferable by the time I’m a senior. I’m always gonna live like it’s still 1999 or 2006 and I’ll never apologize for it, no matter how fast the calendar shreds it's pages. I’m a product of my time, and my time was back then.
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All the garbage going on in the world, the politics, the economic system, the unending drama and noise coming from social media that I’m supposed to care about or get sucked into. I don’t want to be a part of it any longer. For the most part, I’m dead to that world. It feels like a waste of my time on this Earth, and everything about the present day system feels designed to make me feel less human and I want none of it. I desperately wanna recapture the way I felt when I was young, or at least how I felt as a young adult.
I know how you feel. For nearly the entire time I've been active on here I had actually withdrawn from society for the most part. I was "so over" all the BS. But I had found that I was missing something but I didn't know what that was. I can't tell you how I got over it exactly, because it involved a trigger that I was not expecting to occur. I don't know if a person can actually escape that type of situation willingly because for a very long time I didn't think there was a problem. After the trigger event occured, my spirits lifted considerably and I did not know what had happened. I went into a period of introspection to figure things out and found that I had been experiencing some form of depression for a long time. After I came to accept things, I re-integrated with the world including all of the drama, of which I am still involved with even today. But I think it is a cost worth paying.
The things that ended up changing for me:
- I stopped paying attention to the news, politics or things like that. This is partly because I stopped doom scrolling on X and now rarely use it.
- I started focusing on music again and listening to new things. As a result, I stopped listening to the radio so this relates to being out of the loop regarding news. The type of music I listen to has regressed a little but I found that my music choices are dependent on a couple of things, my overall emotional state and also the music scene.
- I stopped playing video games, with exception. I'm still playing the two games in my Currently Playing list, but I haven't played anything in my backlog since early June. This happened immediately after the trigger event. I tried to play a game about a month ago and found I didn't want to.
- I started going to see bands again after a long time. This partially effected the type of music I was listening too somewhat recently.
- I started being more sociable in public which also came with the penalty of being involved in drama.
I won't go into details but I had to come to grips with a mistake I made in my past that led me to becoming a recluse. Once I became at peace with my past, the rest of the world opened up for me. That included some of the things that I had tried to escape from, but as I said I think that cost is worth it. I'd rather be the person I am today than the one I was a year ago. Nothing is easy in life and it is complicated and confusing a lot of the time. You'll end up making mistakes and having to deal with the consequences, but it is better than just hiding away because in that state you can't learn and grow IMO.
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I guess I'm the outlier because I'm enjoying this journey of mine. I liked my 20's. I really liked my 30's. And, despite a major life change, I'm loving my 40's (I turned 41 back in June). Will I enjoy my 50's even more? Who knows, but I'm excited to find out. A lot of people say I look younger than my age, which I guess helps some.
A lot of it has to do with me still being mostly the same person since the beginning in terms of interests and hobbies. My parents regularly remind me: "You never change!" And in some ways, it's true. I'm still gaming, still writing reviews for fun, still staying active, still being a silly goose. All while being a responsible adult that goes to work, pays bills (I just got my car note in the mail for paying my last car payment), cooks, cleans the house, etc.
Another part of it has to do with having things to look forward to: Trips. Events. New game releases. Having something marked on the calendar weeks/months ahead makes the mundane less mundane because it's like you're always working towards something. For example, most Tuesdays I go to trivia with some friends. It's something routine and enjoyable and a fun thing to look forward to during the work week. I'm also in a book club and movie club. I've been kicking around the idea of looking for a doggie club since I'll be getting a puppy soon. I've got three new games to look forward to playing, too. And of course, there's this site's Secret Santa coming up which also excites me.
Sadly, part of getting older is seeing how bad things are politically (especially in the USA - yikes), environmentally, monetarily, etc. I don't have a remedy for that other than acknowledging that it's part of life.
So, personally, I deal with getting older by enjoying it. Yeah, there are times when I'm reminded of my age. I played kickball back in April and stumbled while running to first base AFTER MY VERY FIRST KICK. I got scraped up bad. But, there are times I'm reminded I'm doing things better than I did back in the day. I participated in the Spartan Race earlier in October and out shined some of the plucky, social media hungry 20-somethings.
I was always told that getting older is a privilege, and I believe it.