Yes I had someone the other day ask me if they were too old to study a subject at 35... I find it very weird.
I think if you don't exercise, and you don't learn new things, you probably do start feeling old pretty quickly.
I have been one of these people. The (lack of) fitness is a huge part of it.
But also, some of us just feel like we're in a rush, and we see the people around us doing and achieving things that we'd like to have done already. If you don't have kids by 30 and want them, there's a lot of nonsense telling you that time is gradually running out, etc.
I'm 35, I consider myself old. Why? Objectively speaking, I simply can't do what I could during my 10s and 20s anymore. It's a fundamental change from becoming able to do more things as I got older, now I can do less things as I get older and that's sad.
Anecdotally speaking, I'm just tired of nearly everything and I have nothing I could call life aspirations or dreams. I'm satisfied if I get through another day in peace.
Some people are young until the moment they croak, some are old from the moment they gain real awareness and agency, but most people cruise from young to old on a biological slide.
Please don't take this in bad faith but unless you're struggling with health related issues these limitations seem rather self imposed. Your second paragraph makes it sound like it's mental rather than physical, have you considered a mentor or life coach?
I can't pull all-nighters or concentrate as hard as I could in my youth anymore, among many other things, and I'm more or less constantly exhausted simply due to the fierce but uncaring passage of time.
>mental rather than physical
No doubt it's more mental than physical, but it all comes down to aging one way or another. There's less wonder in life the more I experience; I'm just tired and the only explanation is I'm old, full stop. Most people are more young at 35 than I am, but I'm not one of them.
All nighters are usually the result of poorly set expectations or poor planning. Give yourself some grace and set reasonable expectations for yourself. You just sound burned out, not old. At your age, you need to give yourself some time to figure out, and recover, from whatever is going on in your life, not blame the passage of time.
It’s none of my business, but I say this out of hoping to help: you’re almost perfectly describing depression. You are depressed. I’ve been there, and still deal with it, but it can be helped with a variety of methods. I hope you will talk to a doctor or someone else about it. As an aside, I was surprised when someone told me I was depressed because I didn’t fit the model of depression that I had imagined. It turns out there are various degrees, and “low grade” depression sucks the energy and joy out of life. I wish I had discovered all of the above at the young age of 35 - life could have been better. Good luck.
I think you're trying to read too much between the lines.
When I say I'm tired, I mean literally so. I have lots of joys in life even if it's not as wonderous anymore; lots of things I want to do. The problem is I don't have nearly enough energy nor time for them anymore as I get older. I have more responsibilities (things that need doing) as I get older and my body simply isn't as lively as when I was younger.
And that is only going to get even worse as time passes.
I know I’m just some rando on the Internet and my tiny view of a small slice of your life is not much to go on, but I’m still betting on some low level depression, or some sort of endocrine system thing. 35 is close to the prime of life. I remember being very busy with kids at that age and tired, but I wouldn’t have described things like you have. Aging IS a bitch, but I’m concerned that you feel that way already. Wait till you hit your 50’s :( Anyway, I’ll shut up and wish you all the best. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
(For context, I'm 40 and feel old too. My partner died after a short and nasty illness, which was difficult in itself, and I was left to care for our then two years old kid. I only have one responsibility, but it's more than enough...)
I only started working again recently and work very little. I was earning quite well before, and I'm very thrifty. I guess few are better prepared for disasters than me ;)
Thats cause age doesnt signal what stress or trauma you have dealt with in life.
Depends totally on the life experience of the person. Look at the reactions of friends and family to the Luigi Mangione story. They are all universally suprised and shocked. Why?
Cause the assumption is a well educated well off 26 year old can handle what ever the environment throws at them.
My aunt did Ironman into her late 60s but it's not because she was "young and full of energy" it was because "she is an absolute psychopath and it affects every aspect of her life".
Last I counted she has 5 current ongoing civil lawsuits, on both sides of the courtroom. Two of her own children won't speak to her and the third is getting there.
Yeah most places can’t comp 2 Std deviation candidates. Either in pay or experience. Beast could because he’s got the top company in the market that makes it cheap to hire talent.
>“They want that dream job title, the perfect culture fit, and a supreme compensation package right out of the gate,”
I tend to agree with that quote, but what these young people may not realize, the longer you are unemployed, the harder it is to find work.
When I graduated, the job market was as bad and I believe far worse than now. I took a series of work unrelated to my BS Degree, eventually landing in Programming which is what I was aiming for.
I think these people should at least work, even if in an unrelated field, it shows the interviewer you are flexible enough to do anything.
Yup, they're browbeating because it used to work. Shaming people into breaking the rocks.
Men aren't working because they feel there's nothing in it for them anymore. The pay barely keeps them spinning their wheels, their prospects of having something higher than themselves to live for, such as a family, are bleak, and there's no security in employment.
I know, for me, I focused on cost cutting rather than revenue generation, reduced the amount of time I have to work to virtually nothing, and instead of feeling useless, living in squalor, my standard of living went way up, not down. I get to focus on whatever I want, a lot of the time that's nothing at all, but often enough it's extremely rewarding endeavors, like FLOSS, learning, finding love and starting a family, being out in nature, cooking, constructive hobbies. I don't have a commute, I don't sit in traffic, I don't have a 4 figure rent, I've got nobody to compete with via conspicuous consumption.
This writing explained nearly everything I saw in the corporate world.
One thing I do disagree with is the promotion of enlightened underperformers. Those guys seemed to always end up leaving and starting their own companies.
> Those guys seemed to always end up leaving and starting their own companies
The “enlightened underperformer” path is high-risk/high-reward. Only a minority will be promoted up, and most will end up either doing a lateral move to another company or being promoted out.
There is a YC company that wanted a 4 hour recorded session of me coding up a problem they had given, with me explaining what I am doing for the entire 4 hours.
> It is tempting to do so because you feel things will come easier to you if you fulfill the prerequisites first. But the problem is that there is just not enough time. AND, it actually may not be even necessary.
I think this is a lesson I am learning. I am going through the book PRML throroughly (which means attempting every single exercise) and writing out the solutions.
I've seen this mentioned a few times, but is this true? I could swear I've heard him mention that he uses ChatGPT for programming stuff. He might not be a super technical software engineer, but is he "non-technical" in that he can't even write some simple python or something equivalent?
> He might not be a super technical software engineer, but is he "non-technical" in that he can't even write some simple python or something equivalent?
1. that's a very low bar, almost to the point of making any distinction meaningless
2. imho, "technical" and "non-technical" are context dependent, and not intrinsic human qualities. Speaking for myself : I'm a technical individual contributor on my current team, but there are plenty of domains (bleeding edge AI research likely being one of them) where my technical acumen would fall short of expectations for an IC, and hence where my most logical role would be non-technical in nature.
> it's often the last thing they'd ever want to talk about. With anyone, including people they are really close to.
'Get over it' is the most common response. That's why they shut up about it. People who are close to them are only close because of something positive that is being offered. Nobody wants to deal with anyone else's issues.
