20 Things I Don't Like (And 20 Things I Do Like) About Turning 40
Get ready for Existential AU.
I turned 40 last week. Generally speaking, it’s something I’m pretty OK with — and I always get annoyed by people who make too big a deal hyping up their own washedness. But it has gotten me thinking a lot about the things I like and don’t like about getting older, and the phase of life that I’m in as I officially enter middle age — a whole lot more than I’m thinking about anything Sixers-related at the moment, anyway. (And that New York Times thing interviewing famous people about being 80+ was pretty cool, though obviously doing this as a 40-year-old is a lot lower-stakes. I had this idea well before I saw that anyway.)
So here are 20 negatives and 20 positives that I’m feeling right now, alternating between them. Negatives first so I don’t have to end on a bum note. Happy birthday to me, thanks for (unwittingly) allowing me this self-indulgence and I’ll try to figure out my thoughts on Labaron Philon, Jr. by this time next week.
1a. Just to start on something basketball-related — I don’t like how I largely lost interest in the larger NBA over the course of my thirties. I’ve written about this before, and it’s kinda only gotten more true since then. Bunch of reasons why: less free time, more petty grievances, fewer players I connect to, a league that doesn’t always care about maximizing its watchability or likability, etc. etc. etc.
But the end result is that I just don’t know or care that much about the wider league anymore. I see games halfway through the season and I have to remember (or realize for the first time) what guys are on new teams. Coaches on bad teams get fired before I even know who they are. The draft happened last week and I barely knew five of the guys taken in the pre-Sixers part of the first round. I used to be The Basketball Guy in my group of friends; now I feel like a fraud trying to make any kind of pronouncements or predictions to them about what’s going on in the Association.
In a certain sense it’s fine; I probably won’t be a worse person or writer for only being able to name six guys on the Washington Wizards. But it’s still a little disconcerting to me, and the older I get, the less likely it feels like I’ll be ever be able to turn it around.
1b. I do like that I still love and care about the Sixers as much as I ever did. Or at least, I have the capability to — maybe some games I’m able to brush off a little easier than I used to be, which doesn’t feel like the worst thing in the long run anyway. But I’m still tuning in every night, I’m still watching every Summer League game till the end and caring about preseason wins and losses. And during (and after) that Game Seven against the Celtics, it was the most emotional I’ve ever been over a sporting event.
I’m not as obsessive over the minutiae as I was when the Sixers were able to take up a larger percentage of my time and mental capacity, which I think is ultimately OK. But I’d be pretty bummed if I wasn’t able to feel the team the way I used to, for better and worse. I hope I’m able to maintain that sicko level for decades to come still.
2a. I don’t like how many of my memories of my own life I’m starting to lose. Not in a medical way that’s truly concerning, but just in a way where I’ve been at mental capacity for a very long time and every new thing I learn shoves out something else, usually about myself. (Bad news for me in particular as a trivia guy, and as a regular Sporcler constantly quizzing himself on Jack Nicholson’s 12 Oscar nominations and the starting lineup for the World Series-winning 2002 Los Angeles Angels of Aneheim.)
I don’t think anything I’m forgetting is ultimately that important, otherwise I’d have thought about it recently enough to remember it now. But things are definitely going — names of old roommates and co-workers, classes I once took, running jokes with old friends, things like that. I feel like I remember about a dozen things total that I did in college, and not for fun reasons. Just that the longer you live, the more impossible it is to keep hold of everything up there, and the more you have to make peace with some stuff just being gone forever. Not a fan of that.
2b. I do like getting to watch great TV shows or movies for the first time in a decade or two and feel like I’ve forgotten them enough that I’m almost watching them again for the first time. TV in particular, I’ve come to actually prefer my second time through — or my first time in a long while, whichever time that ends up being — to the first time.
There’s something special about not only getting to relive the show — usually remembering all the big moments but not necessarily how they were connected — but about reliving who you were the first time you watched all the episodes, and the people you watched it with and the conversations you had about it afterwards and all that. It just becomes a richer experience. I like it a lot.
3a. I don’t like losing touch with people for no real reason. As I get older there are just too many people who are or have been in my life in a meaningful way — which is a blessing in one sense, of course, but also something of a curse in how it’s just not particularly possible to make consistent time and space for all of them.
I have dear friends, longtime friends, who I haven’t talked to in half a decade, simply because neither one of us has had specific reason to make the effort. I have friends I care about deeply who I am confident at this point I will never see socially again, just because the shit they’ve got going on and the shit I’ve got going on is no longer the same shit. And the longer the gap becomes, the harder it is to overcome it, because you start to wonder if there was a reason you stopped talking to them in the first place. You wonder if maybe there’s something they’ve been mad at you about forever without you realizing it. The silence multiplies.
And then if and when you do reconnect, you usually realize you were both being stupid and lazy and that there’s no reason to ever go that long without talking again. But then the clock restarts and the cycle repeats. It’s dumb and I fucking hate it.
3b. I do like having some active friendships that span multiple decades at this point and still feel really meaningful. I had a trio of high school friends surprise me at my 40th birthday party last weekend and it was an absolute emotional wallop. Being able to spend time with people who have known you in nearly every version you’ve ever been and still want to be part of your life is incredibly validating of both your past and your present, and makes you feel like you’ve maintained some critical part of your younger self all these years. There’s really nothing else quite like it.
4a. I don’t like how there are certain things I’d hoped I would organically get better at as I got older that I never did. There’s dozens of them, but the biggest is probably being able to convincingly dress like an adult, something I’ve never been good at and have shown precious little improvement upon in 22 years of technical adulthood.
I thought maybe it would come to me through the natural order of things as I grew up, or that maybe someone in my life — a significant other or an employer — would sorta force it onto me until it just became part of my life. But none of that ever happened and I still dress like an overgrown late-’90s 13-year-old 90% of the time, and an overambitious late-’90s 13-year-old unconvincingly trying to be taken seriously the other 10%.
I certainly don’t expect or deserve any sympathy for this, because I’m extremely fortunate to have a life that allows me to function ably even while I dress like I’m auditioning to be the younger brother of one of the teen witches in The Craft. And if I ever put a concerted effort into it, maybe I could dress more convincingly like a grown-up — wouldn’t be confident, but it’s not impossible. But the fact that I haven’t ever cared enough to figure it out, and that adult life hasn’t just naturally granted me the capabilities, is sort of a bummer. Again, just one of many such examples.
4b. I do like that there are things I care about now that I never would’ve expected to when I was younger. The biggest one is probably travel. Not that I’m Carmen Sandiego or anything as an adult, but when I was a teenager, I couldn’t anticipate there ever being a free-time destination for me more appealing than my own TV room. Now I go on trips out of the country basically every year and it’s fun and I love it.
Part of it is realizing the things my family prioritized on trips (museums, historical landmarks, guided tours) and the things I prioritize (eating, drinking, wandering) are very different, and part of it is that I now have a travel partner who I enjoy going places with and is significantly better at trip-planning than I am. But my brother and I used to give my dad such shit for his love of scenic overlooks, and his insistence on stopping at one at any given opportunity. Now I enjoy a good scenic overlook as much as anybody. It’s cool to be able to change in those small ways.
5a. I don’t like losing my hair. I fucking hate it really. It’s the one physical thing about myself I have great difficulty accepting. In my head I still have the hair that I had when I was in my early 20s, and if I catch myself in the mirror at the right time at the right angle I can still convince myself that it’s close enough to actually being the case. Then I see a picture of myself from the side or I catch a glimpse of myself after the wind has blown my hair back or something and I realize the game is long over. It knocks the breath out of me every time.
It could be worse; by the time my brother was my age he’d been almost totally bald for years. But maybe that would be preferable at this point, so I could completely give up the ghost and just embrace a lifetime of going fully Matt Pinfield (and/or committing to being a regular hat-wearer). I dunno. I wish I could just go back. I always will.
5b. I do like how generally, my body has held up pretty well. Not that it’s a perfect or even good body; I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to any of my friends or anything. But it more or less feels like the same body I’ve had for the last decade or two. The things about it that have gotten worse don’t change my life or the way I live it that much. The things that it’s particularly bad at are things that it’s always been particularly bad at. There isn’t much that I want to do that I used to be able to do that my body just won’t let me do anymore.
I really don’t take that for granted. I know plenty of people around my age who can’t eat the way they used to, can’t drink the way they used to, can’t get around the way they used to. I know people who are missing basic functions they used to have. To have a body that still allows myself a basic baseline of livability — without even doing most of the things I probably should be doing to ensure that it stays that way — is a true blessing.
6a. I don’t like how much I hate the winter now. The cold in general just kinda fucks me up. It was never my jam in the first place, but I used to be relatively tolerant about it. I went all through college in New York without wearing a jacket, for reasons that currently escape me. But I did it, and I don’t remember it being a particularly big deal.
But now I just can’t handle it. I get to January and it’s like OH MY GOD ENOUGH WITH THIS ALREADY. I get mad. I get sick. I take it personally. I’ll rant to anyone who’s willing to listen (and probably some who aren’t) about how fucking done I am with winter and how much I hate it and think it’s dumb and wish it would just stop just stop just STOP COME ON NOW. Every winter it’s worse. Every winter I get more irritable. Every winter I get more aggravated by that fake first warm part of spring when it then gets cold again for a little while. I don’t know how much worse I can get but I don’t see me getting much better, at least until I’m a retiree living in Arizona or something.
6b. I do like how much I love the summer now. I was always a summer guy, but now I really cherish the season, feel honored by its presence in my life. Everything is happier for me in summer. I would rather do absolutely nothing in the summer than do just about anything in the winter. Starting in mid-June, I tell Lisa every day how much I love the summer and how sad I am that it’s almost over. I love it almost as much as I hate the winter.
7a. I don’t like how scary going to the doctor is now. I’m beyond overdue for my most recent visit; it’s been a good long time since I went for non-urgent reasons. But I am at the point where I’m afraid every time that the next time I go is going to be the end of the good times. It’s going to be the time where I get informed about the Secret Thing Wrong With Me that means I have to totally stop doing everything I like doing and start living a totally different life just to maintain that baseline. Or that it’s already too late and that it’s just a matter before my body totally betrays me no matter what I do now.
So I put off going as long as possible. Which is the dumbest thing of all, because it actively increases the chances that the next time I go, the vague thing I’m fearing will actually end up being the reality. I’ll have to figure out a way to force myself to go sometime in the next few months. But it’s hard. And it’s only ever going to get harder.
7b. I do like that I’ve gotten smarter about day-to-day maintenance things that allow me to generally feel better in the small ways that I control. Now when I drink too much, I take Advil before I go to bed so I don’t wake up with a splitting headache. When I’m gonna have a lot of dairy, I take antacids first to minimize the heartburn. When I’m gonna eat an unbalanced diet, I take fiber pills to make sure I still shit OK. Sorry for the oversharing there, but I also like that I’m generally less embarrassed about the kind of daily upkeep stuff that it’s worth admitting does make me a generally happier, healthier person. It’s really not the worst thing.
8a. I don’t like how there are certain anxieties that it seems like at this point I’m probably just never going to lose. Any time I text someone who doesn’t text me back, any time I’m afraid I’ve done or said something insensitive, any time I think I’ve made a considerable professional gaffe, my brain will fixate on the worst possible reality that could result from any of it until my entire being is taken over with it as if it has already actually happened. Never mind that the last 49 times something like that happened it turned out to not really be much; that just makes it like I’m facing a hitter that’s had a long 0-fer streak and convincing myself that only means he’s that much more due this time around.
It’s terrible. It’s one of my worst, most self-destructive qualities. It forces me into seemingly endless spirals that consume days, weeks, sometimes even months of my life. Moments that should have been joyous or prideful turn sour. And it hasn’t gotten better with age; I still always feel like the next one is gonna be the big one, the one that belatedly validates every insecurity I’ve ever had and proves I was always right to be so paranoid all along.
8b. I do like that, even though I haven’t gotten any better at not having these spirals, or not spiraling so hard when I have them, I do have a better sense that when I do spiral, chances are I’m eventually going to come out of it. It doesn’t make them any better in the moment, but it does make them a little less destructive in the long term, because I’m at least better at not making any rash decisions based on them that actually will affect my larger life. I’ve gone through enough of these at this point to know I’ve just got to kind of give myself over to the spiral for a little bit, get to the other side of what I’m worried about, and life will probably go on at the end of it. It’s something, anyway.
9a. I don’t like how things feel like they’re actively getting worse in the world and in society — but particularly how it’s hard to tell how much of that is reality and how much of it is just getting older.
There are so many things it feels like I could point to about this being an exceptionally bad time in human (and particularly American) history, things that seem like proof of societal devolution, of cultural regression, of the erosion of basic common morality and decency. But, like… doesn’t every generation eventually come to think that? Isn’t it a typical middle-age cliché to start to feel that way? Am I just surrounding myself with other people entering a similar stage of life who are also starting to think this way and unable to separate their own perspectives from the larger truths of the matter? Or is it actually ignorant of me to face everything wrong with the world and think my aging viewpoint could outweigh all the superficially obvious actual fucking bullshit?
Hard to tell sometimes.
9b. I do like how I’ve lived long enough to see that the way things always have been aren’t the way things always have to be. Attitudes about LGBTQ rights, about sexual harassment and discrimination, about cultural awareness, about what can and can’t be accepted into the American mainstream — all of that has evolved over 40 years (or really the 30 years or so that I’ve been in any way socially conscious) to a point that I never would have guessed when I first started paying attention.
Even as some of that is seemingly starting to go back in the wrong direction, there are undeniable strides that have been made and are still being made that will probably continue to change the world in ways I can’t possibly predict right now. It’s cool to know that that’s the case, because you’ve actually been around enough to see the proof of it.
10a. I don’t like how it’s harder to be exceptional for your age at something when you’re 40. I was a fairly precocious motherfucker when I was younger, and knowing stuff about older movies and music and thing was something I could rely on — in my head, anyway — to make me seem impressive to people. Now that kind of knowledge is all just Old People Stuff anyway, and I’d be wise to downplay it in most public situations. (Not that I can usually resist.)
And it’s just kinda true in general. By the time you’re 40 you’re supposed to be good at some stuff. It’s more depressing if you’re not than impressive if you are. You don’t get to coast on being ahead of the curve anymore.
10b. I do like how I can be a little more confident professionally that the things I’m good at are actually things that I’m good at. I don’t always feel like the best writer or editor in the world, and yeah I get the Impostor Syndrome thing from time to time like anyone. But for the last 16 years now, I’ve been paid pretty comfortably and pretty consistently to write and edit — so shit, someone out there must think I’m pretty good at it. It’s fortunate to have that kind of hard, objective validation for the main thing that you do.
11a. I don’t like how it’s harder to start on totally new things the older you get. Sometimes I get ideas for new projects or new skills to learn or whatever and I have to ask myself — am I too old to start doing this for the first time?
Not that that should ever be the only consideration, and I certainly don’t want to punk myself out of real opportunities with my own premature ageism. But I just feel like it would be impractical not to consider it with certain things. If I was going to try to start a video series discussing the Billboard charts, isn’t it worth asking myself first if I’ll be able to pick up the nuances of the format as well as someone half my age who’s been doing video their entire life? Or if I’ll even be able to handle the technological parts of it without needing to outsource so much of it that it becomes financially and practically unfeasible? Of if anyone is actually going to want to watch a balding, overweight 40-year-old they’ve never seen before talk about contemporary pop music once a week? Maybe, but maybe not.
Which isn’t to say that I don’t want to still push myself into new ventures and continue to try new things and so on. But it’s just a little harder to be excited about yourself being at the center of those things once you’ve moved into middle age.
11b. I do like how it’s easier to know my capabilities for the kind of things I have done before. I can get an idea to do something in my wheelhouse — a list, a podcast series, a staff-wide something or other — and no matter how ambitious it is, I know if I give myself a certain amount of time to do it (and I tell enough people that I’m going to do it), one way or the other, I’ll get it done.
Sometimes I go a little too far or too hard with it, and getting the project done to my satisfaction in the allotted timeframe comes at a certain cost to my health, my sanity and/or my relationships. But I do get it done. And I know that I will, because I’ve done it so many times before. It’s really nice to be able to have that kind of faith in yourself and your abilities.
12a. I don’t like how the evolution of media has cut most of the pop cultural institutions of my youth from the current timeline. I find it very upsetting that the fact that still being a devoted viewer of cable television — along with my tendency to watch a movie I only sort of like for the seventh time just because it’s on — basically makes me an 8-track enthusiast to most of my peers. I don’t like having to explain to younger co-workers that the Video Music Awards (not only the show, but also the awards themselves) were something that used to carry real cultural weight. Radio countdowns, ESPN Classic retrospectives, special trivia issues of Entertainment Weekly… I’m confident I sound like Grandpa Simpson talking to anyone under the age of 30 (35?) about any of ‘em.
And I’m sure there are TikTok- and YouTubeified versions of all of these things, and the young folks who really want to learn about this stuff will certainly find a way. And I’m confident my parents went through the same thing with my brother and me when they were my age. But it’s just a weird feeling to know that the great majority of ways you figured out about pop culture as a kid are no longer really available or of interest in the same way to future generations.
12b. I do like seeing canons shift as I get older. Sometimes it can be frustrating, of course — I’ll never understand why Pearl Jam has been totally left behind to history. But my favorite band growing up was New Order, a band who at the time was more commercially successful but far less critically celebrated than its first incarnation, Joy Division. Now the two are basically on equal cultural standing; you’ll find T-shirts for Power, Corruption & Lies besides the ones for Unknown Pleasures at Urban Outfitters. I’m happy to see that.
It’s not just the changes that tilt in my favor that intrigue me, though. I’m forever annoyed that “Vienna,” a song I view as (at best) the seventh-best song on The Stranger and which I never once heard on the radio growing up, is now considered one of Billy Joel’s signature songs due to its Gen-Z embrace. But I think it’s cool that such canons continue to evolve 50 years after the fact. And the fact that TikTok has made it so that any song from any time can still pop off as one of the biggest songs in the world I think is super dope. It makes music history feel that much more vital to know that at any moment, the past can still so heavily impact (and be so heavily impacted by) the present.
13a. I don’t like how a lot of the media of youth culture has left me totally in the dust. Growing up I thought as long as I stayed current with music, movies, television and sports, I’d be in pretty good shape with contemporary pop culture. It didn’t occur to me that totally new core elements of pop culture would develop — probably should have, but certainly didn’t — with influencer and streamer culture, internet fandom splintering, TikTok becoming the new MTV, and so on. It’s all so wildly alien to my experience that I had to admit defeat with it almost immediately; to try to catch up now would be a full-time job.
Not that it’s a particular tragedy to not be well-versed in IShowSpeed’s work as a 40-year-old; to a certain extent that’s none of my business anyway. But at one point, I did consider myself something of a pop culture expert — and come on, I did winning a fucking nationally televised television trivia competition to that effect, dammit — and for there now to be several major streams of pop culture that I have close to zero frame of reference for… it’s not shocking, it’s maybe even inevitable, but it is distinctly sobering.
13b. I do like how I still love and feel deeply connected to contemporary pop music. It’d certainly be good for my job at Billboard for me to be better versed in TikTok and YouTube, but it’d be a much more considerable fucking problem if I was faking the funk as far as the actual music we were covering goes. And I did always worry that there might be a point with me and modern music where I could follow it on an intellectual level but not really a visceral one, where the music stopped saying anything of real relevance or importance to me. Certainly that happened with my parents; it’s already happened with a lot of my friends. Hell, it’s even happened to some of my older co-workers.
I’m very happy that it hasn’t happened to me yet. I’m not necessarily looking for new artists to tell me something about my life the way I might have when I was a teen, but I still just fucking love pop music. I still get so excited by a great pop song doing well on the charts, by a great new pop artist becoming a superstar. I saw Olivia Rodrigo and Bad Bunny in concert in Spain a few days apart earlier this month and both experiences were absolutely electric and impossibly joyous. And I still feel like I just get it. And I enjoy following it all so much, watching the ups and downs, the microtrends shifting one way and then back, the unexpected developments popping out of nowhere. It still feels like an honor to get to cover all of it. I’d be so sad if I ever lost that, and I’m very glad that at this point I really don’t think I will.
14a. I don’t like how much easier it is to accidentally come off as creepy or just kinda unwelcome as a 40-year-old — and how much I now need to consider that possibility in everything that I do. Particularly in the workplace, I like to be social and I enjoy the company of a lot of my younger co-workers, but I also have to constantly be checking myself: Am I overstaying my welcome? Am I injecting myself into a conversation that I categorically do not belong in? How much is my presence actually desired at this function, or how much is it junior staffers not wanting to seem rude to a more senior one?
Even in a purely professional capacity, it also stinks to constantly be worrying about becoming the office blowhard. I’m often reticent to talk to my younger co-workers even about something purely work-related, because I’ve worked with the guy who was constantly sending notes and making comments just to hear the sound of his own voice and just to make himself feel useful and important, and I very much do not want to be that guy. But I don’t know if anyone ever tells you when you become that guy. Maybe everyone just assumes you’ve always been him. Maybe you really always have been.
14b. I do like that being 40 kinda leaves me in the middle of my co-workers agewise, so that I don’t feel totally disconnected generationally from either upper management or our staff writers. It’s particularly crazy that FOTB Jason Lipshutz, my former IRL roommate, is not only my boss now, but one of the big bosses of the entire editorial staff — it’s cool to not just have a buddy in that position, but someone so close to my age and my experience. When I go to talk to him I don’t have to feel like a kid visiting the principal’s office.
And I’m very comfortable being middle-management while being middle-aged. I have no real desire to be one of the big bosses, but I also wouldn’t feel great about still grinding away at a junior position at 40. I feel like I’m generally where I should be level-wise professionally, which is certainly a privilege to get to say.
15a. I don’t like that I still read the comments, still let them bother me sometimes. I don’t like that I still want more for myself in terms of visibility, recognition from my peers, acknowledgment of who I am and what I do. I don’t like that I get jealous of my peers who have real followings, who’ve written books, who have way more social media presence (and/or real life presence) than I do. I don’t like that I still get those moments of wondering if any of it is really worth it, if I should just keep my head down and do what I have to do and not really try that hard with anything beyond what is specifically asked of me. You hope when you’re younger that you eventually grow beyond all of that; I certainly haven’t, and it doesn’t seem like many people I know have either.
15b. I do like that I mostly still end up doing what I do anyway. Sometimes it’s just for a couple hundred listeners or readers, sometimes it’s just for a handful of my friends, sometimes it’s just for me and me only. But more often than not, I get through those moments of panic and doubt and insecurity and I just do my shit. And I usually end up feeling pretty good about it. Not always, and not always forever, but enough that I’ll probably end up doing it again the next time, too. And I’ve done it enough by now to feel confident that that’ll be the case.
16a. I don’t like that I am absolutely terrified of having to start over at this point in my professional life. I’m sure everyone with a job lives with that fear, but it feels particularly pronounced in my line of work, where there’s sort of an industry-wide understanding that if you lose your full-time job, you’re not getting another one. The island of folks who get to do this for a living shrinks every year, and once the waves swallow you there’s no swimming back to shore.
If I lose my job at Billboard, the options for me are either to start my own newsletter, attempt to cobble together enough freelance work to roughly add up to one full-time job, or to leave music writing altogether. All three options are very frightening for different reasons. I know people who have made each of them work, and no one will or should cry for me if I’m next to have to figure out which one is best for me. But to have done this for as long as I have now — nearly 10 years at this job, about 15 years total as a full-time music writer — and not get to do it anymore will be an exceptionally difficult adjustment for me, and one that I live in constant fear of having to make. Because chances are I will at some point.
And it’s not just work, either. Any major life reboot at this point is one that would be tremendously tough for me to recover from. In a sense that’s a gift, because it means I’m comfortable where I am now, and it’s not like I’ve ever been particularly excited at the prospect of uprooting myself. But the idea of having to start over at 40 — with my job, with my relationship, even with my apartment — is exponentially scarier than it would’ve been 10 years ago, and most likely exponentially less scary than it will be 10 years from now. Good to have stuff to not want to lose, but hard to hold onto all of it.
16b. I do like having been at Billboard long enough that if I was fired tomorrow, I do feel like I would be missed. Certainly not by everyone, and probably not as much as I’d ideally like, but in general my departure would be noticed and felt and to at least some extent, mourned. I’m certainly not irreplaceable — no one is — but I’ve done enough to put my imprint on the office and the staff and the brand that there would be a specifically shaped hole that my absence would leave. I’ve tried hard to, anyway, in a way that earlier in my life I might not have. It makes it all feel a little more meaningful.
17a. I don’t like how the longer you’re around, the more versions of yourself that you could potentially be start to rapidly disappear. A small part of me will likely always believe that I should have spent my life as a session drummer, but considering I’m now 40 and have still never actually learned how to play the drums, it’s probably a little late for that. A lot of things I’ve never done at this point, I’ll never do. “Never” feels tough.
Not that I would necessarily be all that enthusiastic about upending my life to go into full-time drumming territory even if that was a realistic path to professional or personal success. And not that it’s ever really too late to try that or anything else; I know people who have made fairly dramatic life changes in their 40s and are much happier for it. But it’s hard not to feel like some more of those options are falling away every year, and scary to know that even if I wanted to change my life dramatically now — or especially if I did 10 years from now — the number of unlocked doors would be fewer, and even some of those would be pretty hard to open.
17b. I do like that I like the version of myself that I am at 40 probably more than I ever have, or at least for as long as I’ve been an adult. I’ve had moments of being scared about not being the version of myself I would ultimately want to be, but these days I’m much more scared that I won’t get to continue being this version of myself for as long as I want — which, for now at least, is basically indefinitely. My primary emotion when I look at where I am now, where I’ve been and where I could be going isn’t regret or panic but gratitude. That feels super lucky.
18a. I really don’t like how one of my parents is dead and has been for the better part of a decade now. When my dad died in 2018 at age 65, it felt way too soon, but it feels a whole lot younger to me now at 40 than it did to me then at 32. It’s kinda making me angry after the fact in a way I never totally felt at the time. He was barely retirement age. He wasn’t even retired yet himself. He never got to enjoy a pressure-free life. He never got to see Bryce Harper on the Phillies. There’s a lot of life that he missed out on. There’s a lot of life I would be pissed off to not get to experience if I was him. There’s a lot I wish he could have been there for.
I don’t want to be angry about it, and I don’t think he’d want me to be angry about it, and so it’s not something I dwell on often. He had a great life and he left us with everything we could have wanted from him. But looking at 65 being just 25 years away now… it really doesn’t feel like he got a lot of time. He deserved so much more.
18b. I do like how my mom is still living a good and full life, that I still have a great relationship with her, that she’s still an absolute rock for me and my brother, who I also feel closer to than ever. I like that we’ve been given the time we needed to figure out who we are as a family even without my dad around, and still be able to find joy and comfort with one another. I like how our relationships with each other have evolved and deepened over the years. I like knowing how my dad would like to see us how we are together now.
19a. I don’t like not knowing what the future holds. Nobody does, I imagine, and I don’t think I necessarily have particular reason to be more fearful than most. But it’s that feeling of being due at the plate again, and the older I get and the more years I go since the last major tragedy in my life, the more I feel like it’s surely about time for another. A health scare that turns out to be more than just a scare. A professional blow that can’t be recovered from. An action whose consequences will never be undone. I don’t know what it is, it’s just hard to shake the fear that it’s coming.
I hope I’m wrong — but the problem is, grand scheme, I’m definitely not wrong. It’s impossible to live a life where none of that stuff happens ever. It’s just a matter of when, and you hope the answer is a long time from now. But the older you get, the harder it is to act like all that is so far beyond the horizon it’s not even worth thinking about. And once you start thinking about it, it can be pretty hard to stop.
19b. I do like how many such near crises have been averted over the years by me and the people I care about. Both Lisa’s parents and my mom have had major health scares that they’ve basically gotten through. My brother’s brain has been extremely mean to him the past couple years — still is, occasionally — but he’s bounced back in an incredible way, and we just spent a lot of my birthday weekend in New York together with his wife and Lisa feeling like old times. Better than old times, even, considering how grateful we were to all be there. Everything could be so much worse than it is.
It won’t be this way forever, because nothing is. But it is for now, and I’m glad I know to appreciate how special that is.
20a. I don’t like thinking I’m closer to the end than the beginning. Not trying to be dramatic, or to make 40 seem like I’ve already got one foot in the grave. Just a mathematical probability — at least according to the internet, which says men are currently pacing at 76.5 years on average in this country. Seems about right.
I’m terrified of death, of nothingness, of a lack of consciousness. I’m terrified of a slow death and I’m terrified of a quick death. I’m terrified of a death I see coming and I’m terrified of one that takes me completely by surprise. None of it sounds OK to me. None of it sounds manageable. In comparison to death, life seems pretty solid, and I’d like to stay on the latter path for as long as possible. But I’m certainly not gonna live like one of those billionaire extend-o nuts — couldn’t even if I wanted to — and the rest of it is what it is. Can’t say I like that much at all.
And even before that, I really don’t know what the final stage of my life could possibly look like. Lisa and I don’t have kids, neither do my brother and his wife or Lisa’s sister and her husband. There’s no next generation to take care of us. Hopefully we’ll have some retirement money by then — I know, making a call to Anthony Degli Obizzi is definitely on my list for the next year — but it’s not gonna be a fortune, and the bottom could fall out for any of us financially at any moment before then.
It’s hard for me to picture. I’d still rather not even try. But I’ll have to someday, and that day isn’t as long from now as I’d like. Fuck, I’ll be lucky to even get to that day. My dad didn’t.
20b. I do like that I made it this far. When I was 20 I couldn’t imagine my life at 40, couldn’t imagine myself with any amount of professional or personal success, couldn’t imagine myself living an adult life devoted to anything but trying desperately to cling to whatever last scraps of youth were even moderately available to me. To be here at 40 with a job and a partner and a family and friends and a life that I all love — and writing about all this shit on a platform as esteemed as the Ricky — is kinda overwhelming when I think about it. It’s a real accomplishment, and one of my bigger ones.
Not dying would be an even bigger one, and I’ll probably focus on that one more on the off chance that I’m still around and writing on here 40 years from now. But for now, I think I can afford to leave on this one as my primary takeaway. Half my life ago, I never would’ve guessed I’d have so much to still like about my life at this point. Maybe I shouldn’t discount the possibility of my saying the same thing twice my life from now.
Andrew Unterberger writes for The Rights To Ricky Sanchez, as part of the ‘If Not, Pick Will Convey as Two Second-Rounders’ section of the site. You can follow Andrew on Twitter @AUGetoffmygold and can also read him at Billboard.