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So, today is my 50th birthday. I never thought I'd get here.
I should explain: I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in the shadow of the Cold War. We were always about twenty minutes and a bad night's sleep from total nuclear annihilation by Mutually Assured Destruction, the world was always on the brink of ending. By the time I was in my late teens, I was convinced I wasn't going to see thirty (which, I have to admit, did absolutely nothing for the raging depression I had at the time).
But now I'm fifty, which is like... crumbs! I've made it. I made my way through half a century. Wow!
So, what's changed? Well, for a start, the climate I'm living in has changed. I'm still in the same city I grew up in, but when I was a kid and a teenager, my birthday was usually the signal of the beginning of the winter storms. This year? Well, there's a category two tropical cyclone off the coast of Timor, heading south-west (Tropical cyclone Seroja, if you're interested - go look up the track map), and it might head toward the WA coast on Thursday or Friday this week. Which will be... interesting for April. This is what climate change does over the course of about forty-three years (the climate started changing here in about 1976 or 1977).
The technology has changed. I've seen the explosion of the public internet, and the way it's changed so much of how we do so many things (as a practical example: I had an essay to write for university that I was able to complete, from scratch, without setting foot outside the house, because I was able to access all the materials I needed electronically, download them to my computer, and work on my computer at home rather than having to go in to the university library or a university computer lab to access these things). I've seen the miniaturisation of telephone technology, and the ways that the mobile phone has come to be the single multi-purpose device for everything these days (when I was born, the phone was a fixed thing, attached to a landline, and it did one job).
Fashion has changed... and then again, it hasn't. The standard "teen uniform" of jeans and t-shirt has remained pretty constant in its overall form for the last fifty years (yes, okay, the particular style of jeans, the preferred shape and size of the t-shirts and such has altered from year to year - but the overall outfit hasn't changed too much). There's been styles going in and out and round about, and I've seen the seventies come back a few times (never quite in their original eye-watering tackiness, thank heavens) as well as the eighties and the nineties having their cyclical revivals. But people are still wearing clothes, and it's largely clothes their grandparents recognise as clothes (as opposed to the science-fictional bodysuits and utility garments which were being forecast back in the 1970s).
The world of work has changed, and the overall trajectory of the ways the world of work was imagined have altered too. Back when I was a child, I'm just old enough to remember the idea of the working week getting shorter - we were seeing the forty-hour week dropping down to 38 hours, then 37 and a half, and there was talk of a thirty-five hour working week in the future. These days... not so much. The eighties changed a lot of stuff, and one of the big changes which came about in the eighties with the arrival of neo-liberal economic theory was the idea that job security and the shorter working week were things of the past - the eighties is when the idea of "a job for life" died horribly, and when the idea of "work-life balance" consisting of "your work is your life, and therefore things are in balance" really came back with a rush. Everything since then has been tweaking the idea in more corporate-friendly directions. But I'm just old enough that I remember back when unions had power, and where strikes were a regular thing. Not all the changes were good ones.
I've changed. I've learned there's a word for the way my brain works that isn't "weirdo" (I'm autistic, and learning that actually felt like snapping a dislocated bone into place - all of a sudden, things were a lot more comfortable, and it was a lot easier to deal with things). I'm a lot less prone to depression and anxiety than I used to be (or at least, I've learned how to handle the anxiety so it doesn't get a chance to sour into depression anywhere near as often as it used to do). I'm older, and my hormones are busy giving me the first signs of perimenopause (yay, I get to go through puberty part II, and deal with my body switching from high-oestrogen chemistry to low-oestrogen chemistry), so I'm getting things like hot flushes and periods (because why should it be easy?). Getting out of bed in the morning is a bit harder than it used to be, and it takes me a bit longer to recover from things like sleeping in an uncomfortable position.
I still don't feel like I'm an actual-factual "grown-up", and at this rate, I don't think I ever shall. But I'm largely happy with where I am now. I have a job I enjoy, a partner I like being with, a place to live we're happy living in, and I'm getting closer to finishing the degree I've promised myself I'm going to get (just for the joy of getting one). Life is good, overall.
But yeah. Fifty. Wow!
I should explain: I grew up in the 1970s and 1980s, in the shadow of the Cold War. We were always about twenty minutes and a bad night's sleep from total nuclear annihilation by Mutually Assured Destruction, the world was always on the brink of ending. By the time I was in my late teens, I was convinced I wasn't going to see thirty (which, I have to admit, did absolutely nothing for the raging depression I had at the time).
But now I'm fifty, which is like... crumbs! I've made it. I made my way through half a century. Wow!
So, what's changed? Well, for a start, the climate I'm living in has changed. I'm still in the same city I grew up in, but when I was a kid and a teenager, my birthday was usually the signal of the beginning of the winter storms. This year? Well, there's a category two tropical cyclone off the coast of Timor, heading south-west (Tropical cyclone Seroja, if you're interested - go look up the track map), and it might head toward the WA coast on Thursday or Friday this week. Which will be... interesting for April. This is what climate change does over the course of about forty-three years (the climate started changing here in about 1976 or 1977).
The technology has changed. I've seen the explosion of the public internet, and the way it's changed so much of how we do so many things (as a practical example: I had an essay to write for university that I was able to complete, from scratch, without setting foot outside the house, because I was able to access all the materials I needed electronically, download them to my computer, and work on my computer at home rather than having to go in to the university library or a university computer lab to access these things). I've seen the miniaturisation of telephone technology, and the ways that the mobile phone has come to be the single multi-purpose device for everything these days (when I was born, the phone was a fixed thing, attached to a landline, and it did one job).
Fashion has changed... and then again, it hasn't. The standard "teen uniform" of jeans and t-shirt has remained pretty constant in its overall form for the last fifty years (yes, okay, the particular style of jeans, the preferred shape and size of the t-shirts and such has altered from year to year - but the overall outfit hasn't changed too much). There's been styles going in and out and round about, and I've seen the seventies come back a few times (never quite in their original eye-watering tackiness, thank heavens) as well as the eighties and the nineties having their cyclical revivals. But people are still wearing clothes, and it's largely clothes their grandparents recognise as clothes (as opposed to the science-fictional bodysuits and utility garments which were being forecast back in the 1970s).
The world of work has changed, and the overall trajectory of the ways the world of work was imagined have altered too. Back when I was a child, I'm just old enough to remember the idea of the working week getting shorter - we were seeing the forty-hour week dropping down to 38 hours, then 37 and a half, and there was talk of a thirty-five hour working week in the future. These days... not so much. The eighties changed a lot of stuff, and one of the big changes which came about in the eighties with the arrival of neo-liberal economic theory was the idea that job security and the shorter working week were things of the past - the eighties is when the idea of "a job for life" died horribly, and when the idea of "work-life balance" consisting of "your work is your life, and therefore things are in balance" really came back with a rush. Everything since then has been tweaking the idea in more corporate-friendly directions. But I'm just old enough that I remember back when unions had power, and where strikes were a regular thing. Not all the changes were good ones.
I've changed. I've learned there's a word for the way my brain works that isn't "weirdo" (I'm autistic, and learning that actually felt like snapping a dislocated bone into place - all of a sudden, things were a lot more comfortable, and it was a lot easier to deal with things). I'm a lot less prone to depression and anxiety than I used to be (or at least, I've learned how to handle the anxiety so it doesn't get a chance to sour into depression anywhere near as often as it used to do). I'm older, and my hormones are busy giving me the first signs of perimenopause (yay, I get to go through puberty part II, and deal with my body switching from high-oestrogen chemistry to low-oestrogen chemistry), so I'm getting things like hot flushes and periods (because why should it be easy?). Getting out of bed in the morning is a bit harder than it used to be, and it takes me a bit longer to recover from things like sleeping in an uncomfortable position.
I still don't feel like I'm an actual-factual "grown-up", and at this rate, I don't think I ever shall. But I'm largely happy with where I am now. I have a job I enjoy, a partner I like being with, a place to live we're happy living in, and I'm getting closer to finishing the degree I've promised myself I'm going to get (just for the joy of getting one). Life is good, overall.
But yeah. Fifty. Wow!
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Congratulations!
I'm glad you made it, and that your life is good, overall.
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I turn 60 this month and was nodding along at everything you said.
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