Grumpy middleage

[????]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-20591893

...all is explained here Woodrot

[woodrot]

Woodrot is a badly executed internet semi troll. I am only half as miserable in the meatspace.

[*Bob*]

Er.. pot / kettle / black ?!

[????]

:(

[Otta]

I'm not even middleaged yet, but I've started being a proper grumpy bastard quite early.

[*Bob*]

We should start a support group.

Actually, I think we're already in it.

[womanofdulwich]

Personally, I think the quicker you realise material things are not important( up to a point) the happier you will be.

A lot of unhappiness is to do with wanting things you cannot have/ covet.

Afraid to say it took redundancy and being 50 for me to realise this.

[Otta]

I think you're right WOD. I have a very bad habit of just buying things I want ("oh I must have that guitar pedal, it looks so cool, even though I will probably have little or no use for it, it's only ?150"). But now that my income is not mine alone to waste, I am constantly feeling grumpy about things I can't have, or I'm having them then feeling very worried about the consequences.

Perhaps I'll be good with money by my 40s...

[womanofdulwich]

I am pretty sure you will- but your peer group has to be the same- no good them showing you their new stuff all the time-unless you can retaliate with home made something that costed little but you spent HOURS making. :/

[LondonMix]

Hang out with people that make less money than you! You'll save loads and want less :)

[womanofdulwich]

LOL :)

Exactly.

[Otta]

LondonMix Wrote:

-------------------------------------------------------

> Hang out with people that make less money than

> you! You'll save loads and want less :)

Annoyingly, up until the last couple of years I did earn more than most of my close friends, but my income seems to have peaked (and it's not that impressive a peak) whilst they're all climbing ladders. Bastards!

[LondonMix]

Dump 'em, its the only way forward!

[Salsaboy]

Kick their ladders away.

[DulwichFox]

When I take a long look at my life, as though from outside, it does not appear particularly happy.

Yet I am even less justified in calling it unhappy, despite all its mistakes.

After all, it is foolish to keep probing for happiness or unhappiness, for it seems to me it would be hard to exchange the unhappiest days of my life for all the happy ones.

If what matters in a person?s existence is to accept the inevitable consciously, to taste the good and bad to the full and to make for oneself a more individual, unaccidental and inward destiny alongside one?s external fate, then my life has been neither empty nor worthless.

Even if, as it is decreed by the gods, fate has inexorably trod over my external existence as it does with everyone, my inner life has been of my own making . I deserve its sweetness and bitterness and accept full responsibility for it.

Herman Hesse : German Poet (1877 ? 1962) who recieved nobel prize for literature.

http://www.philosopherzone.com/hermann-hesse-quotes/

[Ted Max]

I remember reading that the average age at which a man or a woman in the UK will have maximum disposable income across their lifetime (ie. the age when you are at your "richest") is 34.

I was 34 at the time, and broke to buggery. Cheered me right up, that did.

[Otta]

I'm 34 now. Great, just fucking great!

[*Bob*]

Just a slow downhill slide into the grave now then, Otta.

[Ted Max]

Yeah, but Otta must accept that his inner life has been of his own making, and he deserves its sweetness and bitterness.

[Otta]

Wouldn't that involve taking some responsibility? I don't like to do that.

[MrBen]

I've started to quite like to potter about my house. For example, a typical Saturday pottering sequence could involve fixing something, talking to some plants in my garden, picking up my guitar, hoovering and cooking cheese on toast before brewing up some gin punch. Is this a middle age man thing? I'm 36 years old.

[Otta]

I recently bought a drill.

[malumbu]

I keeo putting things down and then forgetting where I put them

And forgetting names

And peeing people off on this chat room with my fantastic self-depricating wit.

The latter is of course a talent and nowt to do with middle age.

And no focus hence too long spent on this site when I have other things to do.

[Salsaboy]

I'm happy. I'm 48. Does that make me middle aged?

[????]

Approaching old age Slasaboy, the happiness is an illusion bought on by dementia