Young At 40 Yet Old At 36

Posted on by Astrid

Hi all! A few weeks ago, my spouse sent me a YouTube short about millennials’ reactions to the idea of midlife. According to the American Psychological Association, or that’s what the YouTuber said, midlife starts at 36.

Then I read a blog post today in which the author, now retired, reflects on how she imagined retirement to be when she was still young… at 40.

I am 38. Does this mean I’m in midlife or does it mean I’m still young? It probably depends on your perspective.

After all, with respect to my daily life, since I don’t work or study and since I’m childfree, it allows me the same freedom a retiree would have. I also enjoy many things older people enjoy, such as crafting. That is, often younger women do craft, but it’s more for their kids.

With respect to my health, it’s a mixed bag. I am physically healthier than I was five years ago thanks to weight loss and moving more. I however do notice the effects of my disabilities (and probably my history of obesity too), in that I’m probably less fit than many women my age. For one thing, I do find that my knees hurt regularly.

All this being said, age is in many respects just a number for me. Sometimes, I feel like a lady in her seventies, while at other times, I feel quite childlike, both in a positive and a negative way.

Statistically speaking, I do realize I’m at midlife. This sometimes causes me to worry about aging, but then again I always had this worry that I’d die young. That’s not necessarily specific to midlife. I am pretty sure, in fact, that now that I’m physically fitter, the worry is less about myself. That doesn’t mean the worry has gone, but now it’s more of an existential dread regarding the world as a whole. I don’t think one is easier to deal with for me than the other.

I’m linking up with Talking About It Tuesday and #WWWhimsy.

#WeekendCoffeeShare (February 22, 2025)

Posted on by Astrid

Hi everyone. I’m joining #WeekendCoffeeShare once again. It’s almost 10:30PM here, so no coffee for me. Since this is a virtual get-together, you’re free to grab your own beverage of choice. Let’s have a drink and let’s chat.

If we were having coffee, first I’d talk about the weather. It’s been all over the place with freezing night-time temps and daytime highs hardly above freezing early in the week, then a daytime high of 16°C yesterday. Today the daytime high was 12°C, which is still quite warm for late February. Unfortunately, it was raining most of the day today.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that this week was a mixed bag mental health-wise. I’ve mostly been quite tired, but the bloodwork I had done on Monday came back all clear. I wish there was something simple that could explain my daytime tiredness, but I’m pretty sure that if I pressure the doctor to do more testing, they’ll just say I shouldn’t give in to fatigue, as I was told the last few times (many years ago) that I complained of being too tired.

Yesterday was a good day, but today I felt a bit irritable and overloaded.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share that I spent a lot of time early in the week switching web browsers. Somehow, with the latest update, Edge for iOS is pretty much impossible to use for me. Whether this is an actual bug in its accessibility with VoiceOver or it’s just that things have been switched around like crazy and I’m not tech savvy enough for it anymore, I don’t know. I tried getting the freakin’ Copilot (Microsoft’s AI) that was constantly in my way to disappear, but it wouldn’t.

So I decided to leave Edge behind altogether and switch browsers, because I don’t like using one browser on my iPhone and another on PC. I finally settled on Chrome and, though I’m still figuring things out, mostly it works okay.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you that a (now former) staff came to say goodbye on Monday. I gave her the “bull in a china shop”, ie. the polymer clay elephant in a mug I’d created last week. She loves unicorns and elephants, but she already had a unicorn.

This time around, I didn’t get a proper description from the Be My Eyes app, because it judged the mug to be its body and the letter J (for the staff’s first name) to be its tail.

If we were having coffee, I’d then tell you all I had a good day yesterday. I walked a lot, but also visited the next town’s market. I had originally been uncertain as to whether I wanted fried fish (or shrimp really) because of it being quite a high-calorie, high-fat food. I eventually said “screw it!” and considered yesterday a total cheat day. I, after all, also had fried chicken for dinner. Granted, other than that I only had a salad.

If we were having coffee, then I’d share I do really need to lose weight though. I’m about 2kg overweight, which doesn’t seem like a lot given that I used to be 20kg heavier than I am now. However, the “screw it!” thoughts are pretty commonplace especially given the current state of the world. For example, my unhealthy voice is telling me it’s not a problem if I risk getting a heart attack ten years from now because, for all we know, the world may’ve gone up in smoke by then anyway. I, thankfully, do still have more tangible reasons to lose weight or at least not gain any. Like, I still want to be able to wear my favorite pants.

If we were having coffee, lastly I’d share that I am still going strong meeting my movement goal on my Apple Watch each day this month. I’m really hoping for the perfect month award. That being said, I’m not overcompensating for my having indulged in too many “cheat” foods. Not that I believe in cheat foods anyway, since there are no bad foods, just less healthy habits. And overexercising can be a less healthy habit too, as my dietitian reminded me on Wednesday. Not that I’ve ever truly done that, honestly. The bottom line though is that I’m not engaging in compulsive eating habits or exercise. I feel things might need to be a little more controlled, but I’m not sure how to do this.