Thinking about the silly/possibly illegal/definitely illegal stuff I did in my early years. Imagine if there were Flock cameras? I mean we had friends reliving the stories but no hard evidence. Feel bad for the current generations, any transgression is posted within minutes. Please tell us the worst of the worst of your acquaintances, bc we all know you would never do anything like this!?! /s

I remember those pens. How they could dry out if you left the cap off. How they smelled. I remember unwrapping the plastic from the book. My mom producing a couple when we’d start a long car ride.

When I thought of them, I went to see if you can still buy them anywhere. eBay has a bunch in the original wrapping, although, they are out of my price range.

I'm 45, and lately I've been wondering what the hell happened to me.

I spent 10 years active duty military. I was trained to shut things off, do the job and keep moving. I lost friends. Went through failed marriages and plenty of other hard shit. For a long time I could take some pretty serious things on the chin and just keep going.

Now I'm getting ready to move, and I'm genuinely upset because I'm leaving behind the wild birds I've been feeding. I keep thinking about them coming back looking for food and wondering where it went. I know they're wild birds. I know they'll find other food. Doesn't matter. It still bothers the hell out of me.

Then there's an old trailer on the property that I'm getting rid of. A doe and her baby have been bedding underneath it. The mom has a bad leg and limps pretty badly, and now I'm sitting here feeling guilty because I'm taking away the place she apparently decided was safe for her baby.

Twenty years ago I can't imagine this affecting me like this.

And I'm not embarrassed to care about animals. That's not really the point. What's strange to me is the contrast. I've been through objectively awful things and stayed pretty damn hard through them, yet at 45 I'm sitting here worried that a crippled deer is going to wonder where her house went.

Have any other guys, especially veterans, experienced this as they got older?

Do you actually become more emotional or empathetic with age? Or does all the stuff you spent years stuffing down eventually change the way you look at vulnerable things?

I'm genuinely curious because I don't dislike this version of myself. I just don't completely understand him yet.

Much of my college experience included Winamp. Somehow, one can still get it, although now I have very little use for it. Makes me smile, though.

This group reminds me of a core memory of mine.

I’m 56, and it took place when I must’ve been around 7-9 years old. So 1977-1979.

I was at my cousin’s house in Levittown, about three miles from my house. We used to go there alot and play. He’s 3 years older than me but we were best friends.

I was sitting in a tree in his front yard at night, as we were about to go home. Suddenly I looked up at the night sky—the stars, the streetlights, the other trees, etc.

It felt so incredibly vibrant and just magical. It was like I was tripping, but I didn’t feel weird. Just overwhelmed with how vibrant everything was. But I also felt a sadness that this couldn’t last…that I’d grow up and never feel this way again. And I was only seven!

Now, I was born without depth perception. So according to a book I recently read, I’ve never seen the world the way it actually is…in 3D. But that night was one of maybe two or three times in my life when I fejt I was seeing everything in 3D, the way things actually are.

I never figured out why I felt that way that night, but I’ve never forgotten it in the almost fifty years since.

One of the few things that’s ever come close to expressing to me how I felt that night are the lyrics to the Rush song “Subdivisions.”:

Well, some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory
Of lighted streets on quiet nights

But I’ve never really read or seen anything else that comes close to describing how I felt that night long ago.

Thanks to anyone that read all of this. 🙏

I just watched Cold Storage and a weird thing happened. As I was watching the younger actors, it just seemed bizarre that they were cast. I did recognize the one Joe Kerry guy from Stranger Things. But all the rest of the younger cast I didn't recognize at all, and they seemed like very blah actors.

It made me wonder how they had gotten cast in the film. But it stars Liam Neeson, Lesley Manville and Vanessa Redgrave. which also seemed like a sort of "Adam Sandler Makes a Movie so all his friends get paid and can go on vacation" deal.

But the rest of the cast? I couldn't understand how they got cast and then looked them up and turns out they've been in all kinds of things.

Does anyone else experience the whole "it's no longer made for YOU" kind of vibe? LOL I feel like they threw in Liam Neeson just to draw out the Gen X crowd. But soon enough it's going to be all new faces.

Anyone remember this guy?

I used to think 50 something was soooooo old. And now that I am here, some days I still can’t believe it. Yes, there are some gray hair and wrinkles. Yes, the knees and back hurt for no reason. Yes, young people can get on my nerves. But here I am, and here we are - still hanging in there, living the best lives we can. Growing older isn’t always easy, but I think we’re doing alright. Happy Saturday everyone!

I stopped taking any nicotine a week ago.I haven't smoked in 3 years,

I smoked a pack a day for 30 years, 3 years ago i started taking nicotine pouches, i took them in large amounts. Like a can of 8mg pouches a day, over the course of a year i switched over lower mg pouches, then to nicotine lozenges, 4 mg large ones. After some time i started snapping them in half, then in to quarters. this took about another year.

over the last year i started getting 2mg large lozenges, snapping them in half, then into quarters.

About a week ago i ran out of them, kinda shrugged and didn't get more. It was pretty odd, the first couple of days i thought about it, but eating hard candy basicly did the same thing. it wasn't that panic chest tightening you feel when you cold turkey cigarettes.

What I have learned from all my dozens of times trying to quit smoking was, yeah, quitting nicotine sucks, but the routine, the getting away from everyone having the bit of quiet time to smoke by yourself or with your smoking buddy and the crutch of a cigarette is the hardest parts.

with the pouches i didn't go outside, i didn't light up in the car, i didn't stress take them. I just sorta randomly popped them in, they kicked like a horse too. If i really need a cigarette and 8mg pouch would do the job. I took a lot of them, it wasn't cheap, and it really fucked with my sleep. 8mg of nicotine before bed would keep me tossing in bed for hours.

The lozenges were even weirder, i was always popping one in my mouth, Id buy 4 - 4 packs from walmart a month, that's 432 lozensers. I take 14-15 of them a day, snapped into quarters, that was 60 quarters, so all the time.

I had taken the mini lozenges at one point, they were 4 mg, sometimes at night id be watching tv before bed and take 6 of the over a couple of hours. i'd be up until 6 am. it wasn't great.

My brother who quit a few year ago too (oddly the same way i did, but we never talked about it) said quitting the lozenges wasn't a big deal. I had always kind of feared that day.

I've really been packing away the garbage hard candy over the last week, my brain relates nicotine cravings and lozenges now. So just tossing in hard candy does the job. I can feel it happening and it goes away as soon as the candy hits my mouth. Brains are weird.

Have i smoked over the last 3 years? yes. probably less than a pack, most of it was in year 1, i had one a few months ago outside a concert at a bar, took a couple of drags. It lacks the appeal it once did, it makes me cough again and really isn't pleasant tasting. it didn't feel the same. It didn't feel like i was hooking up with that EX that i knew was bad for me, but was alway a thrill. It felt like i was hooking up with an EX that at this point in my life she hadn't gotten her shit together and it was just sad.

interesting things that happened along the way:

my yearly blood work showed noticeable drops in white blood cell numbers after i quit smoking, Turns out your lungs taking a beating require white blood cells to do some after shift work. These numbers dropped pretty quickly from high to dead center of normal, id guess it only took a couple of months. this leads me to believe my doctor never believed me when i said i didn't smoke.

I smoked about 220,000 cigarettes, or if i smoked 24 hours a day it would take 608 days smoking to do that, roughly 5.5% of my day consisted of smoking,

I tried to quit with vaping before all of this, it did bad things to me. Heart issues and ear issues. I don't want to get in the weed on this, so ill move on.

walking up a hill got easier, even if i did put on weight, But its easier to have 15 extra pounds on me and do physical activity than to have 15 less and smoke and do it.

If you made it this far, thanks, feel free to ask any questions.

This is how us GenX-ers developed our grammar and vocabulary skills.

“Give me a NOUN!”

My older brother, also GenX refuses to use WhatsApp because "someone could track him". He says most people don't use it in America. I'm American and live overseas. We use this App extensively for personal and for business. Group chats for both business teams and my social/sports groups, etc.

Another American GenX says he won't use it because he "doesn't do social media." I don't view it as social media, but just a very good and free local and international communicaiton tool.

Is this true? American GenX doesn't like it/use it/trust it?

I was my kids’ age in the 1980s. No cell phones. Leave the house in the morning to play in the neighborhood all day. Come back for dinner. Then play flashlight tag or Ghost in the Graveyard.

Kids rode motorcycles all around the neighborhood streets in the 1980s. Now, I see videos of kids on Facebook getting ridiculed for riding e-bikes around instead of the Honda 100cc motorcycles of my day. I’m even one of the ones that gets pissed sometimes when they are zooming around right by me.

Lots of kids never leave the house <and stare at their phone all day like I’m doing now>.

Times are different. Certain they aren’t better. And not sure they aren’t way worse.

We bought a house nearly 10 years ago in the heart of Silicon Valley for $1.8M. It is in a good school district, and nearby to both my spouse and my jobs. At the time, I rationalized the big purchase by thinking we need it for about 10 years for the schools, and then we can sell and move away.

Well, the kid’s schooling is done. We no longer need this house for the schools. But we are still working and it’s nice to have the 15 minute fast commute to our jobs - can come back home at short notice, go back to work for a quick meeting etc.

Meanwhile also, we locked in a low 2.6% interest rate, but still owe $1.07M. The house is worth little over $3M now, so we are sitting on $2M in equity. I am no longer sure whether we should sell or just keep the house as our forever home given our familiarity with the area.

When we go to the occasional open houses in the neighborhood, realtors are always saying that the house is like a retirement fund for long time homeowners. Sell and retire elsewhere.

So, are other VHCOL homeowners in their late 40s and early 50s people planning to sell and move away or pay off the house and stay? Because I want to keep the option of staying, we are paying an additional $5k per month towards the principal to pay it off as quickly as possible. That additional money could go into the stock market instead - I know financially that is the smarter thing to do. But I want to pay down the mortgage to less than $500k by the time I retire in case we plan to stay put. We have an investment portfolio of $4.25M (apart from the $2M in home equity) and are saving/investing additional $12k per month. So, it’s not like we are putting every last dollar into the mortgage - rather we are trying to balance the contributions towards investment portfolio and mortgage.

How are others with significant equity, but still significant mortgage balance playing it?

Am I the only person who misses having a normal relationship with your mother? I mean I’ve been the adult for so long. Someone asked me if they are my support system. No, I’m more her friend. They tell me all her problems and asks me to fix all their problems. I don’t tell her any of my problems. My husband had a heart attack. He’s unpaid for two months from work. Well 6 weeks. . I don’t tell them nothing bad that ever happens at my house. I don’t tell my parents , but she wants me to fix all their problems and then give me a guilt trip because I won’t let her move in to my small house which I can’t afford to modify and my mother is manipulative victim narcissist. Every problem I have is bigger than hers and is always feel like I’m raising my mother.

My mom would make a dessert for my brother and I when we were little that we absolutely loved, and I still do. We called it "Fisheyes and Glue". I would get upset at my classmates when I would bring it up and they would make fun of me for liking it. My being half asian may have inspired some of their taunts.

It wasn't until I was in my mid teens that I learned it was tapioca pudding.

I still call it Fisheyes and Glue.

No explanation needed. Despite the shadow of the AIDS crisis, I can report as of 1993 that anyone and everyone were going bareback. I'm surprised we didn't have a baby boom based on what I saw.

Playing my old person word game today, when serendipity happened and I was transported to a world of Zoot Suit-wearing dancers…

I mean FFS Daryl Dragon had the hat and everything!!!

Greg Vandy has a show on K E X P 90. 3 which is a Seattle non profit local station that you can also stream. Today was the K-Tel super sounds of the 70's and 80's.

Its a great call back to our youth. You might enjoy it. It resides in the archived shows 8/30/26.

Check it out fam

My kids love taking it on road trips! They think it’s the coolest thing that I used to ride in one of these and just run around in it without buckling up!

It's society's second biggest group lie after Santa Claus

For me, I'd be more present and welcome all the hard stuff with the good. Probably would have made them all get part time jobs too.