The Onset of Cognitive Dissonance

[taste_is_sweet]

Otherwise known as how I'm turning 41 this June. Yes, 41. Forty-one. The big 4 - 1. Ol' One and forty.

Aside from finally remembering how to spell 'forty', I've come to the unpleasant understanding that despite how I'm well on my way to decrepitude (occasionally feeling every second of it; believe me), I still almost constantly feel as completely unprepared for the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune as my kid, who is seven. Hell, sometimes I feel he's way more together than I'll ever be.

Anyone else feel like that, out there in the blogosphere? Like a total fraud who is going to be discovered for the completely green, soaking-behind-the-ears newbie to life in general that she actually is? At least sometimes?

Of course, I also get to add to it the small but sad daily reminders that I'm no longer 20-something and cute but 40-something and matronly. It certainly doesn't help that I live in a small city where the average age is something like 24, because of the big community college and huge university, each with their multitude of bright-eyed and bushy-tailed boys and girls running around. All of them so cute and vital and young enough to be my offspring.

And yet in my heart of hearts I feel like I've barely made it to 18, which is at least the legal drinking age in Montreal. If I felt like drinking, but I don't have the same tolerance I used to.

Comments

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

I don't think this is unusual at all. A much older mate of mine once told me that while it's difficult to understand when you're viewing the world through 20-something eyes that there are fewer "stages of life" than they realize, that really we're children, then teens/early 20s, then aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaadults for the longest time where our internal perception of ourselves really doesn't change much, and then finally true old age sets in (she was 70 at the time).

MG's Great Aunt who is 96 told me she sometimes catches sight of herself in a mirror or shop window when she's not expecting it and finds herself thinking "who is that old lady?"

I think it's really important not to give in to society's view of you. You, who are dangerous in ways 20-somethings only think they understand. *g*

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

I'm definitely with your older friend and MG's great aunt. But I'm afraid I've never felt particularly dangerous, unless it's in ways that I don't understand. :P

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

Then perhaps it's time to start. :D

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Well, I do feel dangerous talking to customer service reps sometimes... I guess that's a start. :)

[draycevixen.livejournal.com]

:D

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

:D

[sholio]

Oh good heavens, yes. I'm 36 and still feel like an adult imposter. Sometimes I have to stop and boggle in amazement that not only do I seem to have somehow acquired a responsible adult life when I wasn't looking, but other people treat me as a responsible adult too!

Of course, it doesn't help that I obstinately refuse to quit enjoying a lot of hobbies and activities that are considered only suitable for young people, like fanfic and video games ...

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

This. Oh my goodness, yes. I feel exactly like that so often I can't even tell you.

But I'm never giving up the fanfic. :D

[sgamadison.livejournal.com]

Hey, apparently you're allowed to date someone half your age plus seven years. Why? Because that's how old we think we are! ;-)

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Heh. That's a nice rule, but I don't think I'd actually have that much in common with a 28 year-old. But it does explain a lot of the male/female age differences in movies...

[claudia603.livejournal.com]

I'm 42, and it doesn't seem real to me! In my mind I'm in my early 30s at most and I sure don't have my life pulled together (in fact, it's a bit of a mess). Sometimes I hate looking at myself in the mirror and seeing someone who is no longer cute and young!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Oh, God, do I hear you about looking in the mirror and seeing how different your face is from what you expect. It's sad, and from some of the other comments it's only going to get worse.

I think, though, that most peoples' lives are messy--mine included--just some more than others. :) Part of being an adult, I suppose, is actively working to clean the mess up as much as possible.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

I'm 27 so i'm young, but I still feel old age bearing down on me like a bad driver. I've resolved to be cute and young, no matter my age.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Good luck! But the 30s are still young! Take it from someone who already zipped through them.

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Haha, I'll be amazing at 90!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Hey, you're amazing now. ;)

[dungeonwriter.livejournal.com]

Thanks!

[wpadmirer.livejournal.com]

Wussies! All of you! (says the nearly 60 year old as she runs in the other direction)

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

::G:: You are definitely a role model, let me say that. :D

[alizarin-nyc.livejournal.com]

Wow, I hear you. I really hear you. I'm 43 in NYC and believe me, I feel the pressure of being the invisible middle aged woman every day as 24 year olds prance by me... ARG. Talk to me about your feelings on this!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Wow, that does sound exactly the same! At least I never feel invisible to my family, but yes--when it comes to seeing the adorable twenty-somethings and remembering how I got that attention too, once upon a time... ::sigh:: So it goes.

[mific.livejournal.com]

There's a tricky stage in your forties when this aging stuff really bothers you. It's linked with all those annoyances and blows to the ego like needing glasses and feeling increasingly creaky. It doesn't so much get better as you stop bothering about it, in my experience. I never feel much more than in my twenties, inside, no matter what the outside looks like. :) Immaturity is the fountain of youth!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Immaturity is the fountain of youth!

Words to live by, indeed. :) Youth is fleeting; immaturity is forever.

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

Wow, reading all this makes me feel so not-alone and like "I love everybody in this bar".

My age? One year older than Paul Gross (who just turned 54 last month and is still a hottie).

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

We love you too! Have another fic beer.

Huh. I thought you were younger than I am and just into retro TV series. I guess we're also as young as we write or enthuse, eh? I think I like that. ;)

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

People always think I'm like a decade or so younger than my chronological age. What age would you have guessed?

"Younger and into retro TV series" LOL. I was already in my 50's when I discovered the existence of the online fandom world (the summer of 2011 to be precise -- so if you count my age as "years in fandom" I am totes a child).

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Baby, I thought you were in your mid-twenties. You just come across as so young and enthusiastic, like I mentioned. :)

You are such a fandom child! That's awesome. I'm so happy for you having found all this stuff and having so much fun with it.

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

Twenties! Hell yeah, that's what I feel like most of the time! *giggles and twirls you*

Wanna know how I came into fandom? (It makes me bounce all over again every time I tell it!)

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Yes, of course I would love to know how you got into fandom. :D Feel free to PM me if you don't want to put it here, though.

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

Oh, I don't mind putting it here for all to read. I delight in it! It was November 2009, and some friends invited me to Thanksgiving dinner at their home; the mother-in-law of the friends' daughter was saying "If you like Shakespeare, you should see this show Slings and Arrows"...well, I watched every episode TWICE and WOW all-round great show and it was the first time I had seen Paul Gross and I was all PAUL GROSS HOLY FUCKIN' WOW (and the exact moment that I felt everything about my world as I had known it shifting was when Geoffrey Tennant shows Claire what it is to be Hamlet's Ophelia). After that I went to watching due South in 2010, and after watching due South, some time in the summer of 2011 (here comes my discovery of online fandom!) I decided that because of the reference to "The Hand of Franklin" in the final episode of due South I wanted to know more about that aspect of Canadian history...I did a Google search for the phrase "The Hand of Franklin"...but what I got WASN'T history...it was a fic called "The Hand of Franklin" (a Fraser/RayK by akite), the first piece of fanfic that I had ever seen...and ZOMG my transformation began into the dSc6d fangirl and fic-writer and fancon-goer that I now am.

Whoa, check out all the links!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

That's a terrific story. :D

In case you didn't get a chance to read about the Franklin Expedition, there's a very nice Wikipedia article here. And here's the famous and beautiful song by Stan Rogers, which I'm pretty sure Paul Gross sung on dS? Finally, here's the lyrics. :)

And I really enjoyed this book about the expedition.

I hate to say it, but you've watched more of Paul Gross' acting career than I have. But have you seen the movie Gunless? It stars Gross (of course), and has Callum Kieth Rennie as the villain. It was a lot of fun.

Re: Whoa, check out all the links!

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

Yay links!

Good Wikipedia article, some stuff there I hadn't known yet about recent scientific expeditions.

Stan Rogers *sigh*. I have several Stan Rogers CD's. So sad and horrible the way his life ended...and it's hard for me not to think about all that "future music" lost to us. I went to the concert his brother did in Chicago last year.

That book you rec, I'll check it out; I read a different one about the Franklin Expedition by the same authors that was written in the 1980's.

Gunless! LOL! Yes, I saw it (and I've read some Gunless fic, too). I've seen umpteen things that Paul has been in and umpteen things that Callum has been in...and I think I've seen ALL the things where they've been in something TOGETHER.

Re: Whoa, check out all the links!

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Heh. I'd figured you knew about all of Gross' and Rennie's stuff, but I wasn't sure about Rogers. :) Do you remember the name of the earlier book on the Expedition?

Franklin Expedition books

[ride-4ever.livejournal.com]

The 1988 book by John Geiger and Owen Beattie was titled Frozen in Time : Unlocking the Secrets of the Franklin Expedition; the 2004 book Frozen in Time : the Fate of the Franklin Expedition sounds to be a later revised edition of the same book. Beattie and Geiger also wrote a "young adults" book about the Franklin Expedition, titled Buried in Ice : the Mystery of a Lost Arctic Expedition (warning for graphic photos which may not be appropriate for REALLY young readers : contains photos of the corpses unearthed by Owen Beattie's 1984 scientific expedition).

Re: Franklin Expedition books

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

It definitely sounds like I got the later version of the same book; thank you for telling me about it.

The corpses are freaky, aren't they? The autopsies--and the fact that they were even possible--were amazing.

[snailbones.livejournal.com]

Oh hell, yes - I never made it past being 16 inside my head, no matter what my body tells me. I'm still amazed when the bank manager treats me seriously - I feel like the biggest fraud on earth, and coming to the sad conclusion I'll never know what to be when I grow up *g*

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Sing it, sister. It's good to know I'm not alone. :)

[yin-again.livejournal.com]

Solidarity, sister. I just turned 44 and alternately feel 12 and 100. Aging is weird, man.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Totally weird. But it's comforting to know I'm not the only one!

I'm 53 . . .

[firesign10.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that flavor of dissonance is a real bitch! ;-) I think I wrote a post about it one time for the year I did LJ Idol. Walking around in Northampton - funky college town in Massachusetts, all full of interesting little shops, street musicians, people walking around just doing their thing. I was enjoying it immensely . . . until I caught a reflection of myself in a window. WTF? Totally jarring - my outside and my inside were miles apart! DISLIKE!!

And I often (almost always!) feel like I'm faking it to a degree. I think I'm just better at it than I used to be, and people buy it a lot. Slogan for our karate instructor's training: Fake it till you make it! Life motto, more like :-)

So you're not alone. At the very least, I'm there too. And I'm positive there's so many others out there, it's just whether or not they reveal it ;-)

*hugs*

Re: I'm 53 . . .

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

::Hugs Back::

It is really good to know I'm not alone in this. I feel like I've gotten better at faking it too, as well as, I can admit, recognizing the times when I actually do feel like I've got it together. There's nothing like having a small child to introduce a person to her own wisdom, I think.

[ext-1752446.livejournal.com (from livejournal.com)]

Yes! It's crazy, isn't it? I feel nineteen all the time unless I actually look carefully in the mirror and notice that it's time to dye my hair again 'cause the gray hair is starting to go wild. I have to remind myself I'm an adult all the time.
But on the bright side, I ran into a twenty-something year old kid at a meeting the other day who had a really neat Boondock Saints shirt on. So I told him so, and the kid takes the shirt off and hands it to me. Tells me I got pretty eyes. So I still got it :) Just don't know for how long.

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

Congratulations on still having it, Baby. ;) That's truly awesome.

Young at Heart

[paleom.livejournal.com]

You just friended me so I came to check you out and found this.

I know EXACTLY what you mean. I turned 42 in April this year and I'm having trouble reconciling it. I faced 40 with a smile, nay even a laugh, but 42 seems to have wiped it off my face.

I feel I've aged more in the last two years than I have in the forty before. Mind you, it's been a hell of a two years, but even so. I am suddenly more aware that I haven't even touched my bucket list and I should still do something to fix that but everything is linked to money that I don't have.

I think it's because I've become stagnant, least that's the excuse I have so hoping that in the next year I can try to change that and get back to myself. Hoping that I face 43 with a smile on my face - wish me luck as I will you.

Failing that - Quest for the Elixir of Youth is now top of my bucket list. LOL

PaleoM
xx

Re: Young at Heart

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

:) Thank you for the comment. It's always a comfort to know I'm not alone with this stuff.

I don't have a bucket list per se, but I can certainly say that I'm definitely not where I thought I'd be 20 years ago. Of course I'm literally where I'd never imagined 20 years ago, but that has been a mixed blessing. Once upon a time I was sure I'd be a well-known science-fiction author by now, but as it turned out my first novel (which is not at all sci-fi) only came out in January.

I also need to fight against stagnation pretty much every day, because sometimes writing original stuff is so terrifying that it's all but impossible. Here's to both of us facing our next birthday smiling!

Where do you live? Maybe we can meet up and buy each other cake. ;)

Re: Young at Heart

[paleom.livejournal.com]

I don't have a list either. Just a vague idea of things I want to do and places I want to see. Congratulations on your novel, even if it's 20 years too late, at least you still managed to achieve it. I live outside Newmarket, near Cambridge. You??

PaleoM
xx

Re: Young at Heart

[taste-is-sweet.livejournal.com]

I used to live in Mount Albert, outside of Newmarket, Ontario. :D When I first saw the Newmarket, I thought for a second you might have been in the same country! But hey, at least we have the Commonwealth! (Gives high five of Commonwealth.)

Thank you very much on the congratulations. I'm definitely very happy about being published, even if it was later than I'd imagined. :) And I hope you get to do at least some of your list stuff. It's sad that so many things we want to do need money.