I find myself thinking a lot about the past these days and thinking about how fast life has gone by.  It really bums me out.  I can usually trick myself into thinking that I can make my remaining years the best that I've had, and while that IS possible I don't really believe it.  I used to be filled with great ideas and energy, now it's all turning into miserableness.  Winter was really hard on me this year (I said hard on!) and the nice weather has made a big difference, but I don't have great ideas anymore and I'm tired of seeing the world chew people up and spit them out.  I'm struggling with the meaning of life and what the hell I'm even here for.

So yeah, if anyone knows, please let me know ASAP!

 :-/

Sorry for the bummer topic, I hope typing it out makes me feel better. 

I get a bit like that sometimes. I guess you're supposed to get all bitter and try to live it through your kids now, thus becoming cranky when they try to have their own lives instead of yours.

I figure I'm here to pretty much try and have some fun while making sure that the lives I touch (my family's mainly) are somehow enriched by me adding to it. Some of this involves not setting expectations for myself too high - life doesn't have to be all about great ideas and energy. 

The other thing is exercise. The difference between me when regularly getting some mountain biking done and me when not is night and day. I think it gives me the endorphin boost and fitness whatnots of exercise but also takes me away from the usual places and technology into the woods where things are different.

This is all well and good, I earn OK money and we're all pretty much healthy. Without both of those things it seems a lot harder.

I think health is part of my issue.  My arthritis and back issues are getting me down.  I've taken pain medicine for over 8 years for it and have recently stopped taking it.  It has lost its effectiveness unless I take it like a junkie and I don't get enough prescribed to me to take it like that.  So now I'm dealing with it with my advanced human mind!

I have started riding bikes as well!  We rode 12 miles Saturday and I felt pretty good, but the next day my body hates me and I fall back into this.

I think you have the right ideas though, what else is there but to try to enrich others lives?  

The thing with exercise is the more you do it the less it hurts, up to a point. I think marathons and whatnot are past that, but if you do 12 miles on a bike once a week or so it'll become a lot easier. Erm, I don't know if that's true with back issues and arthritis! That must make things like this a good bit trickier. Have you tried cannabis?

No, I haven't had any since I was in college.  That was... hmm, 24 years ago, fuck me....

It's still not legal in my state, not that it stops anyone, but I'd hate to get fired for something so stupid.

Don't worry about it matey. I kind of know what you mean - I have days where it all seems a bit much. At 45, my thinking about the past is exactly how little impact I've had on people and how chronically shit I am at keeping friends. I have some very lonely days - I know lots of people, I'm just clearly bad company!

Having said all that, I'm loving my cycling and have got to know a couple of people through that and I've been tracked down by an ex student who wants to invite me to his wedding (not heard from him for 15 years) so that's nice. Generally trying to stay positive and enjoy the family.

Stick with the bike riding and it will get less painful and may even help your back in the end. Takes me a day to get over a hard ride (oo-er missus) but I can live with that - anything over 45 miles tends to fall into that category!

Thanks!

I have some friends that I've known for most of my life, but I really don't seek new ones.  My wife is about the only friend I truly have, and I'm OK with that.  But when I think back to high school or that time period I miss it a lot.  No worries other than where the party was that weekend and who was going to be there.

I think as a society we have life all fucked up.  Why would a sane person choose to spend the majority of his waking life away from home?  I think it should be the other way around, we should work less and spend more time with the people we care about.  Oh well, I wish I could do something about that, but I can't.

I do intend to keep riding my bike.  Like Milko says, when you are away from people and in the woods it really does make life better.  There are times when I think it would be great to sell everything and build a cabin in the woods and just unplug from everyone and everything. 

I'm with you on the fucked up life bit. Work is just so uninspiring now but the way I see it is that I'm half way there. 20 more years and I can retire! In the meantime, I'll use my many years of experience to make my current job as easy as possible :)

No need to worry about sounding down though. Must be a function of being in your 40s!

Except they keep raising the retirement age!  I heard Australia has raised theirs to 70!  I'll never retire, I've already figured that out!  I'll be 80, so miserable and mean and still having to figure out how to be a productive member of society.  Ugh

Yeah, 40 was hard to accept, I dread what 50 will do to me. 

I turned 50 a couple of weeks ago. It didn't hurt at all.

I guess I'm fairly lucky, since I was made redundant by <spits>MegaCorpUSA</spits> I work from home. Billing time is a PITA, and I probably definitely work more hours than I bill for, I get to see the kids every day. And it is good.

The worst thing about getting back on a bike after a while is the numbness that you get in your bum. But I've found it's great for my knee recovery. Yesterday I did 27km (ca. 17 of your miles) and it hardly killed be at all. I do want a new bike though :(

there is no 'meaning of life' - we are just another animal trying to get by

I intend to retire in 2 years and 19 days. The ability to draw my pension at 60 is a legacy of my previous employment as a civil servant and European TUPE legislation. I suffer from arthritis, a fully non-functioning thyroid that gives me poor focus and memory and, um, more arthritis. Obviously I look younger than Manthorp in spite of it all, but yes, I have been known to wonder what it's all about.

I don't believe you. I refuse to believe that we humans are the result of luck and things that would require astronomical odds to just produce an environment and atmosphere suitable to sustain life. If I were to believe that when I'm dead I'm just gone, like someone turning out the lights I'd hate to think how I would decide to live.

You mean ethically?

The trouble with astronomical odds is that, in an effectively infinite universe, they're pretty much a dead cert.

Yeah.  I've always said I'd never want to live to be old, old people just seem miserable and I'm enough of that.  I'm not a mean person at all, but I suspect not giving a fuck would change how I treated people.

I dunno about all that, and my mind has a hard time grasping complex things like that.  It just seems that there were far too many things that had to go exactly right for us to be here.

but, when all those things do 'go right' we pretty much /have/ to be here - life is here because this is the exact right situation for life to be in - on this planet there is life in the frozen wastelands and the almost boiling waters near underwater volcanoes, from the very depths of the oceans to the highest part of the atmosphere

think of an orange, left for quite a while, until the surface is covered in mould, all green and fuzzy

now, look at the earth again - no real difference

life is definitely an accident, my concern is whether our progress has been manipulated along the way 

This is exactly what I believe.

I am very comfortable that when I die I will be gone, dead, non-existent. In fact this is exactly what I want.

I'm just another living being, one of 107 billion that have been on this earth. At no point do I believe I'm special being part of the 107 billion.

I've had this discussion with a few people, and whilst I definitely don't want to die tomorrow it doesn't worry me that I might. I'm very comfortable with my mortality.

Also, when it comes to dying I've decided I want a Sky Burial. Hopefully after my organs have been harvested for donation or some form of medical research has been done on my dead body. I doubt this will happen, but I would like to be some use after I die. Feed me to the lions at the zoo or something like that.

Things they dig out of La Breya Tar Pit look younger than I do...