Getting old. How has it affected your sense of who you are?

Definitely slower, and gee I wish people would quit mumbling.

I don't really think my sense of who I am has changed at all.

I refuse to get old. I've had this attitude for almost 66 years now. (I know what you mean about not expecting to have lived this long.)

EDIT: All of my adult life, I've noted that I don't feel any different inside than I did on my last birthday, or the one ten years earlier, or the one twenty years earlier. I don't feel trapped, but I do sometimes feel like a spectator to an odd process which isn't really me.)

Mine has but I am not quite sure how...probably because there is an ongoing narrative about who I am that exists with memory and in which I perceive few actual disruptions. But I am ongoingly and almost infinitesimally different. Only if I consider points in time and compare, great differences.

Hearing aids don't help? There's evidence that not hearing affects the brain negatively

I know I am getting old. I am simply curious about what it will and will not mean.

The process does and does not feel really me.

The outer changes in me, at 74, are dramatic. There is no mistaking I am pretty old. People have a tendency to relieve me of physical exertion and/or being able to manage small tasks. Get the eff out of my way is my reaction, at least subjectively. My parents passed, relatively young, one from pneumonia at 54, the other a tire iron at 33. My grandfathers died at 98 and 66. One grandmother when my mother was 3. Not sure about the other one. So, they are no help in determining my own longevity. Which is fine with me. I don't have to obsess about a termination date. I still do my own home repairs and I keep up a fairly large bit of suburban property. The wheelchair ramp I am building on the front is more for moving heavy objects in and out than to avoid ascending five steps, as I can no longer pull a refrigerator up. One of my greatest concessions to age is my daily nap. I need that.

What about your internal sense of yourself?

In a sense, I am the same as when a small child, but now I am settled into a more comfortable zone. I had to move from the prison of Asperger's Syndrome into the mainstream of life. It took most of my life to get here, because it was never diagnosed and I had to discover it on my own. But I feel it was worth it, to get here. I am mostly happy with life these days.

I envy the energy of the young. I still work - gardening for other people, usually women my own age who can no longer get up and down, walk uphill or lift things. I am fortunate to still be able to do all that. I am 68.

I now self-check my actions by asking myself "Is this the best use of my time?" I also really try to explore my intentions for many of my actions. That helps me keep my mouth shut.

Mid afternoon naps are a must, just a 20 minute one. Then I can go from 7 am - 11 p.m.

I have a relationship with a man in his 70's and we are like teenagers in our sex life, only not quite as often.

Ambulation pain is no fun. Having pain as quickly as when I walk to the end of my front walkway really stinks. I had to convince a lot of classmates that people older than 30 can actually use the Internet adeptly.

But I also podcast, and I have fans! And I have occasionally had to gently let them down (they are mostly male) with, "I'm happily married but I am really flattered by your attention. So thanks for the day brightener!" or something like that. It's ... weird.

I am 54 years old.

I can't help but be deeply saddened, not for what is but for what never was.
Candlelight8

I'll be 70 next month. I keep saying to myself, "Who? Me?" It doesn't seem real. It doesn't seem possible. I'm just a kid.

Aging doesn't scare me in the dying sense. It scares me because you can lose you cognitive abilities. Memory? Not so good anymore. At a loss for words (the right one doesn't come to mind). These things scare me. My grandmother had senile dementia; my mother had Alzheimer's.

I find that I'm more likely to say something that I might have once censored. Gets me in trouble some of the time. Not here, where I'm writing and have time to think, but in face-to-face situations.

The physical aspects of aging are a pain in the ass. Actually that's one of the places that doesn't hurt. Since when did standing up become such a production?

I've never had a problem with the physical aspects of aging. Gray hair? Okey dokey. Wrinkles? Okey dokey. But the mental signs scare me. Smart ass Roboida doesn't know what day it is.

Not who I am Wan but how the World is. Suddenly now in my '80's I am confounded and awed by the Universe

...and for some reason have become a better person, almost too late...

Welcome back, from...

I'd be delighted if you'd fill out your profile

You might find this author/professor interesting in her research:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ellen_Langer

Her claim seems to be that our belief system/attitude affects our aging, at least in my interpretation. It might also be interesting if people wake up in the morning singing,"Younger than springtime am I..."

Sorry to hear that....is there any way you can make what is your focus, as opposed to regretting? I'm just worried you are spoiling your now by fretting about what cannot be changed. All we have, really, is now

That damned knee never got better???? Sorry to hear that. Knees suck.

The net can still amaze

I have managed to gain a pain in the arse somewhere along the way!

So, you still feel like a kid? Funny, I don't. I don't think I feel any age, really.

I'm finding it kind of amazing that so many people feel like a really young person inside. Perhaps we continue to feel about the age we were when we were forming our identity? When our frontal lobes are really beginning to come online? Perhaps I have never formed a proper identity? I do feel very fluid.

The worries about getting dementia are truly a pain. I have a friend who got dementia in her forties and has been in a nursing home for nearly twenty years. Awful.

Still Boida, we know that a well used brain has some resilience.

I have a friend trying to get a voluntary euthanasia bill through our state parliament at present. Please let it pass!!!!!

Wow! Do you know what has brought this about?

I deleted my profile ages ago for ute good reason...never bothered to put it back! I'm seldom here any more so doing it isn't a priority for me

Thank you...I will have a look.

How has it affected my sense of who I am?

At coming up to 58 in a couple months, I look back and realize what a charmed life I've led.

Not in terms of being wealthy, or famous, or other stuff you may think of. Rather in how I've dodged so many bullets, and have had the pure luck of rolling a lot of 7's and 11's in the craps game of life.

I'm not one that believes "everything happens for a reason" or that situations have been put in front of us to teach us something. The earth spins to make it look like the sun rises, we make of the day what it gives us.

However, I have a big awareness of how fortunate I've been, as far as not dying of something as a side effect of behavior, by accident, as a result of my genes, on purpose, etc. Or living within the confines of physical or mental illness, that could easily have happened.

Not that I walk around spouting off about gratitude, or that something is watching over me, or how every day is a gift. Gag.

Instead I quietly enjoy. Enjoy a lot more than I think many people do. I enjoy the simple things, because that's what/who I am.

My sense of who I am is not a particular age, or gender. Rather, I'm an observer, participating when it suits me. As I age I feel more and more comfort in not following the crowd.

That's all for now.