Unlike my contemporaries, I have never invoked age as an excuse for anything.

"I'm too young for that," "I'm too old for this," or "At your age you're supposed to…" — I don't recall ever making such statements.

One explanation for that, in woke-speak, is that I don't identify with my age. There may be several contributing motivations for that:

1. It's a denial strategy; in that if I think I'm old that makes me so.
2. I have the fortune of being in a decent physical shape; I can afford that denial.

My knee-jerk reaction to people expressing age-related complaints is to mentally dismiss them as something an old beat up man would say. Just admitting to that vulnerability makes me feel old and defeated, so I made a conscious choice to not do that.

I generally avoid making you're old jokes. They simply aren't humorous. They are not not-funny in that it's poor taste or offensiveness, but rather because they're simply lame. In the art of verbal assassination, there are far more compelling and impactful characteristics to target than someone's age.

When I was 21, people mistook me for 27. I had a full-grown face before my body could fully catch up. I imagine the reverse is the case now.

I feel like 32 now. It only sounds cool except for that fact that it also carries along some downsides of being at that age.

I like being older. I feel less miserable; it's lining up quite well with the U-curve theory.

I manage give less fucks; a plague some friends of mine have no hope of shaking off.

Mimetic envy gets milder, almost completely eliminated (safe for very specific cases). It's not easy to envy someone else anymore when the internal character has been solidified with enough competency.

That's not to say I'm above playing status-games, but age does bring along a degree of sophistication to the play.