Things I have learned since I was forty.

A Middle-Aged Manifesto

All haunted and shit. 

1) You are a late bloomer.
2) You are a slow learner.
3) Your skills are not innate. Everything required and still requires practice.
4) Terrible things happen randomly and senselessly. Terrible things will continue to happen in a similar manner until you die.
5) These things are not your fault.
6) Though some things are definitely your fault.
7) You can change your life if you choose to change your life. But a truly terrible event tends to focus the mind.
8) Time is running out. And you have achieved nothing.
9) You don't HAVE to achieve anything.
10) Nobody wants your art.
11) Part of your job, the worst part, is to MAKE them want your art.
12) People who you aren't paying tend to be unreliable.
13) People who you are paying tend to be unreliable.
14) People are disappointing and will let you down and you have to factor that into your relationships with people. Accept this and try to not let it make you bitter.
15) Hard work is occasionally its own reward. More often it is just hard work.
16) Your brain is now falling apart. It is your job to keep binding it in sticky tape for as long as possible.
17) Your body is now falling apart. It is your job to not only patch it up but to subtly tweak your aesthetic so you can live with back hair and balls like clock-weights or a thermostat that's gone haywire.
18) Only you know if you are enough.
19) Popular culture is just something that happens to other people now.
20) That's fine: develop an interest in going for walks and listening to classical music. They're both great. You'll like them.
21) Age is no excuse for a lowering of personal standards. Try and look nice. Police that nasal hair. Hack back those thickets of copper-wire eyebrow. Your clothes don't flatter you anymore. Fine, but at least wash and brush the teeth you have left.
22) Good shoes are half the battle.
23) Don't pretend to be young. But do maintain a youthful sensibility. Have sympathy for younger people. They live with experiences that you can't understand but there is enough basic human common ground for you to relate. That also goes for people from other countries, in case you need telling.
24) If you have the money get new teeth.
25) Don't give up. That's just what they want you to do.
26) Never think you know everything. You know nothing.
27) Knowing nothing is a good starting point.
28) Let go of your guilty pleasures. They should just be your pleasures now. You don't have to explain yourself to anyone. No one cares.
29) Human beings haven't really changed in the last few thousand years, though we have got better at destroying the planet and killing one another.
30) ...though apparently ten thousand years ago no one on earth had blue eyes and the invention of cities has made sperm more aggressive.
31) Grief comes like a thief in the night. Best leave on the landing light.
32) If a woman smiles at you in the street now its is because you remind them of a deceased relative or your flies are undone.
33) You should have taken up drumming. You have no aptitude for it but if you'd practised all this time you might have been half decent by now. And imagine being able to play the drums!
34) You should have learned French too. Quel bouffon.
35) Some things are just unrealistic now. That's fine. You can't do everything. Find peace with those unexplored avenues. Optimistic people will tell you that nothing is impossible and you should reach for the stars. Optimists have nervous breakdowns because they really, really believed and it never happened. Focus on the things that you can achieve and want to do, not some nebulous EVERYTHING.
36) Life is pain. You cannot avoid pain. Try to enjoy the things that don't hurt.
37) Work on your posture.
38) Work on your personality.
39) Some people are going to hate you. Sometimes it will be your fault. Often it won't be - they're just in the business of hating someone and you fit the profile. This is part of the human condition: hating others confers status because a) you get to say wittily unkind things about them at sleep-overs and make milk come out of Tina's nose and the gang will think you're a cold bitch and worry about what you say about them and leave you alone, and b) persecuting the alien protects your investment in the group. It would be better to be kind. At your age constantly sniping at other people looks like unseemly bitterness, especially if they're doing better than you. And let's face it they are...
40) People you love will die. The only way to avoid this is to avoid loving. And loving is the best part of life.
41) You will be misunderstood. Work on your diction, the clarity of your ideas and your debating skills. If, ultimately, they still don't understand you, they are not listening or they are waiting for you to breath so they can say something completely unrelated.   
42) Not every friendship will last. That is sad. That is okay.
43) If you're looking for the exact moment when everything seemed to go wrong, when the world descended into baseness and chaos, when fiction became truth, when learning was vilified, ignorance became honesty, and telling-it-like-it-is meant the justification of verbal assault, it was the invention of social media. That was the thing.
44) You think I'm exaggerating...
45) Someone described you as looking like both David Byrne and, as a back-up, Freddie Starr. Try to come to terms with that.
46) Don't do the sort of work that requires payment without getting paid.
47) You're not too old for anything except skinny jeans, the company of idiots and any music played in a field.
48) There is no such thing as "must see TV". Eat an apple. Go for a walk. For fuck sake: "Must see TV". You fucking idiots.  If anyone tells you "you have to see this" they are lying. Jesus, Samuel Beckett and Joan Fontaine all missed it and I don't think their lives were any worse for it.
49) Life is a precious gift and you're luckier than most. You've squandered a shit ton of it already and the future is finite. Do all the things you need to do as soon as possible.
50)  Cling to love. Cling to happiness. The rest is uncertain.