Approaching end of second quarter century

When you are young, your age is super important to you. A lot of place have age restrictions and as you age are able to do more things. Some things you eventually age out of, but most require you to be at least so old to do.
For the first five years (or at least the last three of those first five), you can track your years on your hand. Below 10, breaking down by years isn’t specific enough so you also track the half years. School makes it easier to track your age, you can add 5 to your grade and usually be right.
You also have the built in milestones. You become a teenager at 13. You can get your driver’s license at 16. You can legally drink at 18 (or 21) as well as vote. At 20 you are no longer a teenager. At 21, you are legal across Canada and the United States.
At 25 you have passed your first quarter century. Some friends that you knew from school have gotten married, and some have had kids. If you went to college or university, you are probably done your program, and should have an idea of what you are doing with your life.
Then it slows down. You still track the big dates every 5 years but don’t really notice it as much. You are probably working with people of a wider spread age group than you have been in school. Kids lump all of you together into a generic ‘old’ category. You get to the point where you have to do the math to figure out exactly how old you are at present on the off-big date years.

Then the second quarter century draws to an end.

By this point you should have a solid idea of what you have been doing with your life. Some people who have gotten married are no longer that way. Some of the kids that you and your friends have had may be getting married or having kids of their own. Some of your friend’s parents and even a few of your friends may have passed on. Some of the injuries you have accumulated over the year have added up and are coming back to revisit you. Health-wise, a lot of us have dropped a step. You no longer spring back from simple injuries and staying up late has more consequences than it used to. The overnighters take a bit longer to recover from.
You have had a lot of time to figure out what is important to you. Some people radically change their lifestyle if they feel the needs aren’t aligning with their goals, either health and diet-wise, or job and relationship wise. The things that we have accumulated start to loom over you as legacies. You might divest of some things that used to be important to you but you haven’t really used in over a decade.
Hopefully by now you have already taken a hard look at your finances and are in a good state. You do still have a bit of time to make a few corrections but you should have your big costs out of the way. Your house, if you have one, should be close to being paid off. You should take some time and really lay down your funerary plans, as it makes it a lot easier on those you leave behind.
Depending on your costs, and what you have saved, you may be looking forward to retiring in the next few years, maybe a bit later, or maybe even not at all. You will still need to find something to keep busy. You probably don’t want to be one of those people who works right until the end, or retires and then dies shortly afterwards.

I am approaching this point. My health is not what it was even 10 years ago, but I’m still feeling okay. I have slowly gotten to the point of taking a second look at my possessions. I can see that they weigh you down, and that your possessions end up owning you, but I am not ready to streamline right down. I am starting to work towards it though.
Making a list of my top 100 games has helped to cut back on my purchases. It has made me aware of what games I already have, and what games I like. Tracking my plays on BGG has shown me what games we actually play, with the caveat that I am trying a lot of unplayed games to see if we like them. If I already have 5 great skirmish, race, or word games, do I really need another? It depends – but I’m giving it a lot more thought now.
The house isn’t as close to being paid off as we would like, and we will need to replace the vehicles in the near future. Hopefully not too near, but certainly in the next 5 years. The storage locker is still a drain, we’ll have to see if we can part with some stuff and bring that down to a smaller locker or even do away with it altogether.

All in all, it has been a pretty good run so far. I look forward to see how much of the next quarter century I will be able to enjoy.