Tag: mid-life crisis

  • I Hate Skinny Jeans

    It’s been a while since I felt an inclination to post any reflective thoughts about my current state. I’m 100% primed for a mid-life crisis right now, but it seems like the only crisis I’m managing to acquire quite successfully is a mid-drift one. My chest is still pretty much where it used to be for the most of my life, so I’m quite comfortable that this is not a case of having a drop-chest. I’ve accepted that I am firmly part of the horizontally challenged brigade that still struggle to squeeze into their jeans of yesteryear. However, the situation is not as dire, nor as disgusting as it may sound.

    I have a very simple philosophy when it comes to maintaining my weight over the years. I’ve reached a point where my pants’ size is as big as I would ever want it to go, and I’ve been convinced of this for many years now. So each time when I feel it getting really uncomfortably tight around my waist, I know that’s a sure sign that I need to shed some baby fat. Incidentally, it turns out that baby fat is not as cute on a grown man. So the simple philosophy really just says that when my pants get too tight, instead of buying a bigger size and giving in to the bulge, I make a concerted effort to lose weight instead. My tolerance level to put up with that discomfort has obviously grown, and I’m starting to wonder if I’m only maintaining my pants size because of my anatomy extending over the belt line, rather than being constrained by it?

    Ok, enough of the disturbing mental imagery and on to the real point of this post. Going shopping for new jeans (of the same size I might add), has turned into quite a frustrating chore because of the insistence by retailers to shove all men (including us real ones) into that girlish designs that suggest that skinny jeans look good on real men. It doesn’t. It never did, and it never will. A man that wears a skinny jeans is probably a man that is either still living with his mother (for her to take care of him and not the other way around), or a man that gets his nails polished and has facial products to keep his skin looking soft and youthful. I hate skinny jeans. Especially for men. And I hate men that pamper themselves as if they’re women. We have more women than men in this world, literally and figuratively, so give it a rest already. Try being a man for a change. You’ll be surprised at how refreshing that can be. And no, being a slob doesn’t mean you’re a man, it just means you’re a slob. Usually a blob of a slob, now that I think of it.

    Shopping at several local retailers has proven that there is a pervasive assumption that men want to wear what women wear. I’m old school and proud of it. I yearn for a time when men were men and women were women, and each had equitable roles, and chivalry was still admired. But the feminists and the apologists will not allow such wholesomeness to survive, so they decided to force men into bootlegged jeans, skinny fit everything, straight leg jeans, low rise jeans, and everything but REGULAR FIT jeans! What happened to the good old regular fit? I don’t want some fanboy designer look. I simply want a comfortable pair of jeans that will allow me to do the chores around the house without having to shift my jewels back in place after each movement because of the feminine crotch that someone thought would be a good idea on a man’s jeans. It disgusts me to say the least, and physically pains me at best.

    No wonder we have such a dysfunctional society. Men are trying to prove that they’re as sassy and polished as women, and women are trying to prove that they’re equal to men. Neither are comfortable being their natural selves any longer except when they’re alone in their homes without any social stigmas to comply with or judging eyes to appease. All this is blatantly reflected in our children when they develop that vacuous mentality that allows only for self-promotion and a desperation for affirmation, while believing that any challenge is a reason to be diagnosed with a mental illness because the support structure that should be there to guide them through the insanity of adolescence is suddenly replaced with self-centred adults trying to compete with their children in appearance and social status resulting in social ills that leave even anarchists cringing with fear.

    Seriously. Can someone simply point me to a retailer that stocks men’s clothes for men in the men’s section, so that I don’t have to constantly look around me to reassure myself that I am actually shopping in the men’s section of the store?

  • Where Will This End?

    I wonder at times what the point is. Not of life. Of living. The worst distraction I’ve ever experienced in life has been my obsession with people’s opinions and affirmations. As much as I appear aloof or independent of it, it influences my behaviour in ways that disgust me at times.

    I’m in the process of killing my Tumblr blog. The dashboard on Tumblr seems to drive the same kind of behaviour as Facebook. It turned me into an attention whore seeking desperately to carve a niche for myself in a sea of uninterested acquaintances. But being the naive fool that I am, any seemingly sincere engagement with a stranger leads me to believe that I am being appreciated for the essence of me. The essence of me? I barely know what that is yet I fool myself into believing that others may be able to appreciate it.

    I sometimes feel like I’m primed for a mid-life crisis, although this crisis has already been in effect for the better part of my life. Responding stereotypically towards a stereotypical event hardly holds any appeal for me, but the tedious tendencies of society to label everything and everyone is rubbing off on me. I can think of no other reason why I continuously attempt to define my state of mind and my phase of life although arriving at a definitive term is quite simple. Dystopia. This is what it is, but hopefully will not be when it ends.

    The struggle then is aptly defined as my grave attempt to turn dystopia into utopia whilst still remaining morbidly functional in a dysfunctional society. Why do I keep measuring myself against society? I must be mad.

  • Nostalgia

    I had time to waste today, so I took a drive through my o-o-o-ld neighbourghood. I was reminded of so much from my past, mostly from my childhood that it left me somewhat bewildered. There was a bitter-sweet after taste from the whole experience, because it somehow felt as if I had left my roots too early in life. I felt a strange yearning to want to be back there, but at the same time I realised that I wouldn’t belong either.

    In fact, it’s difficult to convince myself at present that I belong anywhere in particular. I have a home that I’m excessively grateful for, and family and a scattering of friends, but no place where I feel at peace. As is my nature, when driving through the old neighbourhood there was a strong sense of the potential outcomes of what may have been of my life had I stayed in that area, rather than just an innocent recollection of years and experiences gone by.

    I often wonder if the tone of my reflections these days is the early warning signs of a mid-life crisis about to strike. Maybe it’s just the same yearning I talk of so often to return my life to a simpler time when things made more sense, and everything didn’t depend on everything and everyone else. I’m too tired to do justice to these thoughts right now. Isn’t it strange how life seems like such a long and arduous struggle when we look at what we think may lie ahead, yet it’s a blink of an eye when we stop to notice how much has happened already? Time and health…definitely two of the most important things that we take for granted when we have it…I guess as long as I don’t enter my mid-life crisis wearing a pee-pot on my head and riding an obnoxiously loud and juvenile-looking motorcycle that forces real men to accessorise, I stand a chance of growing old with dignity, not so?