“Forty is the old age of youth; fifty is the youth of old age.”

- Victor Hugo

I don't stretch. I used to. I don't at all now. My range of motion is no less than it was when I did. I spent a year with a physical therapist. She increased my height by an inch or so by getting me to stand up straight (long story short) but she never told me to stretch.

I do engage in regular physical activity. Perhaps the most important thing I can say is that your teens was about shit you did for your parents, your twenties was about shit you did to impress dates, and your thirties is where you start doing shit for you. There are things that you've done your whole life that may have started out for someone else but now they're yours. Own 'em. I've been running since I was thirteen years old. I have maintained that I hate running ever since. Maybe 39 or so is where i realized that I actually kinda like it.

Any physical activity you take up now will not get you mocked by the kids. They'll enthusiastically approve of you trying something new. Especially if you are willing and able to be thoroughly outclassed by people half your age.

30-something is where you should seriously give earnest thought to no longer attempting to impress anyone else. Wear what the fuck you want, eat what the fuck you want, go to the bars you like not the ones you're supposed to be seen in.

I posted that at 38. I needed permission to do what I wanted to do. That permission was not necessary then, I just didn't know it yet.

Friends? Anybody you reach out to will be thankful. People in their 30s cease to have the time or patience to have friends for some reason. So they get lonely. So if you make a habit of saying "hey whassup" you will find yourself with a whole bunch of earnest friends. All it takes is the effort to connect.

Don't let yourself fossilize in the culture. You're about to hit the point where the grocery store has music from your childhood. This does not mean the music from your childhood is cool, it means you are finally economically powerful enough that the marketers are willing to fellate your nostalgia. There's new music out there. Listen to it. There's new books out there. Read them. There's new television out there. It's mostly shit but it's worth figuring it out for yourself so you don't become one of those choads that shares '90s_kid memes on Facebook.

You don't have to use all the new technology and websites and apps out there but if you don't have a passing knowledge of any of this stuff you've officially become one of those crusty old fucks that thinks Jay Leno is funny. Your instinct will be to go "Tik Tok? In my day we had Friendster! And we liked it! We loved it! Change is bad! The world was a better place when I was your age! Youth is wasted on the young!" but your instincts wanted you to have a kid at 17 raise it to 34 and then get eaten by a mastodon or some shit so it's time to start second-guessing your instincts.

And always remember that whatever you do, however you do it, someone somewhere will disapprove. They are every bit as powerless over your life as your parents are so accord them the same level of respect.