I’m not sure if I’m even on my very first account here or one I made later, but I’ve been a Doper for maybe 20 years, I think? I even attended a Dopefest made up of two entire human beings in Afghanistan in 2011-ish. Tonight is the first time I’ve visited in I can’t tell you how long. I don’t know how to navigate this site anymore enough to check, but I’ve probably posted a great many idiotic takes that I would be ashamed of today. Don’t judge me too harshly based on anything you might find there until you get to know the man I’ve become, I guess?
I’m doing good. I’m a lucky man in many ways. I’ve got a wife who will ride or die with me for the rest of our days together. I have two great kids who are on track to be fine adults, although I wish my generation and previous had done a better job of leaving them a good place to live. I’ve got two awesome dogs. I just bought an adorable car, my current favorite material possession. I’ve been obsessed lately with a game on my phone called SkyCards and plan on taking flying lessons, or at least a “discovery flight,” this spring or summer.
I’ve been a total cliche lately, but I’m fucking owning it. I just turned 45 and I’ve been finding myself yearning for the kind of life I had in like, 1999, dude. It’s a full-blown midlife crisis, is what it is. So I finally got serious about my diet and claimed baldness (but you can shave my beard when I’m good and dead, thank you very much). Simpler that way: I just take care of it every couple days in the shower. I bought a 1996 Honda… no radio, but I’m putting a CD player in there. You’re goddamn right I’m burning discs and getting a CD wallet for the car! It’s low mileage, so I’m hoping it’ll last me a decade. My wife and I just invested a little in a setup that’ll let us play vinyl, cassettes, and CDs. I’m trying to express myself creatively better, so I’ve been experimenting a little with oil pastels, LEGO, guitar, and livestreaming, but I haven’t really clicked with a creative outlet yet. Just craving one.
And speaking of cravings, I’ve been after the idea of finding community of some kind… I feel like most people could use a little community. I generally liked the vibes of the Dopers, so I’m hoping that’s still the case in 2026. Howdy.
Welcome back. We’re all older and many of us are wiser than we were 20 years ago. You’ll probably find most of the same vibe, just shufflin’ a little slower.
Couple thoughts. …
If you want to wail and gnash your teeth all day every day about US politics, there’s plenty of fodder here for that. If you want to steadfastly ignore all that angst and just live your life with some friends, there’s plenty here for that too. But IMO it takes a conscious decision to decide whether you’re here for Door #1, Door #2, or both. Absent that decision, you’ll probably be sucked into the #1 vortex.
If you want to look at your history, just click your [B] icon at upper right, then the little person icon at the lower right of the dropdown menu. That brings up your profile page. Which says you joined (under this name) in 2009 and have about 350 posts to your name. And prior to yesterday/today it was 2020 since the last time we all saw you.
Welcome back! My partner discovered that the state will give me $9000 to take my '97 Volvo wagon off the road so we’re in the middle of having to recalibrate our brains to a very different suite of technologies and considerations around getting a current “modern” vehicle.
Which is helping me to reflect on why I get so much satisfaction from hanging on to this relic of a bygone era. I’m more of a relic myself than you are so that’s part of it, but there’s also a component of deliberately and actively managing the level of engagment with the pace of change going on around me/us.
This place is helpful in that process, and better in some ways than my small network of personal friends and neighbors in that it provides additional elements of diversity and perspective. I second the counsel that it is best to avoid political discussions here. Although the mainstream here is pretty well aligned with my own leanings it’s an area where I feel too much validation is neither necessary nor helpful in understanding other viewpoints.
Do carry on with your midlife crisis! Sure there is potential for damage, but it’s much more likely that shaking things up will open new horizons for you. Enjoy!
That’s funny, I was 45 when I joined the board in 1999. Fortunately I’d gotten my midlife crisis out of the way in my mid to late 20s.
One thing you’ll notice coming back to the board is that a lot of the underlying mechanics have changed. For instance, a thread isn’t broken up into pages anymore; it’s on one long page, and if you’re going to scroll a long way backward or forward, you use that smallish slider between the right-hand edge of the text and your browser’s slider on the far right of the page. (The browser’s slider is good for going a few posts up or down at a time.)
And to search within a thread (as well as searching the whole board), you use the search icon in the upper right: ‘find in page’ on your browser won’t do much for you, at least IME.
Where there’s a will and a back account, there’s a way to keep it on the road, probably! Luckily, mine only has like 36k miles on the clock, so I hope it’ll last me a good long time.
)