I think you miss that a lot of people already have those feelings, so the article isn't pushing bad vibes, it's coming to terms with them. Obviously people are different so not everyone feels this way and of course there are degrees to how much one might relate to the article.

I did understand that particular purpose of the article, but there is something oddly detracting about it to me.

Like a soap opera dramatizes and exaggerates emotions, this article is a little too insistent on itself.

I don’t know how people aren’t reading an implied critique in this piece. Is it a kind of writing that many HNers are unfamiliar with, or something?

Or isn't there one really?

For instance:

> 45-year-olds aren’t discovered, they’re uncovered, like toxic waste, or a political scandal, or the murderer at the end of an Agatha Christie book. My god, that 45-year-old was lurking among us this entire time!

One way to read that is as criticism of people who think that way. It certainly seems like a complaint: the author is complaining this attitude is unfair. But whose attitude is it? Is this really the prevailing way of thinking about 45-year-olds? Or is the author just pushing paranoia to the readers?

I think you captured exactly my distaste for this article.

I understand it’s about coming to terms with these feelings and uses these specific examples.

But the examples used in the article seem unrealistic to begin with, as if the article insists that a plurality of people feel this way about youth and aging.

I just don’t think that’s really the case.

Of curiosity I just looked up the authors of my favorite book series - they were 43, 42, and 35 when the first book of each series was published. That first author is currently 70 and we're still waiting for the publisher that owns the rights to want another book in the series, she has a plot in mind and had revealed the premise more than a decade ago.

> The funny part about the young author example, how older authors are not exciting to discover? Yeah the richest and most successful author of all time was discovered when she was 32. J.R.R. Tolkien published The Hobbit at age 45. Little House on the Prairie? Published when Laura Ingalls Wilder was 65.

Agreed. I felt like this article was grasping for something good, but remark that "45-year-olds aren’t discovered, they’re uncovered, like toxic waste, or a political scandal" is ass-backwards.

Tolkien and Wilder and both great examples of writers who produced landmark works basically as a byproduct of leading full and interesting lives -- not by orbiting the publishing world and champing at the bit to churn out some flashy yet forgettable novel at a record young age. When this happens, the only embarrassment is for the establishment "publishing world" which pretends to represent "literary greatness," not for the author who is "uncovered." Personally, I suspect that "uncovered" authors will endure at a higher rate than the "discovered" ones.

Also I have to add that I rolled my eyes at the "evidence" of Emily Dickenson killed herself. So did Hemmingway, who was first published at 26. What's your point?

Despite all this, the core insight that "suddenly you’re old, and find yourself in a permanent state of imperfection, which you must reckon with" I believe is very true. Even those who succeed in one area of life (being published) have to grapple with it. What options did they leave on the table in order to have that success? What options have been lost due to fame and success (only a fool would believe there are none)?

Becoming a particular (and necessarily, imperfect) person instead of a potential person is a kind of horrifying first taste of death. I think that the healthy way to deal with it is to make peace with the fact that our ability to change ourselves is limited and our ability to change the past is even less. The serenity prayer and AA-adjacent ideas do this.

As a last note, I thought the movie "The Weatherman" did a really good job exploring this.