What were you doing half a lifetime ago?

[efaardvark]

What were you doing when you were half as old as you are now?  If you are 10, what were you doing when you were 5?  If you are 30, what was going on when you were 15?  This topic started a lively lunchtime discussion at work so I thought I'd drop it here and see if it has similar effect...

I'm coming up on 60 (in September) so to keep the math simple I'll go with that.  That means I was 30 in '94.  All I can remember offhand from that year was Commodore International going bankrupt and NASA crashing the Magellan spacecraft into Venus at the end of that mission.  My first computer was a Commodore AMIGA 1000 and I'd just upgraded (at considerable expense) to an A3000 model when I heard the news about Commodore so I was a bit bummed.  Magellan I remember because I was working on the Ulysses project at the time.  They were just starting the first of their fast scans of the mission so they had some years yet ahead but I knew a few people on the Magellan project who were going to be looking for work soon.  Those two lawyers inventing spam with their "Green Card" mass-marketing scam on usenet I think was around then as well, give or take a year or two.  Likewise for Amazon and Yahoo going public.  Mid-90s in general were growth years here in the US, which was a welcome change after the economic disaster that was the 70s and 80s*.  The 'Net was just getting started.  The WWW as we know it had only just been invented in '91 and we hadn't yet hit the dot-com bust so everyone was still upbeat and trying to cash in on the boom.  I seem to recall the first pizza was ordered over the internet in or around '94 as well.  Must have been over a dial-up modem connection because things like DSL were still a few years in the future and 'Net-connected smartphones didn't exist yet.

So what was going on when you were half as old as you are now?


* a note on the 80s..  People complain about mortgage rates popping above 5% in the last year or so.  How about the standard 30Y, fixed-rate mortgages ABOVE 10% for 7 straight years, from '79 to around '86.  The peak was over 18% in '81!  Even higher if your credit wasn't so hot.  Even t-bills were pushing 20% yields.  Great if you had cash left to put away.  Not many did.  Massive inflation and rampant layoffs and corporate cutbacks had taken their toll in a failing economy.  The word "stagflation" was invented to describe that era of high inflation combined with a stagnant economy.  I graduated HS in '82 so that was the world the newly-minted adult me started out in.

[Otaking66lives]

I am currently 44, so when I was 22(2001) I was still finding my way in this world(kinda still am lol). I was working at UPS and I believe I went to my first anime convention that year(not my first con, but my first dedicated to anime). Other than that, not too much else to write about.

[viruxx]

Can't say I had much going on at age 18.5 (currently 37). I had just graduated HS in 2005, and started going to a local community college immediately in the fall afterward, majoring in computer information systems/technology. Second semester in (2006), I got a job working at this chain buffet restaurant called Ryan's Steakhouse... and hated every minute of it. Thankfully, that lasted only a few months before my dad got appointed elsewhere with his job, and we all moved to the region we live in currently. I enrolled in another community college the next county over, and spent a lot longer than one should have trying to figure out what the heck I wanted to do. So, I guess I was trying to figure out what I wanted to go into as a career, while simultaneously discovering how much I hated the odd jobs I had to do to make ends meet. The "trial" period, if you will, of life's subscription had ended at that point.

[Animedragon]

Half my current age, 71, isn't a whole number so for convenience I'll say it's 35. At 35 my life was pretty much ordinary and nothing really exciting was happening. I had just bought my second car, and like my first one it was second hand, yeah, I was late into the car-owning thing! Back then I was into computers, CB radio and model and real railways and I'd not even heard of anime. I was also happily in my 18th year of a job that I initially took as a 'stepping-stone' into what I thought would be a better job but after just 1 year I decided that I liked and enjoyed the 'stepping-stone' job much more than the one I was originally aiming for so I stayed with it for my entire working life.

[efaardvark]

On 2/20/2024 at 6:15 PM, viruxx said:

I had just graduated HS in 2005, and started going to a local community college immediately in the fall afterward, majoring in computer information systems/technology.

I went for C&IS at the CC as well.  At least to start.  The local CC offered transfer credits towards the University of California system and UC Davis had a good C&IS program.  The CC was a lot cheaper however, both tuition-wise and because it was close enough that I could save money by continuing to live with the parents, so my plan was to get the general-ed and low-level degree-related stuff out of the way at the CC and then transfer to Davis when I got to the higher-level material.  It didn't quite work out as planned but I'm not complaining.
 

 

19 hours ago, Animedragon said:

I had just bought my second car, and like my first one it was second hand, yeah, I was late into the car-owning thing!

I've only owned 3 cars in my entire life, including the one I'm driving now.  And that one I only bought because a tree fell on my last one!  I tend to take pretty good care of my cars and drive them until they wear out.  Or a tree falls on them, whichever comes first. 

20 hours ago, Animedragon said:

I was also happily in my 18th year of a job that I initially took as a 'stepping-stone' into what I thought would be a better job but after just 1 year I decided that I liked and enjoyed the 'stepping-stone' job much more than the one I was originally aiming for so I stayed with it for my entire working life.

As it turned out things didn't go as I'd planned either.  I was 2 years into classes at a community college (see above) when I took a job doing work a trained monkey could have done.  It was only a summer job and was only supposed to last for 90 days, but it led to an unexpected job offer, which led to what is coming up on a 40 year career.  Never did get around to attending UC Davis. 
 

[Animedragon]

4 hours ago, efaardvark said:

I've only owned 3 cars in my entire life, including the one I'm driving now.  And that one I only bought because a tree fell on my last one!  I tend to take pretty good care of my cars and drive them until they wear out.  Or a tree falls on them, whichever comes first. 

I keep my cars until they wear out as well. I'm now on my 5th car now, of the previous ones two I got rid of because they became unreliable, one I got rid of because while it looked a nice car the longer I owned it the more things I found that annoyed me about it, the other went because while it was a great car and I really liked it my garage suggested I either got rid of it or face a large repair bill because there were serious problems developing.

[Emotion Flux]

I'll be 36 this year, so I'll use that number to avoid the headache of trying to figure out half of 35. Half of 36 (give a year) I would've been 18. That was after my big sister moved out and I didn't see her as often as I used to when she lived with us, but she'd still visit, although I can't remember in what intervals, but it was either a month or 3... I'd have to ask mom about it to know for sure... When she'd visit she'd take me to a movie theater which I really liked because I loved to go to those (as long as no one was being disruptive in there anyway), but I can't remember which movies we saw. I wish I could remember being there with her, experiencing the movie theater together as little brother and big sister, but I wish a lot of things that aren't going to happen. After she had her daughter though she understandably couldn't take me to those anymore because her daughter was so little, which I was ok with. Just the fact that I'd be able to see big sis' and her daughter whenever they visited was pretty sweet. ^^ When I was 19, in the next year when I was 19 is when she passed away. I basically play games all the time, so I don't have much to tell other than her passing away which I still feel a lot of heartache for.

[Zeref]

I was 15 half a lifetime ago and things felt simpler then than they do now. At this time in my life my only job was going to school which I was in comprehensive school or high school. At that time I was still living in my home country of Finland whereas I only recently moved to the United States for a job. I was still learning English then and my English wasn't as good as it is now, even if I still struggle with some English words now. Around that time of age 14 - 15 was when I discovered and began watching anime and getting into playing games on the computer regularly. Overall I think my life was very carefree then with less stress and hassle than that of being an adult with adult responsibility. Another thing I remember was in the Summer of the year I was 15 we took a vacation to China in Hong Kong and to this day remains one of my best vacation experiences. 

Edited April 21 by Zayon

[Metro]

Man, I was like 10, I was probably just playing Minecraft most of the time

[Sakura]

Almost the same as what I am doing now  Playing Runescape, listening to Linkin Park, watching anime, going on anime forums online, going to school.. which I seem to have never gotten away from school just that now it's college lol. Erm I think I played outside a lot back then though. I definitely went outside more then as opposed to now to do things with friends and just hang out. I kinda miss just sitting on the curb with friends and talking or rollerblading/biking and stuffs with friends like back then.