Every year is my favorite year! At 55, I’m pretty fucking happy! Adult kids call, text, and visit, but don’t live with me. I just moved into a smaller house. Retirement is just a few years away.

For me everything after childhood seems to be the best part of life, because after you grow up you finally can make your life the way you want and if you have enough strength you can make it absolutely wonderful.

Childhood can be cool too but only if you happen to be born to a good family.

I like the part I’m living in now, despite the difficulties, since it is the part I can experience and change.

So far for me it has been from 40ish on.

Agree on childhood, mine wasn’t bad really but I hated the absolute lack of freedom.

Early adulthood is poverty and struggle, and anger is closer to the surface.

30s were the worst for me, raising kids was nice but I was stressed all the time, ALL the time, and also didn’t realize how much birth control pills were messing with me.

Early 40s, wow. Sex drive like a teenager but so much more opportunity to use it. Probably nature aiming for some reproduction before cutting it off but WOW. Felt good physically, and almost certainly my best looking years were mid 40s, underweight but tall, I love the look, so felt attractive too.

50s so far probably my most comfortable years. Nothing hurts, still some financial stress but kids grew up great, better relationship , it’s mostly just work, exercise, fewer responsibilities I’d say. Certainly an easier time emotionally - don’t get mad as easy.

Stay in shape and hang on. I can’t say it WILL get better but will say it CAN get better. It has for me. And it’s been kinda nice to have it come later.

The years I see my good friends more often are always the better years.

For me, it was highschool. I had a great group of friends, almost everyday my cousins and friends would be visiting. Some days I had 4-6 people all visiting me. Mom and dad were happy and healthy. I didn’t need money so I didn’t care I was broke. I was in love with a beautiful person who I still think about.

Now, in my 20s, I stay in my one bedroom apartment that costs more than my paycheque and I haven’t seen a human face in almost a week.

Id say mid 20s to 30s. At least, thats the age people seem happiest around me.

Up until now it was my student time, though I think this depends on personal circumstances and is different for everyone. Childhood was nice, but obviously limited in terms of freedom. Teens where decent, but not 100% great. Student life was easily the best for me, I’d constantly meet like-minded people, there were so many cheap or free activities, and people constantly said shit like “you guys are our future” etc. I also loved having well defined work and goals, limited scope, and lots of depth and interesting challenges. Now that I’m working it’s usually very shallow work in terms of complexity, but with lots of communication and interdependencies. And it goes ever on because agile, no clear quartile or semester goals like university.

Now that I’m working I have the money, but I lost the easy access to like-minded people and fun activities. Organizing something with friends turned from “let’s grab a drink this afternoon” into “let’s align our agendas to find a free spot somewhere in 6 weeks”. And programming turned from “here’s a algorithm someone came up with that you can implement” to “the customer wants this button to do X, hi spend the next week implementing/testing/finding out its meant to work differently”.

I’m a bit biased though, because I’m currently burnt out. Work life was decent for a bit, it just temporarily got worse and kinda pushed me over the edge. If anyone has tips I’d love to hear them :3

We should all get a restart phase where we have a young body again but 50+ years of life experience.

The space stage.

We’re talking about Spore, right?

you missed teens. old enough to be free from wage slavery young enough to get away with murder.

Things for me have been improving from mid 20s onward. Each year better than the last imo.
I come from a pretty privileged background, both parents were medical professionals, and I’m a white male. I think my parents did a good job of raising my siblings and I, and our grandparents were very involved and we saw extended family a lot. For me childhood was good but i feel like it was a different mix of freedoms more so than a lack of freedom like you say.
I feel like a lot of people like their early 20s more, but it sort of sucked for me. Underemployed, but much of the issues I had with my college and early 20s was due to the collision of guard rails dropping away and undiagnosed adhd. Things have been improving ever since my wife and I started enmeshing our lives more, dividing tasks based on strengths.
I’m in my late 30s now, and my body feels better than in my early 20s, as I had stopped working out during that time. Also ended up getting diagnosed for adhd in my mid 40s and just this year had vyvanse prescribed which has proved a huge help. The funny thing about it is that I didn’t notice it working. What I did notice was when I forgot to take it. I had grown used to less chaos in my thoughts, so that made it clear it was working after all

Ill take any with independent wealth over any living check to check.

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