How to survive the 35-year-old curse

Whenever I talk about my work friend Jack to my regular friends, I refer to him as “my young friend Jack from work” because, at 25, he is a full 10 years younger than me, which feels important to recognise. Anyway, my young friend Jack recently invited me to join his midweek futsal team, an exciting update because I love both futsal and midweek activities.

Unfortunately, while signing up, something awful happened. The man behind the desk did a double-take at my date of birth and raised an eyebrow. “You belong in that group,” he said, pointing to a group of older men who all looked vaguely like my father. “35 and over.”

Stuck in the middle: Too young for a house, too old for TikTok.Credit: Michael Howard

Then something even more awful happened. Overhearing the confusion, my young friend Jack stepped in and said, “No, it’s OK. He’s cool to play with us.”

I didn’t know which was worse: that Jack had to vouch for me or that I’d officially reached the age when midweek futsal competitions stopped bracketing my age. You hit 35, and it was just over. Later, when I relayed this story to my wife, she was unsympathetic, reminding me that carrying a baby over 35 is referred to as a “geriatric pregnancy”.

Worried that there was an entire discrimination movement I was unaware of, I did what any self-respecting 35-year-old would do and Googled – Turning 35 – hoping to stumble across a comfort read. You know, “35 reasons to love being 35” or maybe “35 people who made it after 35”?

Instead, the first thing that came up was an article titled “35 is the worst age, according to Tom Hanks”. As it turns out, Hanks hated being 35 because that’s when “your metabolism stops, gravity starts tearing you down, and your bones start wearing off. You even stand differently.”

There was also a piece about the world’s oldest wombat recently turning 35 in a Tasmanian zoo, which seemed irrelevant at best and hurtful at worst.

Physical decay aside, what Hanks failed to mention, however, was that 35 is also an age of profound psychological confusion.

Equal distance between 20 and 50, it is a time when the promise of youth is fading in the rearview mirror, yet the comfort of old age remains out-of-reach. At 35, some of your friends act 25, and some of your friends act 45, but no one really has their act together.

Census data from 2021 showed that homeownership for those aged 30 to 39 has decreased in each successive generation.Credit: Andrew Dyson

Now I know there have been countless articles about The Millennial Malaise™, and the last thing I want to do is send the Boomers rushing to the comments section to remind everyone – in caps lock – that things were harder, BACK IN THE DAY.

It’s more of an acknowledgment that a specific set of factors, like the real wage decline, the ever-rising retirement age, and homeownership at historic lows for people aged 35-39, has contributed to a world flush with options for those at each end of the spectrum but failing to cater to the forgotten middle.

Too old for TikTok and too young for a property portfolio, 35-year-olds must do the only thing left available: run from their problems by participating in half-marathons.

Depressingly, not only is TikTok fame out-of-reach, but I probably can’t even work there. According to a New York Times article, ByteDance, the company that owns the video app TikTok, is part of a widespread problem in the tech industry called “the curse of 35”.

Basically, tech companies are ditching workers en masse the minute they turn 35, believing they are simultaneously too expensive and too out-of-touch. One worker observed, “At 35, he feels young but also like a plague”.

*Provided you are 35 or under.Credit: AP

Thankfully, my young friend Jack seems oblivious to the curse of 35, given that he happily accepted my invitation to another midweek activity. This time, we played pickleball, one of the fastest-growing sports in the world and, encouragingly, a hobby popular with people mostly in their 50s and 60s.

It turns out the older crowd is incredibly ruthless on the pickleball court. After several one-sided games, the organiser shuffled over to Jack and me for a quiet word. He suggested we might have more luck joining a group of beginners.

“That far court is full of newcomers,” he said, pointing to a collection of men and women whose metabolism appeared to be slowing at the same rate as mine. “They’re all 40 and under.”

Find more of the author’s work here. Email him at [e-mail] or follow him on Instagram at @thomasalexandermitchell and on Twitter @_thmitchell.

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