Lachlan Brown
I’m in my late 30s now, and the most interesting change isn’t what I’ve started doing. It’s what I’ve stopped caring about.
Not in any dramatic way. I didn’t sit down and make a list. The things just lost their grip slowly, the way some songs you used to love stop showing up in your rotation. You don’t decide to be done with them. You notice one day that they’re gone.
Here are six of them.
Being right in small arguments
When I was younger, I had a strong need to be right. Especially in conversations with my brothers, with old friends, with anyone close enough to push back. I’d dig in. I’d find the angle. I’d want the other person to come around to my view, ideally while admitting I’d been right all along.
These days I notice the urge appear and then sort of fade.
It’s not that I’ve become wise about it. I’ve watched enough of those arguments end the same way. Either both people quietly let it go, or someone says something they regret. Either way, the relationship is a little worse and the truth wasn’t really what was at stake. I was usually just defending the version of myself who needed to be right.
When I let that go, I lose nothing. The conversation gets a bit easier. My wife and I argue less.
Whether I’m on pace with other people my age
A few years ago I’d see someone my age buy a house, sell a company, run a marathon, write a book, and feel something I now recognise as a soft kind of panic. Like I was behind on a race I hadn’t signed up for.
I don’t really feel that anymore.
Some of it is running our business with my brothers long enough to see that other people’s timelines have nothing to do with mine. Some of it is having a young daughter who doesn’t care about any of this. Some of it is just being older. You watch enough people hit a milestone they thought would change everything, and then go back to the same daily moods a month later, and the whole framing starts to feel thin.
There’s no pace. There’s only what you actually do today.
Having an informed opinion on everything in the news
News is the one I’m most quietly proud of letting go.
For most of my 20s and early 30s I felt a kind of duty to be informed about everything. Tech, markets, politics, the cultural argument of the week. I’d read the headlines in the morning, take positions, feel briefly oriented in the world.
Most of it I’ve stopped caring about, not because the news doesn’t matter, but because I noticed how rarely those opinions changed anything I actually did. I’d get worked up about something I had no influence over, spend the afternoon distracted, and not think about it again for a year. It was just weight I’d volunteered to carry.
I still read. I just don’t feel I owe the world a view on everything anymore. Most days I’d rather know one thing well than have a half-formed take on twenty.
Looking productive
For a long time, I confused being busy with being useful. I had a packed calendar, a long task list, and a small sense of virtue about how much I was getting through.
What I actually finished was often less than what I do now in half the hours.
The thing I stopped caring about is the appearance of work. The performance of it. The need to seem like the kind of person who is always on. When I’m with my daughter, I’m with my daughter. When I’m working, I work in long quiet stretches and then stop. When I run along the river in the morning, my phone stays at home.
It’s a quieter life than the one I was performing in my early 30s. It also produces more.
Friendships I was keeping alive out of guilt
This one took longer to admit.
There are people I’ve known for years who I used to feel I should stay in touch with. Some are good people. Some I just had a lot of shared history with. Either way, when I noticed how little I actually looked forward to the next catch-up, I started to ease back.
Not in a cold way. I’d still reply. I’d still see them if they were in town. I stopped initiating to keep the friendship on life support.
It turns out a lot of friendships have a natural lifespan, and stretching them past their useful years is mostly a form of pretending. The friendships I still put real time into are the ones where I feel more like myself afterwards. There are fewer of them than I used to think I needed.
What people who barely know me think of me
This is the one I’m most surprised by.
In my 20s I was constantly tuned into how I was being perceived. By people on the internet, by people I’d met once, by people whose opinion of me wouldn’t affect my life in any real way. I’d replay small interactions in my head. I’d worry about what someone had thought when I said the wrong thing at a dinner.
Now I mostly don’t notice.
It isn’t confidence, exactly. I think it’s just that I’ve slowly figured out who I’m actually accountable to. My wife. My daughter. My brothers. A small handful of friends. A few colleagues whose work I respect. That list is shorter than I once assumed it should be, and the rest of the world’s view of me, frankly, isn’t something I have access to anyway.
None of these came from a decision. I didn’t reach an age and choose what to put down. They just got quieter on their own.
I expect there will be more of them in my 40s.
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