On the most dangerous age
May. 2nd, 2026 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
posicScott D. Clary writes in Facebook -- https://www.facebook.com/scottdclarypage/posts/pfbid02piEMji3ejm16ZwYhg2rfz7FNoyhUNrEDRcQ6B9g8zDuF2CmCHKjAhX42nmaZ6mJl :
The most dangerous age for a man is 35-45. Too old to start over easily. Too young to give up. Old enough to know better. Not old enough to have fixed it. Every man I know in this window is either building something real or slowly going numb. There's very little in between.
***
Well, I was unemployed in Moscow for 4.5 years from the age of 30.5 to 35. Soon after I turned 35, my first official job in Moscow (the researcher position at IITP) started. Soon after I turned 45, I got an official offer of my first semi-permanent position in a civilized country (the researcher position in Prague). I taught for 2.5 years as a docent in Moscow and worked for 2.5 years as a postdoc in Haifa in the meantime. In this sense, it can be argued that I started over twice in this age interval.
Was I building something real? It depends on how real the theories of semialgebras, semiderived categories, contramodules, and contraherent cosheaves are for you. At any rate, I certainly wasn't "slowly going numb". If anything, my sensitivity was only increasing, and continues to increase.
The most dangerous age for a man is 35-45. Too old to start over easily. Too young to give up. Old enough to know better. Not old enough to have fixed it. Every man I know in this window is either building something real or slowly going numb. There's very little in between.
***
Well, I was unemployed in Moscow for 4.5 years from the age of 30.5 to 35. Soon after I turned 35, my first official job in Moscow (the researcher position at IITP) started. Soon after I turned 45, I got an official offer of my first semi-permanent position in a civilized country (the researcher position in Prague). I taught for 2.5 years as a docent in Moscow and worked for 2.5 years as a postdoc in Haifa in the meantime. In this sense, it can be argued that I started over twice in this age interval.
Was I building something real? It depends on how real the theories of semialgebras, semiderived categories, contramodules, and contraherent cosheaves are for you. At any rate, I certainly wasn't "slowly going numb". If anything, my sensitivity was only increasing, and continues to increase.
