So, you may have seen this article last week about women starting to feel “old” at the age of 29. As others have pointed out, it’s not grounded in the most scientific of research - it was based on an online poll on a funeral home website. Still, it made me laugh. Because, you see, I recently turned 29 and - like the women who answered the funeral website poll - ever since I have, I’ve started to feel, well… “old”.

Not because of the way I look - I’m not worried about that. Not even, I think, because of some culturally mediated panic about the proximity of 30, although I suppose that might apply somewhat in a career sense (which I am very cogniscent is stupid, self-indulgent and privileged). I’m feeling “old” mostly because I’ve come to the realisation that I have now almost completely transitioned out of the life stage I inhabited in my early to mid 20s.

And because - the very same week as my 29th birthday - I grossly misinterpreted a pop cultural reference a teenager made and went into an unwitting moral/emotional panic about it. Which is pretty funny in retrospect, but also totally something an “old” person would do.

But back to life transitions. Once upon a time, I like to tell people, I was a “fun person”. It’s true! I used to do things such as stay out past 1am, go clubbing, host lavish dress-up parties, and dig out awesome, off-beat things for my friends to do on weekends. I still do some of those things, but the dress-up parties end earlier (always by 1am) and the awesome, off-beat things I find to do tend to be more about entering Amazing Race-style photography competitions and dressing up as Royal Wedding guests, than about dancing like nobody’s watching.

A couple of weeks ago, a friend asked me to meet her to go clubbing at 11pm and my immediate internal reaction was, “Oh, that’s very late! The Tube closes at 12:30!” She told me that 11 was actually very early for this particular, clearly infinitely hipper than I am, club.

These feelings aren’t entirely new to me. I like to blame them on The Boyfriend, but really the transition started three years ago, around the time of my 26th birthday. I remember sitting in a park in Sydney’s Newtown with a similarly non-partying friend, telling her I just didn’t have the same energy to go out that I used to. I figured it was okay, I told her, because I had had a pretty awesome time in my early 20s. And, who knew? I could be right into it again in another six months or so.

The truth is, the reason I’m not as “fun” as I used to be is because I don’t find the things I used to find “fun” as fun as I used to. I’ve been there, done that and it was great while it lasted, but sooner or later, for most of us, the novelty wears off. (For some of my friends, the novelty wore off at 22. For others, it is yet to falter.)

I’m happy to go and check out the scene if something looks particularly interesting - London’s Guilty Pleasures, for example, is a pure work of art… even if it doesn’t really kick off until 11/11:30pm - but otherwise, I’d rather just go to the local pub with my friends… and drink soda water. Or stay home and watch a DVD. Which sounds incredibly dull, I realise, but after 10 years of being legally able to see the insides of clubs, pubs and house parties, is it really such a strange transition to have made?

The reason I decided to write this post - well, other than to regale you with tales of my hilarity and ineptitude - is because I wanted to talk about the ways in which we have wedded fun and youth. As well as the ways in which being “fun” is privileged over being “boring” and in which being “young” is privileged over being “old”.

To be “young” in Western, white, middle-class culture is synonymous with being “fun” in a particular, narrowly defined way. It is to party, flirt, drink, fuck. It is to be free, and to take complete advantage of that freedom. Not all young people do these things, of course - not all of them have the option to - and most of the ones who do don’t do it all the time. But to not do those things is to be a failed young person, or else to be “old and boring”.

Youth may be maligned for all these reasons (“slutty” “binge drinking” “ill-informed” “out of control”), but make no mistake; it is also heavily revered. Nobody wants to be “old” in our culture - or, since I’m not talking about dentures, walking frames, or nursing homes here, I should say “nobody wants to be middle-aged”. If youth is Gossip Girl, promise and vitality, middle age is The Office, unfilfullment and trying just that little bit too hard. Which is, of course, the other problem: hold on to your “fun” persona for too long, and eventually there’ll be a group of 20-year-olds looking at you like you’re some sad old person who hasn’t figured out how uncool they are.

Which isn’t to say you shouldn’t say “fuck it” and do that anyway, if it’s what floats your boat. Don’t deprive yourself of the things you enjoy just because, in advertising land, they’re only for the under 25/30/35/insert abitrary deadline for end of youth here. But at the same time, if your interests evolve and change as time passes, there’s no shame in that, either. For most of us, it’s just part of getting older.

And even though my 24-year-old self was pretty damn fun at the time, if I tried to do the things she liked forever, I would be bored out of my mind.