My listening, overall, has stayed about the same as I get older. Although, every once in a while I have periods of a week or so, where I don't do much listening. But I tend to make up for it, not consciously, during other weeks. Almost all of my listening is through my system, and it is all active listening. I almost never listen to music while doing another activity; not much of the music I listen to is conducive to it. The only exceptions, are while online searching for new artists, bands and composers.
i am living in the moment. i am not gonna be concerned with when i leave. that'll certainly steer me towards depression and anxiety. my best friend died 2 years ago. the last thing he said to me the very last time i saw him before he died was no day is promised to anyone and to live everyday as if it was your last. so i aint stuttn no getting old. i do whatever i can to be as healthy as possible. stay active, exercise, eat well, rest. ive been an athlete since childhood. ive been reallllly lucky. i had double bypass surgery when i was 48. did everything right but i smoked cigarettes. i quit the day i went in the hospital. i went back playing ball 5 months after. even with a new hip 10 yrsago. at 66, im one of the kids in one of my basketball group. most of the guys are 70s with a few 80 yr olds. one of the guys plays winter hockey. at 75. after finding them, i no longer worry about it. i have listened to music all my life at any moment possible. the innanet was a music haven for me. i was so disgusted with radio by the 80s. the internet offered up a ton of music choices. my equipment tastes hadnt evolved yet. i was burning cds, went on to mp3 players, loading flashdrives. that was so cool because i had access to hundreds of songs right there in my car. just plug it in the dash. sound quality was ok. the dac in my cars were ok. the cd players were pretty decent in some. wasnt thinking that way back then. i started with ht sets till a few years ago i decided to jump in deep. after some research i went vintage and budget. fits the waf, too. my jbl sdp-3 was a hifi piece in its day. im, so far, quite happy with what i have. my jbl l890 towers dig deep and hit hard even before the subs. i listen nearly all day. no change. sorry. that was long-winded.
Covid lockdown really changed me for the better. I went back to enjoying music, tv, etc. much more. I've rode my bike more in the last 16 months than I have in years.
68 here and have been retired for a while now, enjoying my system more and more every day. If I go for more than a few days, I start having withdraws
I’ve been sitting and listening more the last few years (as opposed to listening while working, which I still do), but that’s more of a function of having a nicer room for listening in this house than I have in any of my previous residences. That has inspired me to take more nights to listen to a record or two before joining my wife to watch hockey (or baseball) in the living room. Being stuck home during the pandemic allowed me to use some of my concert budget to upgrade my gear, but I don’t think I’m listening a ton more because of that. I still get out to the bike trail and I’ve been working on the house and the garden. I think mortality concerns might drive me to more concerts when things calm down. I went to a ton of shows in 2019 because I could after getting settled into the new job, house, and city. At the end of the year, I thought I needed to dial it back because I was getting too old to go to more than 50 shows in a year. But now. Every chance I get to see an artist might be the last. For me or them. I’m still annoyed that I skipped seeing Mavis Staples a few years ago at the Borderlands festival. I was going to rectify that and see her last summer at CMAC opening for Norah Jones. That show didn’t happen, for obvious reasons.
I retired 4 years ago this past March. At that point I decided to return to this hobby I had left about 35 years ago. I’m 68 years old. Since then I have put together a decent system to primarily play vinyl. I recently purchased a nice TT, the Audio Technica AT WP7. My speakers are the Klipsch RP 160m’s and my amp is an integrated Yamaha AS 501. I listen to my system about once a day. Usually at night. Occasionally I think of the time I lost, but that can’t be helped so I refuse to dwell on past mistakes. I don’t think of my time left on this earth. Of that I don’t worry as it’s out of my control. I have dove into the hobby; reading various books and mags to learn. I have found it to be both exciting and relaxing. As I have several other interests, this hobby has filled up most of my spare time. Lol.
It varies and part of it may have been the stage of life and what was happening at the time. When I was traveling a lot for work (lots of overseas and NY/California flights), the last thing I wanted to do was fiddle with a tonearm. When I was home (at last), I wanted to push "on" and be done with it. I got back on the horse in around 2006/7 and as the system has gotten better, it has also gotten a little more involved, and sometimes, I think that presents an inhibition to simply turning something "on" and listening to music without any preliminaries. Retirement has also proved not to be as huge amount of "free" time as I might have assumed when I was young. I'm still busy, occupied with "stuff," more of it if not most, the stuff I want to do, but still. And, there's some element of being in the mood to listen. Since I don't usually use music as background, but listen fairly intently. Not for any "serious" purpose, but still, my focus will be on the music if I'm gonna fire up the main system. And that requires a mindset for me, not just a casual "turn it on." I'm not suggesting that this is good, just the state of affairs now, from my vantage point.
I retired in 2007 at a fairly young age and over the last 14 years music has been a daily routine that I haven't broken from along with collecting and following up leads on new music I might be interested in listening to. Fortunately I'm still youngish with many years of musical enjoyment and exploration still ahead of me the only caveat being that I'm running out of room to store my new records and CDs and have to choose my music selections and purchases more carefully.
BTW, I appreciate all the responses and various viewpoints. My thinking all along was that knowing I have less time left than when I was younger, I appreciate music even more today although I don’t listen more or less often than I used to. I’ve also been a musician for most of my life so it’s always been a part of who I am. But I guess as you get older you enjoy these things even more and take fewer things for granted you once did. Just speaking for myself here.
That's right a lot of us don't get to make it there. In my case after 7 months of retirement I'd had enough and went back to work full time. I'll try retirement again in the spring and I'm hoping for a different outcome this time around.
Up to the age of 40, music was always my second favorite passion/hobby/interest behind playing competitive sports. Then, injuries and osteoarthritis kicked in pushing me off the courts and fields and onto my butt. That's when I really started to focus on organizing my collection and improving my listening space. It really kicked into gear 4 years ago when my last real attempt at a long term relationship failed and I found myself with even more time on my hands. I spent hours listening while scouring the internet on sites like this learning about equipment and improving playback and discovering music. Right before the pandemic hit, I purchased a new integrated amp, DAC and speakers and, in bittersweet fashion, I couldn't have timed it any better. Although I wasn't forced to work from home and was able to still go to my office, I learned how to use J-River to listen to my now well-organized home collection from there and then after work, when my social opportunities and reasons to leave my home were severely compromised due to lockdown and restrictions, I would engage with my main system to a new level to use as a therapeutic distraction. According to my last.fm scrobbling account (another thing I discovered in the last two years) I've listened to an average of 6 hours of music per day. I'm still a few years from retirement, but I plan to take advantage of how, with current streaming and playback technology, it's never been a better time to be a music enthusiast and I will spend the last third (hopefully) of my life fully immersed in this incredible hobby. So yes, as I've aged, my music system(s) have never been more important and more utilized.
I retired three years ago after a divorce and a move back to my hometown. I have friends and family here, but I’m basically a homebody. I have my turntable set up for the first time in several years, so I spend time almost every day rediscovering my LP collection. I have a nice 4K tv, but I got rid of cable because I only used it for occasional baseball watching (not worth $100 a month). I bought new speakers and a networkable integrated amp that I can control with my iPhone. My sizable music collection is all on my computer, and I’m listening to it most of the day on my main system over my LAN. I loved working, but eventually my age became a barrier to getting new projects. Retirement has meant being very careful with money, but I love that I have all day to listen my music.
We moved from the East Coast to Texas in 2017. When we were searching for a house here, one of my main objectives was to have a room just for my music collection and the equipment, which I now have. It is my favorite room in the house. I was really looking forward to spending hours in there each day. Four years later, I have not done that. I just can't justify on a sunny, warm day not spending time outdoors working in the yard or taking our dog for a walk. Music is essential to my being, yet I just have not devoted the time I thought I would to spending hours of time daily listening to music. I would not say I am spending less time, but I have been surprised the time has not increased dramatically like I thought it would.