Out of Touch?

The media these days seems to be full of stories about TV shows I've never watched, never even heard of in some cases, and people I've likewise never heard of and never seem to find out exactly why the media thinks that I should have heard of them.  Time was that I had my finger on the pulse of popular culture, or so it seemed,  I watched inordinate amounts of new TV shows and knew who everyone in them was, (the advent of the internet helped immeasurably there).  But as time went on, I found that I was enjoying large amounts of it less and less.  Gradually, my feeling of obligation to watch all of this stuff so as to know what my workmates and friends were talking about started to wane.  Increasingly, I switched my viewing allegiances to my true love - the offbeat, the obscure, the low rent, the vintage and the weird side of the media.  Which, at first, meant tracking down out of print VHS tapes and later DVDs and watching late night TV schedules for random screenings of this sort of stuff.  The internet and then streaming TV has made finding this stuff far easier, but there are still gaps to be filled in my viewing experience.  Of course, the downside of giving in to my passions was that I couldn't find anyone else remotely interested in the same sort of stuff to discuss it all with:  strangely, exploitation films don't make for the sort of 'water cooler' discussions at work that soap operas or reality TV does.  But again, the internet has helped here, bringing me into contact with kindred spirits and providing me with somewhere to write about it all.

What all of this is leading to is the question of whether this increasing detachment from current pop culture means that I'm getting old?  It's a subject that's been preoccupying me somewhat of late - I've recently been referred to as 'old' by others, despite the fact that a) I'm certainly not old - I still fall well within the parameters of 'middle age', b) I don't think that I actually look old, (sure, the receding hairline doesn't help, but is balanced by the lack of  greyness in most of what's left) and c) I certainly don't feel old.  I guess I've reached that age where it is somewhat startling to find that it isn't just kids who regard you, in relative terms, as being 'old', but also some adults.  Having said that I don't feel old, my increasing preoccupation with things past is, perhaps, part of a subconscious acknowledgement that my past is now longer than my future, (although life expectancies are increased these days and the fact that my mother is still going strong in her nineties and on my father's side, I had an aunt who lived to be a hundred and one, gives me hope of many more good years).  I suppose the fact that, for a while now, I've been effectively retired from work, (thanks to a financial windfall from the endowment policy paying out when I paid off the mortgage on my house a few years ago, plus the prospect of some upcoming work pensions paying out), doesn't help with others' perceptions of my age. The fact is though, that even if I am semi-retired, (as I prefer to style my situation, as I don't rule out going back to some kind of paid work), it's an early retirement, (they used to be quite fashionable for us public sector workers).  Still, enough of all this introspection - I've got another podcast to edit together for the Onsug, unless, old man that I apparently am, I fall asleep in front of the TV...