By Josh Gardner, who is mentally still enmeshed in the Twilight saga

A NEW year, a new chapter of epic lore waiting to be written. I can’t wait to see which ragebait will trigger me and which AI slop will trick me in the months ahead.

But, as I considered the 2026 to come, I began to crash out. Unless ChatGPT’s got its sums wrong – always possible – I’m only a couple of years away from turning 40, which is mathematically impossible.

After all, I’m a millennial. I’m society’s youth demographic. I’m the bogeyman who killed the housing market and made bank adverts woke. The idea that I’m hurtling towards middle age fills me with even more than my usual baseline of anxiety.

Am I really a chopped unc like my nephew claims? Now that I think about it, he is legally an adult, despite being born after 9/11 and in fact conceived on it. I had to retreat to my safe space/childhood bedroom to process the possibility that age might also happen to me.

Sadly my sus fears were confirmed when I floated birthday ideas with my friends. Laser tag was dismissed as ‘childish’, even on edibles.

I fired up my phone’s calendar app to do some detective work. Bizarrely, time had indeed moved on from my prime. The early noughties when I heroically opposed the Iraq war? 15 years ago and counting.

This explained a lot. Like how my friends found my use of Gen Z slang embarrassing, and the yelp of pain I involuntarily emit when standing up.

Okay, I don’t look or sound like a grown-up and I haven’t achieved any life milestones that would deem me an adult in the eyes of society, but physically I’m there. I must be the first person in history refusing to be chill about the ageing process.

40 always seemed so hypothetical, as distant as the heat death of the universe or the release of GTA VI. Sure, it was going to happen, but not in my lifetime. I’ve only just convinced myself being in your 30s is cooler than being in your 20s.

What if it gets worse? What if I come to terms with being 40 only to hit 50? The decades will whizz past like an Instagram reel. And that’s if I’m lucky enough not to die of Trump.

This realisation almost scared me into growing up. Thank Tarantino we’re in the middle of a 90s nostalgia boom so I can put off maturing for a few more years. If you need me I’ll be pre-ordering Pokemon Lego.