I'm not worried about my age. Never have been, ever. I hated birthdays as a kid because it was a stupid thing to celebrate, from a pragmatic view. What'd you achieve in that year? Nothing? Then why celebrate? And if you did achieve a lot, then why didn't you celebrate that earlier? Once a year is too arbitrary to me.

I love growing older though. You accumulate so much knowledge (... or here's hoping?) that you can use in all aspects of life. It's exhilarating.

Staying modern isn't as much an issue I feel, because that's literally part of our core skill-set these days. You can only succeed if you can empathise, you can only excel if you can adapt.

You need to stay on top of the latest tech. Know what it does, and where to apply it. It's another thing that sets apart a good designer: knowing how & when to use each tool at our disposal.

(re:Ken M.) As for being disillusioned with the industry; I don't feel that's any different from anywhere else in life. I'm disillusioned/disappointed in so many things in life. We're all so narrow-minded. We don't care about what happens outside our own little worlds. Too often we don't bother to really touch other people's lives. To me, that's not industry-tied, even though it might be somewhat worse than elsewhere. I find this issue also very location- and company-specific. I've seen it. And I've seen it in different gradations. Only way to change that, is to own it and invoke change.