![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My last day at 42
Dec. 15th, 2004 10:34 pmPretty much all of us know when our birthday is coming up. For me, it’s always nine days before Christmas, it’s also nine days before my Dad’s birthday. I always make plans to go see free movies on my day, it’s one advantage to living in Phoenix.
I don’t make a big deal over my birthday, and I really don’t expect others to. I’ll never object if a friend or friends wants to take me to dinner for it, just no wait staff singing, PLEASE! I remember one year that I did not want to go as I’d been sick, my sister’s step-son was in town and his birthday is on the 13th IIRC, so we went out for his birthday and mine at the same time. I was quite blunt with my sister – NO SINGING. My illness was an ear infection. I did not need loud, off-key singing next to me.
Well, sure enough, I was surrounded that evening. I should have stood up and left, but I endured. And it was every bit as painful as I’d expected.
So why this post? I knew full and well that Thursday is my birthday, but for some reason it struck me while I was at work today that tomorrow I’ll be 43. I don’t know why it struck me as such, all we’re doing is marking the anniversary of the planet being in the approximate same position relative to the sun that was there when we were born. Every day we are +1 day older, or +1/365.25th of a year older. It just isn’t terribly important to me.
There are milestone birthdays in your life: When you’re 16 you can drive, when you’re 18 you can enlist in the military and enter into legally binding contracts, at 21 you can drink (hmmm, old enough to die for your country but not old enough for a beer on Saturday night), at 40 you start getting the Over The Hill regalia in your office at work, etc.
But I’ll be 43 in approximately 75 minutes.
So where the hell has my life gone?
This isn’t really a midlife crisis speaking, my life is in a seemingly perpetual state of crisis, so midlife is no big deal. I just wonder where the years have gone. Next year is my highschool graduation 25th anniversary, and I work with kids whose parents are younger than I am. I don’t regret not “settling down” and having 2.5 kids, a minivan and a Labrador, still, it gives me pause.
I made a conscious decision when I was in my 20’s to not marry until I was at least 30. I don’t regret that, I don’t know anyone who married in their 20’s (of my contemporaries) who is still together. The problem is that I wasn’t dating during that time, and that definitely held me back when I decided to date. With a couple of exceptions (and boy, were they doozies!) I’m comfortable with the decisions of the women that I’ve chosen to date. Several of them have remained as friends afterwards, which is kinda weird (fortunately Russet doesn’t mind). And that path of experiences has led me to meeting Russet, and that’s as close to 100% good that it would be stupid to try to find better. She’s an amazing woman and I can’t imagine a better fit. Well, if the Stepford factory was still open, maybe I could, but that wouldn’t be Russet.
I’ve succeeded in the corporate world, failed in the corporate world, been moderately wealthy, am currently basically below the poverty line, had great cars, made several marks on the world (and it’ll be several centuries before they can fill THOSE craters!). I am satisfied with my life, but it is so easy to play “what if”, and that is a game that you just can’t win. You can spend the rest of your life second-guessing past decisions that now appear as mistakes. But then I look at those key junctions in my life and simply remember that if any one of them were to change, then I almost definitely wouldn’t have Russet in my life, and for me that’s as close to the meaning of tragedy as I can conceive.
Be well, friends.
I don’t make a big deal over my birthday, and I really don’t expect others to. I’ll never object if a friend or friends wants to take me to dinner for it, just no wait staff singing, PLEASE! I remember one year that I did not want to go as I’d been sick, my sister’s step-son was in town and his birthday is on the 13th IIRC, so we went out for his birthday and mine at the same time. I was quite blunt with my sister – NO SINGING. My illness was an ear infection. I did not need loud, off-key singing next to me.
Well, sure enough, I was surrounded that evening. I should have stood up and left, but I endured. And it was every bit as painful as I’d expected.
So why this post? I knew full and well that Thursday is my birthday, but for some reason it struck me while I was at work today that tomorrow I’ll be 43. I don’t know why it struck me as such, all we’re doing is marking the anniversary of the planet being in the approximate same position relative to the sun that was there when we were born. Every day we are +1 day older, or +1/365.25th of a year older. It just isn’t terribly important to me.
There are milestone birthdays in your life: When you’re 16 you can drive, when you’re 18 you can enlist in the military and enter into legally binding contracts, at 21 you can drink (hmmm, old enough to die for your country but not old enough for a beer on Saturday night), at 40 you start getting the Over The Hill regalia in your office at work, etc.
But I’ll be 43 in approximately 75 minutes.
So where the hell has my life gone?
This isn’t really a midlife crisis speaking, my life is in a seemingly perpetual state of crisis, so midlife is no big deal. I just wonder where the years have gone. Next year is my highschool graduation 25th anniversary, and I work with kids whose parents are younger than I am. I don’t regret not “settling down” and having 2.5 kids, a minivan and a Labrador, still, it gives me pause.
I made a conscious decision when I was in my 20’s to not marry until I was at least 30. I don’t regret that, I don’t know anyone who married in their 20’s (of my contemporaries) who is still together. The problem is that I wasn’t dating during that time, and that definitely held me back when I decided to date. With a couple of exceptions (and boy, were they doozies!) I’m comfortable with the decisions of the women that I’ve chosen to date. Several of them have remained as friends afterwards, which is kinda weird (fortunately Russet doesn’t mind). And that path of experiences has led me to meeting Russet, and that’s as close to 100% good that it would be stupid to try to find better. She’s an amazing woman and I can’t imagine a better fit. Well, if the Stepford factory was still open, maybe I could, but that wouldn’t be Russet.
I’ve succeeded in the corporate world, failed in the corporate world, been moderately wealthy, am currently basically below the poverty line, had great cars, made several marks on the world (and it’ll be several centuries before they can fill THOSE craters!). I am satisfied with my life, but it is so easy to play “what if”, and that is a game that you just can’t win. You can spend the rest of your life second-guessing past decisions that now appear as mistakes. But then I look at those key junctions in my life and simply remember that if any one of them were to change, then I almost definitely wouldn’t have Russet in my life, and for me that’s as close to the meaning of tragedy as I can conceive.
Be well, friends.
