It's natural and appropriate to write about*/think about getting older right around the time of year when you do so, according to the dictates and nuances of the culture in which I was born and raised. Other cultures or subcultures have their own ways of commemorating your individuated and bespoke time-passage toward inevitable non-being, but the one I'm stuck with does it on the anniversary of birth and the damning assignation of the Dreaded One More to the tote-board balance of your age. I'd consider the Jehovah's Witness method of not acknowledging birthdays, but it turns out decrepitude finds them too eventually anyway.
Whatever else happens this year, I guess the bright side is I can't accidentally age more than one year, so I know I have at least 12 months left before I turn 50. Some people find the landmark ones daunting or especially spooky, but I don't know, I sure don't feel fifty-adjacent. That said, I have just enough self-awareness to know it's actually not possible for anyone to "feel fifty" as something very close to 100% of 50-year-olds would be experiencing it for the first time. I reckon I "feel" about 35 but that's only because it's taken me plus-or-minus 15 years to finally figure out what being 35 meant.
I don't have a lot to worry about at the moment, though, and for that I'm both very cognizant and very grateful. I had a "well, let's just do a couple more tests" brush with Serious Medical Bad News within the last year that turned out to be nothing, plus a happily unconcerning colonoscopy. I'm probably 10 pounds heavier than I'd like to be, but that's manageable with some effort, or at least has been in the past. Both my parents are still alive, so I suppose that bodes well, though neither of them are in super great shape. The good news is all I have to do is avoid a 60-year smoking habit and I'm likely to see slightly better results than they have. So far so good.
I don't have plans for next year's half-century. Some friends and family mark the occasion with purpose and gravity, either with some kind of celebratory standard-maker of an event (a party or a trip or a party while on a trip) or by willfully succumbing to the squeeze of the ice-cold black hand of death-panic around their mortal human hearts. The second one sounds bad, but there's almost no paperwork and it's absolutely zero cost (if you don't count the xanax and the ice cream). Plus a full-blown anxiety attack always delivers, whereas if you build up to some big splurgey trip, you run the risk of being disappointed. To some people, the Eiffel Tower is just going to end up looking like a big pointy unfinished building when they're finally standing in front of it. All that to hold up just the one elevator.
This year isn't much of a landmark, unless you think it's interesting when your age is the square of a prime number, you fucking nerd. The big giant plan is to have brunch with my kids, being very aware and appreciative that it's one more year when they're local and uncomplicated by other attachments. Though each year I accumulate, I wouldn't mind if they complicated a few things. Not looking to be a grandfather tomorrow, but a prospect at this point wouldn't hurt. This cat here isn't that old, but she ain't gonna last forever either.
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*Trust that I'm acutely aware that it's in no way "natural" to write about this or anything else. I'm sitting here on a perfectly gorgeous, uncommonly mild late-May afternoon in Southern California, active-typing my way through a mild panic about writer's block for no reason and almost zero incentive. But look, I decided a long time ago that remarking on a life is the same thing as living one.
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