Happy Birthday to me. I am 45 today.
I know intellectually that 45 isn't any kind of real number. It's a marker of things, sure. But it's not as big of a deal as my brain is making it out to be for sure. I remember my parent's 45th birthdays very clearly, and it really doesn't feel like it was all that long ago. But here we are all the same.
I've been traveling again lately. Baltimore and Ann Arbor and the Catskills, and Manhattan most recently. I got my Gray's Recession Special last week, which was one of the landmarks I had in my head that the pandemic was starting to point toward an ending, or at least an adjustment to the way I had hoped it would be if I were to survive this thing. It's weird to consider these things in such a way, but that's part of the process I suppose.
It's so hard to know what this process is supposed to look like. But then, isn't that always the way when we find ourselves looking at things in a new way?
My life is full of those new ways now. New ways of working, and new ways of thinking. I'm trying to remember that I am lucky enough to have to go though these changes, and lucky to figure out who I am when I am in them. So many people I knew no longer have that chance. The privilege of being here far outweighs whatever discomfort might come out of the existence in it.
I'm old and maudlin now, and I think this might actually be an improvement. If only I could go back and tell my younger self all about that.