Musings Of A Middle Aged Man on His Birthday

Musing of a Middle Aged Man on his Birthday

I turned 49 today. I remember when I was 20 and I couldn't wait to turn 21 so I could drink everywhere even though the drinking age was 19 at the time. It didn't matter, it's one of those milestone ages. I remember 30 and 40 as being relatively uneventful blips on my time line. I can also remember being 10 and my grandmother telling me not to be in such a hurry to grow up. What did she know? She was old and being older was the greatest thing on the planet. So here I sit on the ledge of the second half of my life.

I always get kinda weird around birthdays. I think too much anyway but I put it in overdrive when another year clicks off. I start asking myself the really good questions like what have I done with my life? Have I made any progress over the last year? What will I do with the next year and what will become of that? Being painfully self aware is a mother trucker.

I was looking at some pictures of my version 1 kids when they were teens and then looking over at my version 2 kids. The v1 kids were teens yesterday. I mean it seems like yesterday. That's how fast it happened. I look at v2.1 and v2.2 and realized that I'll be 64 when V2.1 is 20. That'll be tomorrow. What will I do with the next 15 years of my life to reach my goal of changing the world and making my mark on mankind?

I have to finish that degree I've been fooling around with for the last 10 years or so. I had some dumb luck in my life and some of it got me distracted. I had this whole pipe dream thing going on about how I was going to do my 30 and sit at home tinkering around the garage for the rest of my life. Terrible idea really but it made sense at the time. Having had the opportunity to “sit around” for a while really put things in perspective. I keep saying that I'm too old and that I don't want to borrow the money, stuff like that. My better half explains to me why that is ridiculous through story after story. She tells me about the woman she knows that came here from the middle east where the only way one went to college was a lottery system. To her the US is the greatest place on earth..."I can go to college and I can borrow money to go? Sign me up." The story of the 53 year old woman that went to nursing school (when the wife was a student) and graduated and went on to the career in the medical field she always wanted. No my wife doesn't want to hear about why I'm too old to go to college or why borrowing money to do so is dumb. She's tired of listening to me bitch and wants me to be happy. Really good wives are a very precious thing.

Short term goal. Get back to Columbia Southern and work on a couple classes while I get geared up to go back to University. It may take a while to get where I need to be but as long as I'm heading that way, it's all good. You can work a dead end job for crappy money if there is light a the end of the tunnel. There isn't any reason why anyone should be doing nothing. Life is just too damn short.

Happy Birthday self, now get your ass in gear.