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(Originally written 4/3/8)

First off, I apologize if this post will suck. I’ve been sick the last few days, and I hardly ever get sick. In fact, when I was working, most of my sick days were in fact mental health days. OK, and a few “I am too drunk/hungover to work” days, but hardly ever due to real ill health. It’s looking like nothing major, just a 3-4 day thing. Starts with sore throat and you can’t sleep, the next day it progresses to phlegm, itchy eyes, soreness, tight chest (and hey, who doesn’t like a tight chest? ZING!), etc. Then a day or 2 to flush it out. I am a pretty wussy sickie. In cases like this, I give the bug one whole day to ravage me. I succumb, with full intentions of being functional the next day. I guess it’s some sort of mental thing like it can beat me for a day, but that’s it. So here I am at the hopeful tail end, just in time for the weekend.

As I write this, it’s Thursday night. I find myself writing a lot on Thursday nights. My wife is outta the house for a few hours learning to cook raccoon or weasel or other such shit under the guise of ‘Japanese cooking’. I have some space to be burgeoning writer. Plus I usually throw back a few CR & DCs (coconut rum & Diet Coke). But as I’m just getting better, and still have a whole day where I can hammer my hand into oblivion, reason takes over and my liver smiles in silent appreciation. So I am sick and sober. 2 things I prefer not to be.

My birthday was this past Saturday. Yes, yes, I am sure all your cards and presents are in the mail. Actually, it was like when I was writing the Missile newsletter, and berated all my stores for never sending me presents in exchange for all the monthly entertainment they got. Guess what? I got exactly as many presents from them this year as I did last year;bubkis.

Unlike most of my work, this is not to be bitter. Birthdays pretty much stop being fun after 21. Then it’s about “hitting” all the big numbers; 30, 40, 50, etc. My wife asks me what I want for my birthday, and I tell her nothing. I seriously have pretty much everything I need. Sure, there are tons of cool, expensive things I want, but I count myself very lucky to need next to nothing. I think maybe basically being without a job for this long has made me realize a lot of things. I will not have the biggest house on the block, but everything I need (and want) is here, so that makes it the best. I will never have the newest car, but it will get me where I need to go. I will never have the biggest TV, but I enjoy everything I watch on my small 3 foot non HD screen. I will never have the best body, but it’s healthy, and let’s me do all I want/need.

I guess birthdays are an easy way to look back at the last year. Another year older and all, but did I grow wiser? I don’t really know, but I will share with you my observations.

It seems once you hit your mid 30’s, and people find out it’s your birthday, they always ask the same question; “well, do you feel older?” And up to this year, I could say no. But this year, I found myself having to fucking say yes. But let me qualify that. I’ve been helping my bro in law pretty steady for the last 4-5 weeks or so. It’s the steadiest thing I’ve had in a while, and by far the most physical gig I’ve ever had. After being a Maury-watching, moose tracks ice cream eating bump on the couch for so long, it sure was a shock to my body. I’m kinda in the swing of it by now, but I can’t kid you. There are some days I come home and am completely exhausted.

I pretty much haven’t given up the gym, though it has been a struggle to get in a good, full week every week. I’ve skipped a day here and there due to “fatigue”, “exhaustion”, or just out and out “lazy”. I still play hockey every Monday night. My eating habits have taken a bit of a hit. I can’t eat the way I used to; like 5-6 times a day. Instead, I have to wolf down a ton of food at lunch. I eat so much so fast, I often develop hiccups. And I can tell you, hiccups are not a manly trait at the jobsite.

So I think that has something to do with it. Once I truly find my groove, I will feel better. There are other things I can’t ignore however. I wanna say at about 33-34, grays starting creeping in. Just in the scruff on my chinny chin chin. Not too big of a deal, but over the last year, these SOBs have spread like Jamie Lynn Spear’s legs. ZING! HI-O! Over the last year, I noticed long grays creeping in my SRVISPT (Stevie Ray Vaughn inspired soul patch thingie) That’s a bit harder to hide. It looks like I have fishing line coming out of my mouth. (Which I did have on my 25th birthday, but that another story.) Deep breath, OK, I can handle this. Then a few months back I found the grays invaded my head. It was like overnight, the Gray Hair Fairy would pick a hair here, and a hair there and suddenly turn them white. I was shocked. Goddamn it. I admit to being vain enough to pluck them out. But then that led me to the moral quagmire of ripping hair out just because it was white. I’m not dying my hair Nickelback blonde anymore, so I feel they stand out. Fine, I will concede this one for now. But when I land The Job, and they allow me to dye my hair funny colors, it’s game fucking on whities.

I should have realized when the Gray Hair Fairy was paying me visits to wear a shirt. Because not too soon after, to my horror, I found a few gray chest hairs. O fuck. There is no denying this aging thing now. I just need a cheesy shirt and medallions and I can fade into leisure suit land. OK, the chesties bothered me, and yes I did rip them right the hell out. I will win that battle. And since you are curious, but don’t want to ask, no, I have no grays down there. Pervert.

The getting-older thing is creeping up in other areas as well. Most nights I am in bed by ten fucking o’clock. Wanna guess what time my parents go to bed? Right. But I think I can qualify this as well. When you sleep, your body heals itself. Most gymrats will tell you that muscles are built in the gym. This is total bullshit. You tear your body up in the gym; you actually grow when your body sleeps. Plus I have trouble falling asleep, so the earlier I get to bed, technically, the more time I get to fall asleep. I use that time to mentally organize the next day. I find I get a lot of writing ideas when I’m lying there. So I am being productive when I go to bed early. Plus I am so damn tired….. And it’s never a good sign to wake up on a Saturday and think “well, what time can I take a nap today?”

I see my generation being phased out as “young”, and rightfully so. I see it when we go out to bars. We’re not those young, careless kids anymore. (And yes I am saying we because I know a bunch of you are around my age and I want to drag you down too, old fart.) I see it when there are some bars we (this time we meaning the typical crowds I run in) used to go to, but hardly ever do anymore. I can throw out a bunch of bars we used to go to all the time. For some reason, we hardly ever go there at all, and who knows if we ever will? It’s not “our” bar anymore. “Ugh, there’s too many kids there,” we’d say. That may be true, but is there a twinge of jealousy there? If I went to those bars now, I would just be the creepy old loser in the corner leering at all the girls.

Don’t get me wrong. More than anyone I know, I want to go to dive bars. Sometimes I just want to ‘grab a beer’ that is just a beer. No microbrew, import, hawty-tawty, bells & whistle type deal. Just a cold lager at a dive. It doesn’t have to have 50 big screen HDTVs. It can have a good jukebox. It can have peanut shells on the floor. No pretensions, no bullshit, just a normal place to kill a night and not empty my wallet in the process.

But it seems we are now going to “better bars”. Bars where there aren’t a bunch of kids. Bars where there aren’t metal bands playing Pantera. Guys still rocking the long hair, girls rocking the fuck me boots. And I kinda miss that. We go to bars where “people our age” go. I know it’s evolution, I know it happens to everybody. But I would like to go to slightly younger bars. I would be out of the way of the kids who are having nights they will remember the rest of their lives. Sure I would be jealous. But the jealousy is tempered by the fact I know I could drink most of them under the fucking table.

I feel older because we don’t go out nights as often as we used to. In fact, sometime it feels like it’s everything I have to get “dragged” to the supermarket or store. My body feels like it’s being unrightfully ripped away from it’s rightful home on the couch.

I feel it when I make that wildly victorious grunt just because I was able to go up all the stairs. I hear it when I make a pained grunt whenever I get up from the couch. So I reckon making various noises at the completion of everyday tasks is another sign. Good lord. I drink more milk and water then beer on any given week. (Rum, on the other hand….)

I won’t bore you with the whole having-no-job sphiel. You’ve heard all that already, but I will tell you that it has made me appreciate my family and friends more. It’s weird. I’ve been totally blown away by some of the gestures I have received.

I see now that sometimes the best times you can have with friends are when you think nothing ‘special’ will happen at all. Sometimes just being with friends, shooting the shit, maybe barbecuing or watching DVDs, can be really healing. During my layoff, I have been disappointed that I feel some friends have kind of left us behind because money is tight and we can’t go out. And I know it’s just me being paranoid and hyper-sensitive. I know everyone has their own evolutionary schedule going on. The point here being, that sometimes you don’t need to go out, spend a lot of money, or come up with a reason to get together. Just get fucking together. I can’t tell you how many times over the last year that we were with friends doing “nothing special” and the next morning I was still thinking “hell, that was a blast, we need to do that more often. “

On a slightly different topic, I now see that, Goddamn it all to motherfucking hell, my parents were right about a lot of shit. See all that above stuff about me being old and tired? When my dad was my age, he had 4 kids. I didn’t even come along yet. I can’t even begin to imagine how the hell they did that. I do appreciate them much more now. I actually drop in on them from time to time. But I never, ever tell them they were right about stuff. And you fuckwads better not sell me out and show them this, or there will be hell to pay.

I’ve learned that you absolutely have to have something to take your mind off the real life stuff. And you shouldn’t feel guilty about it. Go work all day. Go do all the shit to keep the house running. But also do the stuff that you enjoy. The stuff that gets your mind off all the serious stuff. It could be reading, painting, writing a witty and insightful blog. It could be a run in the park, some time at the batting cages, whatever. We’re not splitting the atom here. But too much real life can be a bad, bad thing.

Time does go by faster as you age, but it’s math more than anything else. Say you’re 4 years old. One year is 25% of your life. But at 40, 1 year is 2.5%.

Society has used age as a barometer. In your early twenties, you’re not supposed to have it all figured out. But, man, come your thirties, you better be well on your way, or you are looked at as retarded. You can be dopey at 23. At 33? Not so much.

I’ve probably learned more that I can share with you, but, hell at my age, I’m forgetting more than I ever knew. It’s getting late-9:07- and the Gray Hair Fairy has work to do.

(OK, I’ve been sitting on this post for a week, trying to make it better. I don’t like the ending, but fuck it, it’s not gonna get much better. So I hope you young punks learned something. Now get the hell off my lawn.)