Poop Poop Bee Doo

The end is nothing. The road is all. - Willa Cather

Today is my 36th birthday. Funny, but this birthday has always had a magical quality for me. It’s the age that Marilyn Monroe and Princess Diana were when they died. I shared a youthful fascination with them both, and because of this, I suppose 36 struck me as either a mystical milestone of insight, or the last youthful pit stop before you get on the highway of true adulthood.

But now that I’m here I can’t really say I feel either way. It basically feels, well, like a birthday and I still feel like me.

But I’ve always wondered what it was like to be here. 36 was always something I was heading towards. It’s now something that I’m heading away from. I’ve been mentally thrashing through the concept about how I’m always looking to the future. I suppose it’s a result of my childhood. The one thing that made me get through the daily interaction [I use the term loosely] with my peers was the thought of something better.

One day, I’ll leave all this behind.
One day, my dreams will come true.
One day, I’ll show every last one of you.

The trouble with “one day” thinking is that you damn well better have an alternate plan in case one day arrives in ways you had never expected. I’m trying to apply more mental energy to focusing on the present, breaking my life down into bit sized chunks. Despite my best efforts, however, if I’m totally honest it’s just not good enough.

I vacillate between thinking that some things are just silly to be doing “at my age” and the fact that if I don’t do them, I’ll be unhappy so I might as well do them anyway. I can’t seem to stop raging at the dying of the light, the fact that I still want the things that I don’t have.

Yet.

It’s immature I’ll grant you, but I’m just trying to be honest here.

I suppose my efforts to be in the present need to start focusing on not being so mad at the past. It’s over. It’s done. I did the best I could. Now I want to look at what I have learned from it all.

Here are some insights so far:

Despite paying regular premiums, assume that the only payout you will ever get from an insurance company is a death benefit.

Everybody else is pretty much as scared and insecure as you are, if not more so.

If you love doing something so much you’d do it for free, that’s where you should focus your efforts.

You can have all the discipline, drive, ambition and talent in the world. It means nothing without the physical energy to apply any of these aspects.

The 30’s is your decade of major slaps upside the head. Generally speaking, all those things you thought were so important at 25 become about as significant as lint on your coat by the time you hit 35.

Sometimes you’ll be the only one who believes in you. You’ll have some long dry spells when that needs to be enough.

My one consolation is that I’m not having a total nervous breakdown like I did last year. I’m more settled, more comfortable in my own skin now, and I sense more possibility in my life.