A New Decade

I'm afraid.

In a few days it'll be my birthday. 

A. Whole. New. Decade.* see footnote

For the sake of sanity, let's not go into details about which decade, but lets just say I'm not a teenager anymore.

It's kinda surreal. After all there was a time in my life I thought being 24 was "old".

And now, I find myself referring to twenty year olds as "those kids".

And you slowly have to acknowledge the signs that you're no longer a spring chicken. Things like how you develop random joint aches. Or how your hair thins and your children always draws their daddy with short spiky hair in their drawings- all 5 spikes. Or how you've gone from finding grays on your scalp, to finding gray nose hairs, to finding gray pubes. How you find plaid jackets and bow ties fashionable. Or how you think 50-something postmenopausal women to be more attractive than a 21 year old. And how your idea of driving too fast is 76 mph.

Yes, folks, it's that time.

And I'm not sure if I'm just going to wake up that morning to find my scalp totally clean ala Jean-Luc Picard (minus the charm).

A long time ago, I had some pipedream goals for this decade of life. Things like being married and having my own children. Owning a Porsche 911. Having more than 20 publications. Having more than one million dollars in my retirement/investment portfolio.

Hah- most of them will remain pipedreams for now. But here's to the next decade* of life....

* though to be mathematically accurate, the next decade actually starts the following year. Just as how the new Millenium began not in 2000, but 2001, or how we begin counting at 1, not zero. But what's the fun in that?