Nineteen Years Late for the Sleepshop

As of the 23rd of April, 2010, I am officially ‘middle-aged’.  At least, I hope I’m middle aged since despite the recklessness of my youth (and barring the intervention of an oncoming bus or falling chunk of frozen airline waste) I’d still like to see *at least* eighty.

When I was twenty, forty seemed pretty damned old but for any twenty year olds out there who might find themselves reading this you might take heart in the fact that it doesn’t feel that old when you get here.  I still enjoy a lot of the same things I did when I was twenty and forty doesn’t feel as decrepit as you might think.

So far every age has had its advantages, and this one is no different.  As a writer, for instance, being forty works out very well.  I’m not saying young people can’t write because I don’t believe that’s true, but the older you get and the more ’stuff’ you see, the more it brings to the writing table I think.  At twenty, my goal was to be published before I was thirty (a goal which I technically achieved by getting a non-fiction work published at twenty-nine, even though that wasn’t really what I meant).  By thirty-five, I’d almost given up on seeing my fiction in print and I think ‘giving up’ is one of the true hazards of getting older.  At twenty you have dreams but often not the means to reach them, and when you finally have the means other things have a way of piling on and burying them.  Even if I never have great fame, I’m glad I didn’t give up on this one particular dream though.

According to the conventions of our society I was supposed to start getting uneasy at thirty, and am now due for a full on freak out where I buy a flashy sports car and then dump my wife for our nineteen year old live-in nanny, but I finally got my regular car paid for and we don’t even have a nanny (plus my wife has been with me for over twelve years and hasn’t stabbed me in the throat with a desert fork yet, so I think that really speaks to her character).  I think I’ll skip the panic attack and maybe try again when I turn fifty.

In the interim I’ll continue to stay up too late and sleep too late, I’ll continue to play video games and enjoy science fiction, horror and cartoons.  I’ll continue to find flatulence amusing and laugh at dirty jokes.  There’s plenty of things out there to be serious about, but getting old doesn’t *have* to suck.  If it does, I haven’t reached that age yet and I hope I never do.

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