Birthdays…suck. Especially when yours is on Christmas eve, as mine is. This year I am hitting a milestone. That “mid-life” road marker that is really a myth because there are only about 50,000 centenarians in the United States out of the 300 million population. 92% of us are, at least, somewhat overweight which leaves the age of 100 way out of reach for our pudgy fingers. Odds are Willard Scott will not be calling you to mark the occasion. Is he still alive??
The most that Americans can rely on, even if they try to be healthy, is maybe about 88 years. Unless you find a mass on your pancreas like Steve Jobs did and die at 56. Your imagination can also abruptly end if a lunatic steps out of the shadows and shoots you at 40. Life sucks too.
This is an uplifting blog….I mean that, …I think. Stick with me and don’t look up from your computer to continue watching Dancing With The Stars, that show…you guessed it…sucks. You have to know by now that you subscribe to a middle-aged (again, doubtful) queer with depression, don’t you?? However, I am not Debbie Downer!!
I really am happy today. I booked the caterer for my 50th birthday party extravaganza I am having on December 3rd of this year. There is going to be a Beatles cover band to entertain too. I needed to have one last big hurrah while I am still spry and agile enough to make a fool (originally typed “full”…senior moment and I just ate a large sandwich) of myself on the dance floor.
I can’t take the fact that I am turning 50. The only solace I have is that if I died today people would say I died way too early, at such a young age. That makes me feel good.
I just launched a nationwide legal services company. The thought of massive success has begun to depress me. If I become insanely rich, I don’t have that many years left to enjoy the money! I actually had a thought yesterday that I would be immensely more happy if the company fails!!
Welcome to my world. I know you guys are out there. Already dreading the day you get that AARP membership card in the mail. Driving down the highway with Stairway to Heaven vibrating your car windows. Ahh, the good “young” days. I once spent an entire afternoon writing DOS commands for my new Apple IIc in 1981. The purpose? So when I turned it on, one sentence would flash on the black screen in green print. ”Hello Julya!” That was a good day.
I learned and read about the death of Steve Jobs this week on my iPad 2. I also check court dockets, do all of my shopping, pay all of my bills, and play Chess with some guy in Australia on the darn thing. All while I am listening to my Beatles catalog through those little white ear buds.
If I could accomplish all that Jobs did in his 56 years, I wouldn’t be bummed about not hitting the target 88. I am sure he would have completed more projects and given the world more gadgets had he lived. But I am also sure he would be satisfied with his successful life and loving family. I am sure he had hundreds of perfect moments in his life. It doesn’t always suck.
I wrote a couple of blogs ago about cutting and pasting the moments of perfection in your life. This party is going to be one of my moments. One of the moments that I can take with me, tuck in my pocket for my drift towards whatever. There are no promises or guarantees, and that is okay with me. I don’t jest when I say it sucks. Because some people are here but a short while…and some don’t have the best of lives when they are here, upright and breathing.
Being 50 makes you want to scream at the passage of time and rejoice in the opportunities that lay before you. So it is the true mid-line of your life, the life that streams through my mind. It doesn’t matter if it is cut short, it really doesn’t. And you really can’t live your life thinking about when it will end…you just gotta live!! Wake up each day and live it as though it is your last, but knowing one day….hopefully in 38.2 years…. you will be right!!
For Steve.
- In a Wonderland they lie,
- Dreaming as the days go by,
- Dreaming as the summers die;
- Ever drifting down the stream
- Lingering in the golden gleam
- Life, what is it but a dream?
(poem excerpt by Lewis Carroll)
