Yeah, so...here is my blog. I have decided to join the early 21st century and let other people know the thoughts running through my head, even if they don't really want to. I don't know what's going to go in here. I imagine you'll hear lots about my grad school experience here at Indiana University and ramblings about anything else that happens to be going on in my life at any given moment. Or just completely random thoughts about what I see going on around me.
Unfortunately today my mind is trying to get the better of me, and it's been winning most of the day. I hate it when that happens. I'm probably just tired. We're 1.5 weeks into the new semester and I'm already playing catch-up. This is because I agonized all of last week on an assignment for my Environmental Economics class, ignoring first-week readings, etc....only to give up at the last minute and drop the class. Oy. I still don't know for sure if I made the right decision. I think I did, for now, but I wonder if I hadn't gotten so stressed over it, maybe I could have made it through and I'd be okay. I'm disappointed because I put so much effort into it, and was really excited about the class, and it turned out I just couldn't cut it. But it's too late now; now I just have to accept it and move on. It's going to play havoc with my schedule all semester, but whatever. I'll deal.
There are other things on my mind that I don't particularly feel like discussing. Instead, I will get to the topic that's been bouncing around my head the last couple of days:
On Getting Older
In a mere two months I will be 31 years old. I believe it was '60s counterculture icon Abbie Hoffman who said, "Never trust anyone over 30." I guess that means you have roughly sixty days left until I become completely untrustworthy. As if I wasn't already.
Every once in a while I get what I consider reminders that I'm not quite as young as I used to be. A couple of months ago, I found out I was actually older than one and possibly two of my professors. What's more, one of those claimed she was in the midst of a mid-life crisis. That didn't leave me much hope. A lot of the time it comes when I look at my hairline. I always promised that when my male pattern baldness became too noticeable, I would take the dignified way out and just shave it all off (again). I feel that day may not be too far off. It comes to me when I look around and see a bunch of 20-somethings (and younger) walking around, making googly eyes at each other, and it reminds me again that I'm in my early 30s and have not settled down yet. That's probably when I feel the worst. Let's not go there. And did I mention I quit a secure, well-enough-paying job with great benefits and traded it in for a career change to I don't know what and many thousands of dollars of debt?
A very close second is when some physical activity that used to be easy becomes just a bit more difficult. Sunday was a good case in point. I play basketball a lot. I don't know that I'm very good, but I enjoy it. I make my shots, make a few good passes, and try to play good defense. Sunday I don't know that I did any of those particularly well. This may or may not be partially attributable to injuring my ankle fairly early on. I went up for a shot and came down on someone's foot. I still don't know the extent of the damage, but will try to find out in the morning. I'm thinking it may just be sprained, but the swelling and lingering pain makes me think it would be a good idea to get it checked out.
(Tanget: I guess the best course of action would have been to quit then. But like any good male eager to prove his worth, I kept going, which was probably stupid. Hey, I didn't think it was that bad. It's like that seen in "Monty Python and the Holy Grail" where King Arthur runs up against that angry knight who keeps fighting despite Arthur chopping off his limbs one by one, and when he has no more limbs, finally declares the fight a draw. "Dude, you all right? Your ankle looks pretty bad." "Nah, I'm fine, let's keep going." "Seriously, dude, you're foot should not be bent that way." "It's just a flesh wound, c'mon, let's keep playing." "Okay, whatever.")
Regardless of the reason, I felt like I got winded before anyone else, all but perhaps one of whom were younger than me. This seems to happen more and more lately. Back in the day, even a couple years ago, I would play in my rec league at work, and we'd all have to play a full forty minutes since we were short-handed. We'd play the whole game, and at the end, I'd look around at everyone with their hands on their knees, sucking wind, and go, "C'mon, you're not tired already, are you?" I don't think I could do that anymore. Nowadays, I'm the one sucking wind, going, "Give me a minute here." It's not like I'm out of shape or anything; it's just that doing what I used to do has gotten that much harder. What used to be easy at 28 is no longer so easy at almost-31. I could hike to the top of a tall hill now and feel more out-of-breath than I would have a couple of years ago. That mile run that used to take 7.5 minutes now takes more like eight. Little things.
This bothers me in a vague way. It tells me that age is starting to creep up on me; it's a portent to the days when perhaps I won't be able to get physical at all, and that's the scary part. Part of me believes my body will eventually betray me, and if it does, I hope it does in one fell swoop, where I can lay there looking up at the sky and think to myself, "Well, at least I didn't fall apart piece by piece." Maybe that's what I'm really afraid of: getting old slowly and realizing that the things I used to do in my youth are impossible now. It could also be that I'm coming back to the pack, regressing towards the mean. Despite being rail-thin, I've always been active and had great endurance. Maybe now that I'm slipping a bit in that regard, I'm just becoming more like everyone else. Who knows.
One thing I do know: I could still take you. All of you. So don't mess with me. 'Kay?
No comments:
Post a Comment