Old

I recently turned 50. In my more honest moments, I did not expect to make it to 50. I almost didn’t. But, here I am, likely in the best shape of my life since I was a teenager, down 60 pounds since the heart attack, numbers on medical tests are good (mostly), and I can buy clothes in sizes I’ve not been able to do before.

I also have 60% of my expected heart capacity (ejection rate or something) so I can run, but only for 4 minutes at a time. I have what’s likely permanent nerve damage from diabetes, and I have a pill case that I have learned how to pack efficiently in order to close the lid. What I’m saying is I have ailments, not just injuries. I have conditions and remedies and they all sound remarkably like the things I heard my “old” family members talk about when I was a kid.

[Sidebar. Dear pharmacies, when you fill a prescription, and that prescription is fulfilled by 30-90 pills the size of cooked rice grains, those pills don’t need to be delivered in a jar the size of a pop can. We have to store these things, sometimes a lot of them, in tiny medicine cabinets. Right size, y’all]

But, I am, by any measure and in my nieces’ estimations, Old. And while I am fit(ish) and have a normal BMI for the first time, I also remain vain and slightly… not obsessed but.. preoccupied with aspects of my appearance. I shaved my beard, for instance, because I wanted people to see the weight loss. It was also more white than salt-and-peppery, which I thought made me look even older. I even bought not one, but two electric razors (rotary and foil) trying to simplify that process, only to realize I kind of like the act of shaving with a razor. Of course, now I have two electric razors I can’t return and rarely use, but they’re the best I could get.

Which is another quirk of being Old I find oddly adopted: buying up. My partner and I often said the cliche “you get what you pay for” was true, but then bought a mid- to low-range version because, well, we didn’t make much for a long time. But through our 40s, we did ok job-wise and also cleared much of our recurring debt and found ourselves, while not debt-free, solvent in a way we hadn’t been our entire lives. And I found, as I was actually needing to buy new clothes, that I could go into stores and just… buy something. Michael Jordon U-M sweatshirt from the bookstore because I was cold and forgot a jacket? Sure. Pricey khakis as a ‘reward’ for hitting a weight-loss milestone? You betcha. Laptop I don’t need just because I wanted it? Embarrassingly, yes. It is a dangerous feeling and I find I have to be careful about why I’m buying something now because solvent != rich.

I am also beyond the halfway point in my career. Right now, that’s meant working for the last two decades at a university, a job I originally thought would be for 4 years. I like working for a university, not always enjoying the work itself, but that’s part of any job. But I’m also now An Old there, with 20 years at the institution and a fading list of accomplishments. I nod to other long-timers, we who are fewer each year as our colleagues take jobs with vendors or retire. I don’t think I can prosper out of the higher ed space and, frankly, I’m good at navigating the politics, culture, and pace. I don’t think I’d be good in industry with those skills as they are also now fine-tuned to a very specific wavelength of bullshit,

All of this is meandering thoughts circling a point, though. Much of my life has reached a past-halfway point. That likely happened chronologically a while ago, but the Law of Round Numbers means that it’s top of mind for me now. It’s an odd realization–and I intend that in the “becoming real” meaning of the phrase–to live in, being conscious a little too often of your mortality, of your growing irrelevance, and of how fragile the meat sack carrying my mind around actually is. I don’t have deep thoughts about this, this mildly-coherent post isn’t going to blow up into a New Yorker piece about this 50-year-old white guy’s existential revelations.

I’m just old now. I have things I want to do, but will run out of time to do them, so priorities start to shift. And it’s a new experience for me that I thought earned noting.