Well, I’m 39 now. Have been for almost 30 hours. So far, so good (all things considered).

And boy oh boy, do I consider ALL the things.

In fact, it feels like I’ve done nothing for the last 2+ years but consider all the things. In my defense, there’s been a lot to consider. But, as is my custom, I’ve become fed up with considering and need to do… something. And this is about the place that I never get past. The precipice of Something. It’s always the same. Some arbitrary ‘new beginning’. Seizing the supposed energy that comes with a new week, a new month, a new pen, a new notebook, a new year. Because, ‘this time’ it will be different. However by ‘this time’ + two weeks it will be basically the same as it ever was.

Even this, the wry but frustrated observation of past cycles, the ‘first post in months’ that is destined to be come ‘the last update in weeks’, the soft ‘but maybe…’ whispering in the back of my head. The sad sigh that follows. I’ve done it all before.

And so, I am embarrassed. So often have I tried to jump start something that isn’t a car engine. So often have I postured, trying on the costume of the person I want to become, standing in front of the mirror going, “wouldn’t it just be wild if I just wore this?”

Wouldn’t it?

“This time will be different.”

Well, things are certainly… different. Pandemic. War. And the careening, bucking, lurching, drunken networked, polarized society we live in just throwing itself against the walls of its cage. I can honestly say that life at 39 is different than I expected. I don’t know that I ever actually sat down and considered what it would be like to be 39. But I do know I wouldn’t have ever considered it would be… like this.

So I guess that means it can be anything, that I can be anything.

It means I don’t actually have to come out here and pay my dues by bleeding all over the blogpost, by being just self-deprecating enough, by noting for the record how stupid or privileged or pointless this whole endeavor is, by winkingly insulting myself to wrestle the privilege away from anyone else.

It means that I can just… do what I want. Type what I want. Take pictures of what I want. Post what I want, build what I want. Perhaps more importantly, it means I don’t have to do… any of it. I can just be.

I am sick of death. Lately that is the dense, gaping black hole that lives in the back of my head and perpetually and eventually tugs at all of my thoughts. I can’t lose any more down that drain. I need to do… anything else.

And so, I am.