Diminishing Returns

Seems like, every time a zero-year birthday is imminent, I go into sort of a funk. And, with each looming zero-year birthday, the time between the actual birthday and the onset of that funk increases. I was a late-term baby: maybe I was late to my very first zero-year birthday because I didn't want to face it and was sulking in my mom's womb? Dunno.

Weird thing for me is that I don't really have a sense of time. My memory makes it so that pretty much everything that's happened seems "recent". The only real way that I have any time-sense is that I'm able to recognize that my memories have order and I know that a longer line of memory-dominoes indicates that something happened further in the past ...but that's about the only semi-tangible clue about the scale of the amount of time that's past. Yet, as nebulous an indicator as that clue is, it still seems to be enough to cause the whole "looming zero-year funk" to start earlier and earlier.

That this past Thanksgiving marked the tenth without my father probably didn't help. Similarly, not being able to have Thanksgiving with my mom due to illness probably exacerbated things. Thus, this time's zero-year dread seems to have started a full two months before my actual birthday. It probably started even before that – though less in the form of dread than small things like starting to answer people's "how old are you" question with, "nearly fifty" ...at least as far back as May.

The universe also seems to be prompting it. For starters, this summer, a month before she was to turn nine, by doggo was diagnosed with cancer. While it seems like like the surgery, recovery and three months of chemo successfully prosecuted the cancer, the event/process still turned my mind to aging and death. Then came the Thanksgiving-time reminder of things. And, as a coda to that, one of the streaming TV services decided that November would be a great time to run a Marathon of Dead Like Me. Don't get me wrong: it's a great series – even if it's been 15 years since I've watched it – but its timing was especially resonant this year.

As fun as going to EDM shows and festivals tends to be, it probably doesn't help the "I feel old thing". Not so much the aching joints an muscles the next day as being surrounded by people that are literally less than half my age (started this birth-year by going to see Herobust at Echostage, for my birthday, where I ran into another guy celebrating his birthday ...but it was his 24th). And, while I'm not the oldest person at festivals I'm usually the oldest at one-night events (including performers, staff and probably even the ownership). And, while the twenty- and thirty-somethings we run into are usually very welcoming and like to point to my wife and me and say "life goals", it's still a compliment that drives home the gulf in ages.

Plus, this zero-year, I'm almost certainly in that part of ones life where there's more years behind than ahead. The only way that's not true is if I manage to top the century-mark. And, while family-longevity says that's a possibility I've enough in the way of chronic health conditions – and semi-toxic treatments for same – that even if I otherwise could reasonably expect to top the century-mark, those conditions and their treatment means the safe money is on not topping it.

Oh well...