I turned 39 today, which is I guess as close to officially being middle aged as one can get. Or at least most of my body is middle aged. My kidneys and liver are probably closer to retirement and my appendix is looking around nervously like Old Yeller and going “Nah, we don’t really need to go out back, do we?” Still, if there ever was a day to take an official reckoning of my life this is the day to do so. Here we go.
Height: Six foot one. Or so I still claim. The last couple of doctor’s visits have measured me more around six feet which means that either a) I even slouch at the doctor’s office, b) my poor posture has finally started causing back problems or c) the definition of an inch has been slightly changed from when I was twenty one. Outside of the concern of lower back problems (talk about entering middle age) the real reason this bothers me is if true I will no longer be able to say that Liz Phair wrote the following song about our failed relationship in the early 90s…
(Look, in the early 90’s we thought this sounded good. It was a weird decade.)
Weight: 185.4 pounds! That is a BMI of 24.4, which puts me in the normal weight range and slimmer than 63% of the population. This may not sound like much but back when Kim and I started dating I weighed more in the range of 215 pounds and was horribly out of shape. Now I have at least improved my diet to the point where I have been able to keep the weight off and have a personal trainer who has helped build up my strength (though I have faded a bit in that the past few months).
5K Time (treadmill at 0.5 incline): 39 minutes, 10 seconds. Yeah, that sucks. I’ve been trying to beat my age in a 5K and I can now almost do it but that is solely because I keep on getting older. One of my goals for the year is to really build up my speed and cardio and knock a couple of minutes off of this time. I don’t know if it is realistic for me to break 30 minutes given my history of leg injuries but I would love to get a lot closer to it.
Work: I now have a cubicle with a door on it. After 15 years of work, two years of grad school, and numerous times of staring up at the fluorescent lights while seeing grey walls around me I have finally advanced to the world of having my own door. And a massive whiteboard! Honestly, that might be the greatest thing that I have ever had. I can spend all day drawing up ideas, building lists and just jotting down ideas. Of course, they are making me move in a few weeks so it will probably go away and I will now be in a cubicle that sits above a bowling alley and below another bowling alley but such is life.
Personal: I think I have finally entered adulthood. Kim and I have been married for 17 months (take that Kim Kardashian) and while it hasn’t been the easiest thing in the world we work well together. The fact that I am always on the road makes things really challenging but we work through it. We just bought a new house, marking my first personal entry in the wonderful world of home ownership where I get to say things like “what does escrow mean” and “does the house really need gutters” and “instead of paint couldn’t we just put up a half dozen neon beer signs?” Again, the fact that I am with Kim makes me the luckiest man alive. There are times where I can barely deal with me and I’m me.
Writing: Yeah, this has been the biggest challenge. I just have not been able to get back into the swing of things writing wise but I want to give it one more try. I just miss sitting down and writing and talking about whatever is on my mind and having that outlet. It really is a time management issue. Marriage, work, travel, keeping up the house, exercise, keeping up the house, everything takes time. Sadly, I still waste a hell of a lot of time surfing the net and reading pro wrestling websites. I just have to prioritize and do what is important. So I will try to get back into the blogging game. Once more into the breach my friends, once more.
Showing posts with label Birthday. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Birthday. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 04, 2012
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Activate shields
Yahoo headline of the day: Asteroids barely avoid colliding with earth.
You know what, I don’t ask much of my president. Sure I would like an economy that doesn’t suck, a foreign policy with some semblance of direction and a belief that one day we will be able to say the word politician without using a tone of disgust but those aren’t really requirements. All I ask is that the president prevent an asteroid from slamming into the earth. And for crying out loud, Obama almost screwed that one up too. Seriously, shouldn’t we at least keep Bruce Willis on call for these situations?
Anyway, since it was my birthday last week I might as well give my annual post on what it feels like to get older and older. I’m 37 now, an age that it many ways fits me but still makes me feel damn old. I think I’ve been telling people that I’m 37 for two years now but I would at least like to think that I am in my early thirties. I really hate the fact that mid-life is approaching rapidly especially from a statistical perspective.
What I find interesting is that even with my age things like high school and college still hold some pretty major significance for me even though those events took place fifteen or twenty years ago. Think about that; we are talking decades plural here if I want to think about being a geek in my freshmen year of high school. No one remembers those events but me yet they still weigh on decisions that I make now. I doubt that I am the only one who thinks like this but it is pretty fascinating.
That said, I am finally acting more like an adult. I’m engaged to the woman of my dreams and want nothing more than to marry her and spend the rest of our lives together. My days of being the last one out of the bar are behind me and I am happy for that. The stories are great but I am glad to have avoided becoming that old guy at the end of the bar. I’m doing well at my job and I’m close with my family and while this past year has had some of the toughest moments of my life I can’t in anyway complain about the hand that life has dealt me.
I’m still working at becoming a better me. If being with Kim has taught me anything it is that I am in no way as perfect as I imagine myself to be. I seemed to have become oblivious to the fact that I can be arrogant or obnoxious or selfish or for a lack of a better term, a complete asshole. Those aren’t my main personality traits but they are there and for years I simply ignored them or hid them under my cynical veneer. I’m trying to change that part of me because it is not who I want to be. That might be one of the main reasons why I am with Kim: she makes me want to be the best version of myself I can possibly be.
It’s tough realizing you are getting old. Even staying up until 11 to write is a challenge now. Various body parts hurt much more than they should and I really need to get my cholesterol checked. But I look back at 37 years on this planet and I’m pretty damn proud at what I have done with my time and I think I am just getting started.
You know what, I don’t ask much of my president. Sure I would like an economy that doesn’t suck, a foreign policy with some semblance of direction and a belief that one day we will be able to say the word politician without using a tone of disgust but those aren’t really requirements. All I ask is that the president prevent an asteroid from slamming into the earth. And for crying out loud, Obama almost screwed that one up too. Seriously, shouldn’t we at least keep Bruce Willis on call for these situations?
Anyway, since it was my birthday last week I might as well give my annual post on what it feels like to get older and older. I’m 37 now, an age that it many ways fits me but still makes me feel damn old. I think I’ve been telling people that I’m 37 for two years now but I would at least like to think that I am in my early thirties. I really hate the fact that mid-life is approaching rapidly especially from a statistical perspective.
What I find interesting is that even with my age things like high school and college still hold some pretty major significance for me even though those events took place fifteen or twenty years ago. Think about that; we are talking decades plural here if I want to think about being a geek in my freshmen year of high school. No one remembers those events but me yet they still weigh on decisions that I make now. I doubt that I am the only one who thinks like this but it is pretty fascinating.
That said, I am finally acting more like an adult. I’m engaged to the woman of my dreams and want nothing more than to marry her and spend the rest of our lives together. My days of being the last one out of the bar are behind me and I am happy for that. The stories are great but I am glad to have avoided becoming that old guy at the end of the bar. I’m doing well at my job and I’m close with my family and while this past year has had some of the toughest moments of my life I can’t in anyway complain about the hand that life has dealt me.
I’m still working at becoming a better me. If being with Kim has taught me anything it is that I am in no way as perfect as I imagine myself to be. I seemed to have become oblivious to the fact that I can be arrogant or obnoxious or selfish or for a lack of a better term, a complete asshole. Those aren’t my main personality traits but they are there and for years I simply ignored them or hid them under my cynical veneer. I’m trying to change that part of me because it is not who I want to be. That might be one of the main reasons why I am with Kim: she makes me want to be the best version of myself I can possibly be.
It’s tough realizing you are getting old. Even staying up until 11 to write is a challenge now. Various body parts hurt much more than they should and I really need to get my cholesterol checked. But I look back at 37 years on this planet and I’m pretty damn proud at what I have done with my time and I think I am just getting started.
Thursday, September 03, 2009
I'm a ninja, it's my birthday
Well, in roughly an hour and a half I will turn 36 and will now be on the late portion of my mid thirties. To think of what has happened to me over the past year is astounding. Comparing where I was a year ago to where I am now is just mind boggling. I would never have expected any of this to happen.
Last year on my birthday I was packing up my apartment in Kansas City and moving to Delaware. After five possibly misspent years out on the Great Plains I was moving to the east coast where I knew absolutely no one. Seriously, I did not know a single person within a hundred miles of my new home. I was returning to a company I had worked for in the past but was faced with the fear that maybe after seven years away I had forgotten everything I had learned on the first go around. I was saying goodbye to the familiar and hello to a complete blank slate. Incredibly, it worked out in the best way possible.
I didn’t feel that way at first. I still don’t feel that I am an east coast guy and I will never understand the whole idea of going to the shore on weekends. Wilmington is a small city and everything seems to be a drive for me whether it is to go to a bar or a grocery store or to an area of actual culture. But I love my apartment and I have gotten used to the area. It might not feel like home just yet but it feels pretty nice.
My job is going exactly the way that I hoped that it would. It is tough to explain just how at home I am talking about power lines and how energy flows. I know it sounds like the most boring thing in the world and I am sure to most people it actually is but I just love the fact that I can model every power line in the country and figure out what will happen next. Plus, I jumped back into the industry at the perfect time as everything is up in the air again. Having gone from a company I didn’t particularly like to this is a wonderful change of pace.
But obviously the biggest moment of the past year is the one I never would have predicted no matter how much I tried. I never even fancied the thought that Kim and I would get back in touch and decide to start dating. It would have been a dream on the level of winning the lottery; it seemed that unlikely. Yet today here I am dating the woman of my dreams and happier than I have ever been. Every day I remind myself that I am the luckiest guy on the planet.
All I can say is for the first time my life is precisely where I want it to be. I have the best girlfriend ever, a job that excites me and a wonderful family. Things aren’t perfect but of course they never are. I wish I knew people out here who I didn’t work with or had a regular trivia game to play or was fifteen pounds lighter but those are all things that I can address. I do miss my friends in KC and sometimes wish I was on my way to the Brick on a Friday night to unwind but sometimes you have to move to grow. That is what this year has been all about. I am looking forward to my birthday tomorrow for all the possibilities the next year holds. After this one I feel that anything is possible.
On that note I have something to announce. As my regular readers have probably noticed the posts have been a little lacking at times recently with the occasional skipped entry. For lack of a better term, I’ve been busy with my real life and am tired as a result. I still love to write but over the past few months sitting down at the laptop and writing a page of material has grown a little tougher. So, after some thought I have decided that after four years and ten months, 1,253 posts and probably around 800,000 words I am due for a little break so I am taking a two week sabbatical. I guess that would be more of a hiatus than a sabbatical but either way I just want to take some time to recharge my creative batteries and take care of some other projects. I’m not going to stop blogging or change from the five posts a week schedule or anything. Just taking a little time off to celebrate one hell of a year.
As always, thanks to everyone who does read my thoughts from my corner of the world. See you all in two weeks. Take it away Josh…
Last year on my birthday I was packing up my apartment in Kansas City and moving to Delaware. After five possibly misspent years out on the Great Plains I was moving to the east coast where I knew absolutely no one. Seriously, I did not know a single person within a hundred miles of my new home. I was returning to a company I had worked for in the past but was faced with the fear that maybe after seven years away I had forgotten everything I had learned on the first go around. I was saying goodbye to the familiar and hello to a complete blank slate. Incredibly, it worked out in the best way possible.
I didn’t feel that way at first. I still don’t feel that I am an east coast guy and I will never understand the whole idea of going to the shore on weekends. Wilmington is a small city and everything seems to be a drive for me whether it is to go to a bar or a grocery store or to an area of actual culture. But I love my apartment and I have gotten used to the area. It might not feel like home just yet but it feels pretty nice.
My job is going exactly the way that I hoped that it would. It is tough to explain just how at home I am talking about power lines and how energy flows. I know it sounds like the most boring thing in the world and I am sure to most people it actually is but I just love the fact that I can model every power line in the country and figure out what will happen next. Plus, I jumped back into the industry at the perfect time as everything is up in the air again. Having gone from a company I didn’t particularly like to this is a wonderful change of pace.
But obviously the biggest moment of the past year is the one I never would have predicted no matter how much I tried. I never even fancied the thought that Kim and I would get back in touch and decide to start dating. It would have been a dream on the level of winning the lottery; it seemed that unlikely. Yet today here I am dating the woman of my dreams and happier than I have ever been. Every day I remind myself that I am the luckiest guy on the planet.
All I can say is for the first time my life is precisely where I want it to be. I have the best girlfriend ever, a job that excites me and a wonderful family. Things aren’t perfect but of course they never are. I wish I knew people out here who I didn’t work with or had a regular trivia game to play or was fifteen pounds lighter but those are all things that I can address. I do miss my friends in KC and sometimes wish I was on my way to the Brick on a Friday night to unwind but sometimes you have to move to grow. That is what this year has been all about. I am looking forward to my birthday tomorrow for all the possibilities the next year holds. After this one I feel that anything is possible.
On that note I have something to announce. As my regular readers have probably noticed the posts have been a little lacking at times recently with the occasional skipped entry. For lack of a better term, I’ve been busy with my real life and am tired as a result. I still love to write but over the past few months sitting down at the laptop and writing a page of material has grown a little tougher. So, after some thought I have decided that after four years and ten months, 1,253 posts and probably around 800,000 words I am due for a little break so I am taking a two week sabbatical. I guess that would be more of a hiatus than a sabbatical but either way I just want to take some time to recharge my creative batteries and take care of some other projects. I’m not going to stop blogging or change from the five posts a week schedule or anything. Just taking a little time off to celebrate one hell of a year.
As always, thanks to everyone who does read my thoughts from my corner of the world. See you all in two weeks. Take it away Josh…
Thursday, September 04, 2008
Wave goodbye...
I’d really like to write something incredibly special and meaningful right now. Today is a rather momentous day in my mind. I turned 35 today as well as prepared for having movers arrive in the morning to pack me up and move me out from Kansas City. Sadly though, I am insanely tired at the moment so I am not sure what I will be able to write. But I’ll give it a go.
As of today I am no longer important to American culture. I am no longer a male aged 18 to 34. I am not a part of the target market. That is what I mean when I say that this birthday is rather meaningful to me. This marks from a marketing standpoint that I simply no longer matter. It also means that I am in my mid-30’s. No ifs, ands or buts about it. That will take me a little while to get used to because I have failed on my biggest goal: to be married by the time I turned 35. On the plus side I did not settle for someone who I really didn’t want. On the minus side I am alone when I didn’t really plan to be at this point in my life. I will write a lot more about this in the upcoming weeks.
As for leaving Kansas City it is a real bittersweet moment for me. As anyone who has read this blog knows I am not exactly fond of this town. I intentionally did not set down roots when I moved here. I knew that this was only going to be a rest stop in my life. I never anticipated living here for the rest of my life. But there are certainly things that I have enjoyed about the town.
KC is a really convenient place; something you get spoiled by. I was able to go to hundreds of concerts with no real commute to any of them. Shopping surrounded me wherever I turned. There were bars within blocks of my apartment. True, you typically have to drive wherever you want to go but it is never a long drive. I’ll miss that.
I won’t miss the conservative nature of this town and the closed mindedness that confronted me at seemingly every turn. I won’t miss the cliquishness and the pettiness and all of the small town nonsense that I came across. Those are the things that drove me crazy and it took me years to find some like minded people I could connect with. Maybe I can blame all of this for my lack of a social life at time. It took a long time for me to meet people that I would want to be friends with.
But I did end up with a great group of friends and they are going to be incredibly tough to say goodbye to. I moved here knowing no one and I will leave with some wonderful friends, a few of whom made the decision to leave one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make. To everyone who has crossed my path in these past five years and has touched my heart I thank you in every sense of the term. You made these past few years worthwhile.
Where am I off to? Delaware in terms of geography. The next challenge of my life in more abstract terms. It should be one hell of a ride.
I’ll end with what might be the most appropriate song possible. I sure made a mess of this town…
As of today I am no longer important to American culture. I am no longer a male aged 18 to 34. I am not a part of the target market. That is what I mean when I say that this birthday is rather meaningful to me. This marks from a marketing standpoint that I simply no longer matter. It also means that I am in my mid-30’s. No ifs, ands or buts about it. That will take me a little while to get used to because I have failed on my biggest goal: to be married by the time I turned 35. On the plus side I did not settle for someone who I really didn’t want. On the minus side I am alone when I didn’t really plan to be at this point in my life. I will write a lot more about this in the upcoming weeks.
As for leaving Kansas City it is a real bittersweet moment for me. As anyone who has read this blog knows I am not exactly fond of this town. I intentionally did not set down roots when I moved here. I knew that this was only going to be a rest stop in my life. I never anticipated living here for the rest of my life. But there are certainly things that I have enjoyed about the town.
KC is a really convenient place; something you get spoiled by. I was able to go to hundreds of concerts with no real commute to any of them. Shopping surrounded me wherever I turned. There were bars within blocks of my apartment. True, you typically have to drive wherever you want to go but it is never a long drive. I’ll miss that.
I won’t miss the conservative nature of this town and the closed mindedness that confronted me at seemingly every turn. I won’t miss the cliquishness and the pettiness and all of the small town nonsense that I came across. Those are the things that drove me crazy and it took me years to find some like minded people I could connect with. Maybe I can blame all of this for my lack of a social life at time. It took a long time for me to meet people that I would want to be friends with.
But I did end up with a great group of friends and they are going to be incredibly tough to say goodbye to. I moved here knowing no one and I will leave with some wonderful friends, a few of whom made the decision to leave one of the toughest decisions I have ever had to make. To everyone who has crossed my path in these past five years and has touched my heart I thank you in every sense of the term. You made these past few years worthwhile.
Where am I off to? Delaware in terms of geography. The next challenge of my life in more abstract terms. It should be one hell of a ride.
I’ll end with what might be the most appropriate song possible. I sure made a mess of this town…
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