End of Another Year

Another year is ending. I remember when I was a teenager in the eighties, I thought that year 2000 was going to be so far away, and thinking that I was going 32 that year was just unthinkable. A 32-year-old person is just so old to my eyes then. And I turned 32, and then now I am 40. And I don't feel old. In some ways I mean. In other ways of course I feel old. Like the appearance of lines on the face. Or my thought processes - advising the young ones how they should think carefully about their life commitments. Yes, so I am old in those ways. But I don't feel old old, if you know what I mean. Like when I compare myself to what I thought a 40-year old guy would be like, I don't think I fit that stereotype. I still wear hip t-shirts or hip jeans (I would like to think), and I don't wear khaki pants with checkered shirts on the weekends. But I don't have the same level of energy I used to have anymore. And the other things that worries me (and when you worry that means you are old) is the fact that many of my friends are going through their mid-life crisis - getting split up, looking for new wives etc etc. I do worry, and it is hitting too close to home for comfort. Not my home, because my home is a home of one, but my closest friends' homes, my loved ones. The sad thing is that it is becoming more the norm than the exception. Which makes me wish all the time that I am that innocent child in the eighties that I used to be. Where things like these don't happen, at least not in my sheltered life then.