Tick... tick... tick...

I've always said that two of the subjects which fascinate me most are death and time. They are, after all, the two things that you can't escape from, can't sidestep, can't change the nature of.

Time is the more tangible of the two, for obvious reasons. Time we have now. Death comes later. This is probably why I love stories about time travel, alternate universes, and communication across the ages.

Great stories about death are more elusive. Most stories about death are about living people confronting death, or living people reminiscing about dead people. We know essentially nothing about death itself. I think many people believe in reincarnation or an afterlife because it's so hard to imagine nothing. Intellectually, I firmly believe that death is the end, in every sense. Emotionally, it's harder to swallow, because I can't imagine not being alive, not being conscious. How can this be? I know how it can be, but I don't really know.

Another thing I've said for quite a few years is that I feel old. This statement has taken many forms. For a while I joked that I'd die at age 36, because I felt that ages 17 and 18 were the best years of my life. While I'm not sure I can point to a specific year that I enjoyed more than those years, I don't really believe that my life is a bell curve centered around those best years.

I've always felt very mature for whatever age I was, in many ways. I can act very mature. I'm also a large, tall, bearded male with a few gray hairs, which means I pretty much exhibit most of the physical characteristics of maturity as our culture tends to view it. I've typically had friends who are older than I am, often five-to-ten years older.

Many things about me are goofy and childish (as the quote from Doctor Who goes, "What's the point of being an adult if you can't act childish once in a while?"), though they're not generally the sorts of things which are admired as being endearingly childlike. I think this makes me both feel and appear as more of an oddball than as a youthful sort, which reinforces my sense of being old.

We can travel through time, but only in one direction. The speed of time is 3600 seconds per hour.

Yesterday I commented to John that one nice benefit of my working out and weight loss is that I don't get those nagging little back aches that I used to get. My muscles are stronger and I'm carrying around less of a load. Back when I started bicycling in 1997, this was in fact my main motivation: I wanted to avoid developing back trouble, if I could.

Despite this, I've been feeling physically confronted with the fact that I'm aging. For the first time, I don't just think I'm old, I'm actually getting signals of age.

For one thing, my gray hairs are multiplying, especially in my beard. I used to have flakes of red in my beard, but those flakes are starting to turn gray. And since I am at my core a blonde (I have bright blonde hair as a boy), I expect my hair will go gray at a fairly young age. It wouldn't surprise me to be gray at 40, like my uncle.

In addition to my recurring shin splint issues, my knees are starting to twinge a little. Nothing serious yet. Nothing pulled or torn or broken. Just little feelings that my knees don't hold their position as well as they once did, that if I'm not a bit more careful I could wrench something the wrong way or rip something up.

In the last three years I've had friends who have gotten divorced. Not many who have had children, strangely enough. Many of my friends own real estate. Most are on their second or third or fourth jobs.

On the other hand, a lot of my friends seem to be figuring out what they want to do with their lives, with their careers. Their life partnership issues seem to be getting worked out. (Some friends seem more comfortable in one than the other, I'll grant you.) And I think what's weighing on my mind is that I don't feel like I've worked out any of this, nor does it seem like I'm making any progress at all on it. Sure I have a career, and I like my job, but I feel like I'm stuck at a certain place and that I'm not the sort of person who'd going to find it easy to move out of this place, inasmuch as I'm somewhat introverted, don't want to move into a position that involves much less programming - especially if I'm trading programming for meetings - and I'm highly reluctant to work much longer hours than I do already. (If I found myself in an absolutely riveting job, this might change. I haven't yet learned of the existence of such a job.) And I keep having this nagging feeling that I ought to be writing fiction, even though I have a hard time following through on that and don't have much confidence in my creative ability.

As for a life partner, well, I've now been continuously single for more than twice the span of time that my longest relationship lasted. And I think I've previously covered that who I am sharply limits the sorts of women who might be good matches for me.

So I'm feeling down about all of that, and the sense that the years are starting to roll by faster. That even though death is a long way off, time is starting to get short.

I know I'm not the only person wrestling with these issues, or ones like them. It's awkward to discuss them with someone in person, of course. Doing so with someone who's grappling with them more successfully is even more depressing, and doing so with someone who's having just as hard a time feels like a big pity party. That's one of the advantages of having a journal - on-line or otherwise - I guess.

I often feel that the solution to many of my problems - these one among others - is to just kick myself in the ass and start doing whatever it is I need to do (figure out what I really want to be doing in my job and go do it; start asking women out; start writing, revising, and submitting stuff; stop watching so much TV; spend less time on-line, etc.). That's hard to do and it gets harder every year. Inertia. Complacency. Easier to just sit and feel sorry for myself or distract myself with my many hobbies (which I really do enjoy!).

All I can do is take it one day at a time and do my best.

Probably the biggest difference between Michael Rawdon the 20-year-old and Michael Rawdon the 32-year-old is that mhr20 lived in the moment and didn't worry so much about the future. mhr32 worries about the future all the time.

Tick.. tick... tick...

Eventually, the alarms start sounding.