It’s your turn.

I can’t figure out how to figure out what I want to do next in my life career-wise. So I thought I’d ask my readers.

How did you figure out what to do with your life?

Did you always know? (If so, you might be one of the lucky ones.) Or did you stumble across it? Or purposefully investigate different options? Or something else?

I really want to know.

Thanks!

An op-ed caught my eye in the New York Times yesterday. The headline: In Therapy Forever? Enough Already.

As someone who has been in psychotherapy more or less since I was 17 years old (except for a period of one year, another period of two years, and another period of several months), and as someone who recently switched therapists after 11 years, and as someone who is fascinated by psychotherapy in general, I knew I had to read it.

Well, I read it, and it bugged me on and off all day. I read it two or three times yesterday and again this morning.

I read it the first time with shame. I asked myself: have I been in therapy too long? Are my problems more solvable than I think they are? Maybe I don’t really need therapy in order to fix them?

But if that were the case, wouldn’t I have fixed them already?

<rant>
The guy who wrote the piece, Jonathan Alpert, is apparently a psychotherapist who has a book coming out this week: Be Fearless: Change Your Life in 28 Days. It’s common practice for newspapers to publish op-eds by authors who have books coming out; op-eds are often marketing tools. But to me, this piece just smacked of blatant marketing. I went to the author’s website, and right there on the front page it says: dubbed “Manhattan’s most media-friendly psychotherapist.” Those are also the first words on his “About” page. Being “dubbed Manhattan’s most media-friendly psychotherapist” is a good thing? If I were looking for a new therapist, that would be a complete turnoff. It makes Mr. Alpert sound like someone who’s more interested in getting publicity and making a name for himself than in helping other people. I would want a therapist who thinks his primary job is to help his clients, not to become famous.
</rant>

In addition to his coming off as kind of a dick, I take issue with some of what he says in his op-ed. For example, if a woman comes to him because she’s in an unhappy relationship:

…I ask what might be missing from her relationship and sketch out possible ways to fill in relationship gaps or, perhaps, to end it in a healthy way. Rather than dwell on the past and hash out stories from childhood, I encourage patients to find the courage to confront an adversary, take risks and embrace change. My aim is to give patients the skills needed to confront their fear of change, rather than to nod my head and ask how they feel.

OK, but psychotherapy is not just about solving problems. Some of us have lifelong psychological issues that pervade our lives, that derive from troubled childhoods, where we learned patterns that have kept us stuck, and we can’t be “cured” by antidepressants (because we’re not actually depressed) or by solving one specific problem and then quitting therapy.

He also writes:

In my experience, most people seek therapeutic help for discrete, treatable issues: they are stuck in unfulfilling jobs or relationships, they can’t reach their goals, are fearful of change and depressed as a result. It doesn’t take years of therapy to get to the bottom of those kinds of problems. For some of my patients, it doesn’t even take a whole session.

Fine. But sometimes an unfulfilling job or relationship or whatever is not the real problem: it’s just a symptom of the problem. If you just fix the relationship situation or the job situation, you might just be treating the symptom, not the underlying disorder, and the disorder will just re-manifest itself in another problem.

It seems like a very American, surfacey way of dealing with things. It brings to my mind Annette Bening’s character in American Beauty, this hard-working, high-achieving, outwardly perfect-seeming woman who just thinks positively and tries to ignore or bury anything that’s troubling under the surface. Don’t explore anything: just achieve and move on to the next life goal! Again, so very American.

But what the hell do I know. After all, Alpert is right in one sense: if your therapy isn’t working, it is time to move on. Things weren’t working anymore with my old therapist, so after months of trying and waiting, I moved on — to someone who’s more interactive, more willing to give me fresh insights.

Still, this whole idea about “achieving life goals” — it seems so American. And so late 20th century/early 21st century. People didn’t used to talk about “life goals.” I mean, life goals are a good thing, I guess. But the concept comes from our having moved on from a religion-based world. If you don’t believe in God or an afterlife — which I don’t — then you have to provide your own meaning in life, and that comes from setting goals for yourself. I think it’s a more truthful way to live, but god, it was a lot less complicated when you just felt stuck in your station in life and worked the fields until you died, right?

It’s really annoying to have to come up with “life goals” when you have no idea what those goals should be. What are my goals? I’ve been struggling with that question ever since high school, and I’m no closer to finding them than I ever was.

Yesterday I went for a walk after work. I work from home on Fridays, and we live near Columbia University. I crossed Broadway near the gates at the entrance to the Columbia campus and was about to walk down Broadway when I saw, standing there in front of the university gates, one of my idols: biographer Robert Caro!

In fact, just two days earlier, I’d finished reading the first volume of his Lyndon Johnson biography, The Path to Power, having been engrossed in it for the past month. The latest volume of his LBJ bio, The Passage of Power, comes out on May 1, after a ten-year wait, and I can’t wait to read it. I’d previously read volumes 2 and 3, so I wanted to read volume 1 before the new one comes out. I’ve also read Caro’s other masterpiece, The Power Broker, about Robert Moses.

And in fact, just before going for my walk — literally right before getting up from my desk to put on my shoes — I’d been reading this fascinating new Esquire profile of Mr. Caro.

And suddenly, a few minutes later, there he was a few feet away from me.

He was wearing a dark suit with a red tie, a red handkerchief in his pocket, and he was standing with a couple of other people. I had no idea what he was doing there, standing in front of the Columbia University gates, but I had to say hello.

So I went up to him and said, “I’m so sorry to bother you, but I’m a huge fan of yours.” I told him I’d just finished volume 1 and that I’d previously read volumes 2 and 3, that I’d read them in reverse order.

He couldn’t have been nicer. He asked me what my name was. He shook my hand. He introduced me to his wife, Ina Caro, who was standing next to him, and I was just as thrilled to meet her; Ina Caro is an accomplished author in her own right, and she has been Robert Caro’s sole research assistant on all of his books. Then he introduced me to his editor, Katherine Hourigan, who was standing there as well. He asked me my name again, and then he made a point to ask my last name.

It was so surreal to meet him. I wish I’d been more prepared. I wish I’d had my picture taken with him. I wish I’d had a book for him to sign. I wish I’d sounded more intelligent. I wish I’d been able to talk with him longer.

I did a Twitter search when I came home, and it turned out that he was at Columbia last night to speak at a centennial event for the Columbia Journalism School.

Caro has been working on his biography of Lyndon Johnson since 1974 — almost my entire life. It was originally going to be three volumes, but three became four, and four became five. Caro is 76 years old; he has completed all the research for his fifth (and presumably last) volume, but according to Esquire, his will states that if he dies before he finishes writing the last volume, nobody else should finish it for him. I hope he makes it.

More recent profiles of Caro on the occasion of the new book’s release, including the Esquire piece:

• The Big Book (Esquire, May 2012)
• Robert Caro’s Big Dig (New York Times Magazine, last week)
• Should LBJ Be Ranked Alongside Lincoln? (Smithsonian, May 2012)

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about whether or not to have kids. And by “lately” I mean the last several years.

I’m not sure when it started: probably around the time I turned 30, when I realized that most of my straight friends from college were starting to become parents, and I wasn’t. But back then it didn’t bother me too much, because I definitely didn’t want kids, or at least I figured I still had lots of time to decide whether I wanted them.

Then my brother, who is younger than me, became a dad. Now I have a two-and-half-year-old niece, with a nephew on the way. If my brother can be a dad, I feel like I should be able to be a dad.

And I’m 38 and haven’t accomplished anything in my life and I’m only getting older.

For whatever reason, I’ve been thinking more and more about what I’m missing by not having kids. I still don’t think I want them; certainly, having them comes at a cost.

But not having kids comes at a cost as well.

Having children allows you to grow as a person. You learn new things about the world and about human beings every day. You learn to be responsible for someone other than yourself. You become less self-centered. You gain more of a stake in what happens on our planet. And you’re contributing to society by raising members of the next generation who will live here.

And there are selfish good reasons, too. You have people to take care of you when you’re old and sick, to bury you when you die, to remember you after you’re gone. And then your genes will live on through your children, and through your children’s children. Or, if you adopted your kids, then the lessons you taught them, and the stories you told them, will be passed on.

And having kids gives your life some direction. Your adult life divides into stages: you’re childless, and then you raise a baby, and then a toddler, and then a kid, and then you’re a middle-aged parent of a teenager, and then your children are adults themselves, and then you get to be a grandparent, and so on.

Without kids, I have none of that.

My life has no direction. Right now I’m just in the long, vast middle of my existence, which started about 12 years ago and will continue on for the next 30 years or so. Nothing new happens. Nothing changes. I don’t take on new responsibilities. I don’t learn new things about life. I don’t grow as a person. I’m just stagnating.

A long time ago I read Dan Savage’s The Kid, about his experience adopting a baby with his partner. An early chapter of that book has always stuck with me, where he talks about why they decided to have kids. He says that if gay men don’t have kids, they have three choices. They can remain overgrown gay adolescents; travel the world and collect a bunch of crap; or renovate a house.

Of course, that’s bullshit. You can still try to make the world a better place through your career, or by volunteering, or by doing something else.

But what he wrote still stings. I don’t want to be some middle-aged gay adolescent.

Maybe this isn’t really about kids. But it feels like it is.

There’s also the nagging feeling that my own parents think less of me for not being a parent.

And yet… I don’t think I want kids. The day-to-day existence of it. The crying and the yelling and the tantrums. I fear I wouldn’t have the patience to be a good parent; I fear I’d lose my temper and raise them wrong and screw them up, like my dad screwed me up. And there are the extra mouths to feed. And the constant worry that they’ll get into an accident and die. Or thinking about what their lives would be like on our warming 21st-century planet, constantly staring at screens and ingesting toxic chemicals in this shitty country we live in.

Would I feel different if Matt wanted kids? Maybe. But he definitely doesn’t.

I just feel like there are these major life milestones that most people go through, milestones that I will never experience.

And I feel like not being a parent means that I will never fully be an adult.

I want to revitalize this blog somehow. Even though blogging the way I do it seems to be passé, and even though I haven’t been blogging as often as I used to, I still like having it available as an outlet. I think it needs a redesign — or at least a new theme template. The links to the previous and next posts at the top of each individual blog post have not worked in several years and seem to be unfixable. A new theme would probably fix that.

I’ve been seeing my new therapist for about three months. It’s been good so far. I have felt an increased urgency in my therapy sessions, although that’s not because I’m seeing a new therapist, but rather that’s why I decided to see a new therapist. I am tired of being an unhappy person, and I am tired of all the stagnation in my life. I wasn’t getting anywhere with my old therapist anymore; I was just talking about the same stuff over and over. So I wanted to start working with someone new.

My new therapist is more interactive, more willing to call me out on my circular thinking.

One thing he suggested is that instead of trying to fix everything at the same time, I try to focus on one thing at a time. So I’ve decided to start with my career. Unfortunately, I have no idea where to start. I have never known what I wanted to do with my life. It would be one thing if I knew what I wanted to do, because then I could figure out how to get there. But I have no idea what I want to do.

Still, I seem to be out of the rut I was in with my previous therapist. It’s not necessarily translating into any life changes yet, but it’s only been three months. I saw my previous therapist for 11 years. I guess I need to be patient.

But I’m 38 years old and I’m not getting any younger.

I just realized that I had drinks back in 1998 with now-U.S.-Senator Roger Wicker, Republican of Mississippi.

So, my therapist gave me a homework assignment last week: he wanted me to think about what my wants and needs were when I was in law school. (Long story.) I’d been thinking about it over the last few days, and this morning I decided to pull out some of my old journals from my law school years to try and help me remember. While going through one of them, I came across a description of a night I had completely forgotten about.

On the night of February 14, 1998, the Virginia Glee Club, of which I was a member, performed in a Valentine’s Day concert on Grounds (which is what you call the campus there). Coincidentally, in town that night was Hob Bryan, a Mississippi state senator and UVa law school alumnus who was a longtime friend of the Glee Club. Since he happened to be in town, he came to our concert. Afterwards, he invited three of us Glee Club guys to have drinks at the Colonnade Club, a swanky faculty club on Grounds.

So we went to the Colonnade Club, which was basically one room with a small group of people having drinks. And, quoting from my journal:

Not only Hob, but also this other guy around his age, the guy’s daughter, and a young guy who it turned out is a 4th year…

So we went downstairs, fixed ourselves some drinks, choosing from gin, Maker’s Mark (I think), Speaker’s Choice Scotch. Went back up, hung out in nice comfortable chairs in the elegant room. And it turned out this guy is a Congressman! He’s a member of the U.S. House from Mississippi, represents the northernmost district, 24 counties, bordering Tennessee. Roger something. Begins with W? And his daughter (Meg? Margaret?) is visiting UVA this weekend…

I was reading this, and I thought, well that’s interesting, because one of the current U.S. senators from Mississippi is named Roger Wicker. So I looked him up on Wikipedia and the description matches up. It was him.

To continue on with the evening: another Glee Club guy and his girlfriend showed up, and we continued sipping from our drinks. And then:

Congressman X recited from memory a speech on whiskey by one Nathan “Soggy” Sweat, a long-ago state senator (from the 60’s at least). Congressman X used to be a Mississippi state senator too, a colleague of Hob’s; he was elected to Congress in 1994, part of the Republican Congressional Revolution. This speech, during a time when Mississippi was debating removing its state prohibition laws finally (the last state in the nation to do so), was phenomenal. And he did it from memory and so convincingly. “If by whiskey you mean that drink of the devil, that… and… [etc etc] then I am against it. But, if by whiskey you mean the oil of conversation, the… the drink that keeps you warm on a cold and frosty evening… [etc etc], the sale of which fills our state coffers, providing for crippled children, the elderly… [etc etc]… then I am for it. This is my stand.” It was hilarious; it was a phenomenal performance. I felt like I was in a movie.

This morning I looked up Nathan Sweat. Turns out I had gotten his name wrong; his name was Noah “Soggy” Sweat, not Nathan “Soggy” Sweat. Here’s the whiskey speech.

After a while, we four Glee Club guys sang “The Good Old Song,” the UVA school song, for Hob Ryan and Roger Wicker. Then some people left and only four of us remained: me and one other Club guy, and Hob Ryan and Roger Wicker. According to my journal, the four of discussed the Monica Lewinsky scandal — this was just three weeks after the scandal broke — and Iraq. Since Ryan was a Democrat and Wicker was a Republican, “we got some give-and-take for a while,” according to my journal. Then Mr. Wicker went to bed and the three of us stayed up talking a while longer.

I wonder how I would feel today about having drinks with a Republican congressman from Mississippi. Back then I was 24, sexually confused and closeted, and less politically opinionated (albeit a solid Democrat). Later in 1998, Wicker would go on to vote for all four articles of Clinton’s impeachment (only two of them passed), and of course in 1996 he had voted for DOMA (although to be fair, so did most of Congress).

It’s so weird that I didn’t remember any of this until rereading it in my journal. That’s one of the reasons I’m so glad I’ve written things down over the years.

Oh, poor blog. How I have been neglecting you. It’s been almost three weeks since my last post. Thanks to those of you who responded; what I really learned from it, unintentionally, was that some people who I thought read my blog apparently no longer read it, or at least want me to think they no longer read it. Or maybe they read it but have no desire to leave comments. The other thing I learned was that although my blog automatically posts to Twitter when there’s a new post, most of my Twitter followers don’t click on the link. I say this not to wallow; it’s just that it’s helpful to know who your audience is when you write.

Last week I went to Houston for a few days on a business trip. I have to attend a conference every year in Houston, and this one was a bit of a slog, because I was either sick or sleep-deprived much of the time. A week and a half before the conference I came down with a cold, and by the time I left for Houston, it was still working its way through my body, or at least through my nostrils. On top of that, for three nights in a row before the conference, I slept terribly. The night before the conference I couldn’t fall asleep until around 3:30, and then I woke up twice over the next four hours. This despite having a sleeping pill prescription, Sonata, which I’ve been taking two or three times a week for the last several months. Since it didn’t seem to be working for me, I worried that maybe my body was becoming immune to it.

So on Wednesday morning I woke up to go to the airport, feeling exhausted and shitty, with mucus still working through my system. The first leg of the trip, to Dallas, took off late. The captain came on and said that we were THIRTY-FIFTH in line for take-off, which meant we’d be sitting on the tarmac for 30 minutes before taking off. Ugh.

I was sitting by the window. I just wanted to sleep, but the two women next to me struck up a conversation with each other. They seemed to get along well, and then they both agreed that Satan was real. I don’t know how their conversation turned to religion or Satan in the first place. I think they both might have been Jehovah’s Witnesses, but I’m not sure.

I wanted to hate them, but then I realized that I didn’t really know anything about them, other than that they thought Satan was real and that they’d probably think I was Satan’s spawn if they knew I was gay. So I closed my eyes and tried to sleep and ignore them. I told myself at least I wasn’t sitting near a screaming baby. When the plane finally took off, they stopped talking to each other. Whew. Eventually I put my coat over my head and leaned my head against the wall next to my seat and once again tried to sleep, but couldn’t. And my stomach wasn’t feeling well.

Because the plane took off 30 minutes late, it landed 20 minutes late. By the time I got off the plane, it was 2:15, and my connecting flight was at 2:30, and it was in the next concourse. So I rushed with my bag, down the concourse, up an escalator, waited impatiently for a monorail, and finally managed to make it onto my plane at 2:25 or 2:26. I had to check my bag, but I was on the plane! Out of breath, tired, but on the plane! Win!

And then the plane sat there on the tarmac in Dallas.

After a few minutes, the captain came on and said there were severe thunderstorms in Houston and they weren’t letting any planes fly into the Houston airport. He didn’t know when he would have any more information, but he would let us know.

I was sitting by the window again, with two people next to me, on a full flight.

And then I started to feel claustrophobic.

I was also hungry, and exhausted, and sitting on a plane with no idea when it would move. I felt completely terrible. All I wanted, dear God, was to get out of this confined space and get to my hotel room in Houston. I felt myself on the verge of a mini-panic attack and tried to stave it off. I wound up calling Matt, and he talked with me for a few minutes, and I managed to calm myself down a bit.

At 3:35 — five minutes after my flight was originally scheduled to land in Houston — the captain came back on and said that if he didn’t hear anything in 15 minutes, he would let anyone off the plane that wanted to get off. I felt a rush of hope and relief.

A few minutes later, he came back on and said we were cleared to take off! Hooray!

We taxied down the runway. The flight attendant came on and said it would be a 44-minute flight. Excellent. At 4:02, we finally took off, and I looked forward to landing at around 4:45 or 4:50.

But no, that had apparently been old information. We had to take the long way around the thunderstorms. The pilot said we would be landing at 5:33. FUCK. The flight would be twice as long as scheduled. I just wanted. Off. This. Fucking. Plane.

I closed my eyes, listened to some music, tried to relax.

At 5:08 the pilot came on and said, “Good news, it looks like we’ll be landing a little early. We should have you on the ground in 18 minutes.”

Okay, good. Instead of 5:33 we’d land at 5:26. Really, seven fewer minutes should not have been a big deal, but when all you want to do is get off an airplane, every minute counts.

I basically started clock-watching (or, watch-watching). I couldn’t stop checking the time. We began descending into some enormous dark clouds. And we just kept being surrounded by clouds. I was like, are we descending, or not? How big are these fucking clouds? Why aren’t we landing?

We finally landed at like 5:35 or 5:36. Not 5:26. Not even 5:33. I know it might sound silly that I was so annoyed by a few extra minutes, but I was. Again, I JUST WANTED TO GET OFF THE FUCKING AIRPLANE. I was so pissed off at the pilot. Why tell us we’re going to land early when we’re not? Why didn’t you just keep that false good news to yourself?

Then we taxied. Then we stopped before we even got to the gate. ARGH. My knee was bobbing up and down and I was drumming my fingers on the seat and the guy next to me must have thought I was a lunatic.

Then we started moving again and we FINALLY got to the gate. I finally got off the fucking airplane. And then I had to go to baggage claim and wait for my bag, and wait, and wait, as about 10 irregularly-shaped and unusually heavy packages came down the ramp, each about 30 seconds apart, as the rest of us stood there and thought, what the hell? What are these things and who packed them and where’s our freaking luggage?

But my bag came and I got into a comfortable taxi and there wasn’t much traffic. At about 7:10 pm, I was finally in my hotel room, about two and a half hours later than I’d planned.

I got room service, watched TV, then tried to read but decided to just go to bed. Exhausted.

Oh, blog, thank you for your white space that allows me to pour out my anger and annoyance! Glad you’re still here.

Today’s my 11-year blogaversary.

I’m kind of surprised this blog is still going. But I like having it.

I made a resolution to cook dinner more this year and order takeout less. It’s not going great so far, as we just ordered Mexican.

The thing is, there are various vectors on the cook-vs.-takeout scale. Cooking is cheaper — unless you’re making a very complicated recipe that requires lots of ingredients, in which case it might be more expensive. Cooking is healthier — except that for dinner tonight I’ve ordered a vegetarian burrito with brown rice and a side salad, a meal that will contain more vegetables than what I might have cooked. Cooking is more enjoyable — sometimes. I like cooking, but only when I’m actually doing it — caught up in the slicing and the doing. If I think about getting ready to cook, including going to buy the ingredients I don’t have, it’s a pain in the ass.

I guess I have to decide why I want to cook more: because it’s healthier (sometimes). Because it’s cheaper (sometimes). Because I like the process of cooking (sometimes). Because I want to know what goes in my food (always).

Ah well — at least I cooked on Saturday night. Resolutions can be gradual!

Regarding the 2012 elections:

Pundits like to pontificate, and so do the rest of us. But really, there’s no way to predict what the 2012 election will be like, what the big stories will be, and what will ultimately happen.

It amazes me that pundits never talk about the effect of a running mate until summertime, when the running mate actually gets picked. It’s like collective winter/spring amnesia. The biggest game-changer in the 2008 election — other than the economic collapse less than two months before Election Day — was John McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his running mate. That didn’t happen until the end of August, and it had an enormous effect on the race (though maybe not on the actual result), giving the GOP ticket a huge injection of enthusiasm. Palin seemed to dominate political news coverage for the next two months.

If things go like they always do, Romney won’t pick his running mate for another eight months. When he picks that running mate, it will change the story one way or another. So maybe we should all stop speculating about what this election will be like until that happens.

I tweeted yesterday that next year will be the first year since 1987 with four different digits.

Every year since 1988 has had a digit that appeared at least twice:

1988: multiple 8s
1989-1999: multiple 9s
2000-2010: multiple 0s
2011: multiple 1s
2012: multiple 2s

Next year, 2013, will finally break this pattern.

I was trying to figure out the previous record for a sequence of numbers with repeating digits. I think it was 1099 to 1202. Before that, 988 to 1022.

Meaningless trivia, but I still think it’s cool. Numbers are fun.

Here’s a list of the books I read in 2011. I do a similar post every year.

My reading is very important to me, because I love to learn. The difference this past year was that I got a Kindle in late 2010, so I was able to read big, thick books on my long work commute, and I was able to sample books I might not have tried in the past — hence, more fiction and self-help than usual.

That said, I’ve decided to make some of my reading from the past year private. I have tended not to disclose as much of my personal life on my blog as I used to, and some of the books I read this year were self-help books that I’d rather keep to myself. So… in chronological order, here are most of the books I read in 2011:

[private]

[private]

Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, Edwin G. Burrows and Mike Wallace (started in late 2010, finished in 2011)

The Creation of the American Republic, 1776-1787, Gordon S. Wood

The Tragedy of Arthur, Arthur Phillips

Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy: A Practitioner’s Guide, Nancy McWilliams

The Story of Britain: From the Romans to the Present: A Narrative History, Rebecca Fraser

Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600-1947, Christopher Clark

The Help, Kathryn Stockett

[private]

The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell, and the Struggle for Civil Rights, Robert Mann

Watching TV: Six Decades of American Television, Harry Castleman and Walter J. Podrazik

If the Buddha Got Stuck: A Handbook for Change on a Spiritual Path, Charlotte Kasl

When Things Fall Apart: Heart Advice for Difficult Times, Pema Chödrön

Thoughts Without a Thinker: Psychotherapy From A Buddhist Perspective, Mark Epstein

11/22/63, Stephen King

Turning the Mind Into an Ally, Sakyong Mipham

[private]

The Sense of an Ending, Julian Barnes

The Stranger’s Child, Alan Hollinghurst

A World on Fire: Britain’s Crucial Role in the American Civil War, Amanda Foreman (started a couple of weeks ago)

Happy New Year.

Today’s my birthday. I’m 38 years old today.

I’m not sure I like birthdays anymore. They’re just a reminder that I’m getting older. It’s silly, really, because I’m only one day older than I was yesterday, and the only reason I celebrate today is because the Earth is in the same place relative to the Sun as it was on the day I was born. But still.

Last year when I turned 37 I felt this *click* as I transitioned from my mid-30s to my late 30s. Last year I suddenly saw 40 on the horizon. I then realized I still had three years to go before I turned 40. So this birthday doesn’t feel as troubling as my last birthday because I’ve also resigned myself to the fact that 40 is approaching in a couple of years.

I don’t really know how to act my age anymore, and I haven’t for a few years. I don’t know what I’m supposed to be doing. I’m not in my 20s. But I’m not middle-aged, either. I don’t like getting drunk or staying out late like I used to. On the other hand, I still want to have a life, and I don’t really feel like I do. I don’t want to spend the rest of my life not doing anything new and not challenging myself.

Most people my age are straight and married with a couple of kids in elementary school or middle school or even high school. If I were straight I’d be a dad. But I’m not. So I never really know what I’m supposed to be doing.

I’m not young but I’m not old. It’s weird.