50

This number is different somehow.

I've never had an age freakout before. Of all my birthdays only 16 was treated as a milestone: I can't even remember many of the rest of them. I certainly don't recall feeling this odd mix of shame, fear and resignation when I turned 30, or 40.

I'm not sure what it is, but I think that subliminally I have always thought that fifty was the age after which shit should get easier. You've been in your career long enough to make at least middle management, you've got the house and the cottage, the wife and kids and a white picket fence and a car in every pot and a chicken in every garage and by those metrics I am not just a failure, I am the epitome of failure. 

But I don't feel like one. Usually. 

I have struggled with articulating this and I finally hit upon it last night: I expend entirely too much mental energy convincing myself I'm a failure that sometimes, for brief periods, I'm convinced. Then I remind myself that the only way to win a rigged game is not to play it; that in order to get ahead in a career I would need an appetite for bullshit in various flavours, and further that the monetary rewards of 'getting ahead' are not worth the stress. 

I own a home, which is more than many can say. We've been here since 2004, and I was adamant back then on getting the most affordable home we felt comfortable in. I was certain interest rates would eventually rise, maybe all the way back to 1980s levels, and my certainty tripled after 2008. I looked like a fool, because interest rates cratered and stayed subterranean. They've been talking for years now about their inevitable rise, but let's face it: they can't jack the rates too much or the entire economy will simply implode. Still, at the rate homes are appreciating in value, I consider myself damned lucky. 

I never held with owning a cottage: I wouldn't do that even if I was very rich. It makes no sense to me to have more than one residence while there are homeless people. Also a home that sits vacant 90-plus percent of the year seems like a colossal waste to me. 

I count Eva among the greatest blessings of my life. I would not be here right now were it not for her. It's not a conventional marriage by any means but it is ours and we cherish it. We have the luxury of full time jobs we can perform maskless without leaving home, we have a housemate we consider family, and we have a couple of pets who enrich our lives beyond all measure. 

No kids and I'm not going to rehash that. We tried, we tried hard, we tried different ways, we were dealt a crushing rejection, we learned that in the eyes of Family and Children's Services we were not fit to parent...eventually, while still hating them, we grew to believe them. No, we're not the monsters they seem to think we are, but clearly we don't check all the boxes.

We don't check all the boxes. But we check the ones important to us.

So whence comes this free-floating miasma of mediocrity? What's missing?

It's not money, or rather, it's not much money. As I have mentioned probably too many times, I really would prefer NOT to be rich. After a certain point, money becomes more hassle than it's worth and that point is lower for me than for most. Don't get me wrong, I'd love to have enough spare cash to see some of the world, also to, you know, be able to save for "retirement". Hell, let's be realistic: I'm not going to be able to retire. I will die at my desk and get written up for job avoidance. 

Not money, or not much money. It's not fame or glory, both of which I ALSO consider to be more trouble than they're worth. I don't want to be recognized by strangers everywhere I go. That sounds mildly terrifying to me. 

So if it's not the lucre and it's not the limelight, what is it?

Meaning. It's meaning. 

Our society has so conditioned us to believe that meaning is derived from, well, lucre and limelight that, absent those things, life can easily feel meaningless. I have had to cobble together what meaning I can find, and against the yammering voice of Mother Culture asking have you "made it" yet? my little excrescence of meaning can seem pretty pitiful. But it isn't. 

I have people in my life who care about me. Who love me, and whom I love. Some of them I have never met, but I still feel close to. Others I haven't seen in years (what with this pandamnit,  that's most of my friend list). A precious few I see regularly. All of you mean something. All of you mean a great deal. Every single one of you gives me a reason to live each day, and every single day someone says something to me to make me smile. If that's not rich with meaning, I don't know what is. 

I have long bemoaned a lack of discipline that has seen hobby after hobby. resolution after resolution,  peter out before they even get started. It's been the central question of my life: why can't I just DO THE THING. I am coming to understand that DOING THE THING means engaging the world on its terms, not my own. I'm not built to do that. I have enough trouble keeping my mouth shut at all the petty injustices I see every day, and I have this nasty habit of treating my superiors like they AREN'T inherently better than me, which tends to piss them off since (lucre lucre lucre!) they "clearly" are. All of this leaves people lamenting the "potential" in me. Oh, but that word chafes. You're not supposed to have "potential" at fifty. If only he'd learn to love the taste of shit sandwiches and boots, he could really go far. I don't like shit sandwiches and I'll shove your boot up your ass before I lick it and that's why I'm a lowly call center grunt making a shade over minimum wage. I made quite a bit more in 2013 than I will this year, but I am not in retail anymore and I am PROFOUNDLY grateful for that. In retail, especially right now, the shit is neck deep. 

My future is written in water along with the world's. I am learning a difficult lesson for the likes of me: to live each day as it comes and, if not embrace ambiguity, at least coexist with it. I don't have a choice. The world of 2022 is a professional juggler alternating running chainsaws with Swarovski crystals, oh, and also he's drunk and he's three weeks from a Parkinson's diagnosis. There's no telling exactly what's about to go SPLAT next but you just know something will. 

I'm going to keep searching for the meaning in every day. And you know what? I'm going to keep finding it. And when something splats, I can pick it up or I can step over it, keeping my eyes on what (and who) matters.

I love you all. Thank you for being here.