Aging (gasp)

I heard a phrase on mpr this morning that describes how I feel about aging so completely... and now I've completely forgotten it. That also describes aging completely. Ha ha. There was a woman being interviewed who was talking about her two books (one about being anorexic, one about recovering from anorexia) and she said this thing... about being defined by society or something. Oh rats, it was so perfect and now I've lost it.
That defines aging, too.

Other people have probably said this, but it seems that there is something about turning 40. All through my 20s and 30s I felt like I was the same age. Practically. Oh, I might have felt a bit older at 38 than I did at 21, but mostly I felt like an adult who still feels like a kid a lot of the time. That brings to mind a conversation Ross and I had with his mom and her sister Abby. Ross was talking about how, as the younger generation, he always feels like he's still a kid. And Abby said, "How do you think I feel? I feel like a kid, too!" Which makes me think that probably the vast majority of people still feel, at some level, like they're kids. Except that some people have the appearance of never having been kids (Dick Cheney, for example). So that makes me wonder how common this phenomenon is. What percentage of the population still feels like kids?

But back to aging. When I get up during the night for a glass of water my left foot makes this snapping noise. And it hurts. My left thumb feels a little painful and swollen, and over the last couple of years I've had this chronic knee tendonitis that interferes with my running. I've had chronic shoulder tendonitis for longer than that, but that seems much more dependent on the intensity of my climbing so I don't chalk it up to age quite as much.

But hell! I don't want to get old! I want to stay young and strong and vital. I suppose this is an important realization, but I feel both like I shouldn't have to come to this, and guiltily like I should have come to this sooner. I feel like I NEED to acknowledge that I won't be young forever so that I can plan for the future, set goals and achieve them while I'm still able to, and so on. But I hate even acknowledging that. I don't want to think that there's a finite amount of time to climb 5.12.

I ran the Twin Cities Marathon ten years ago. Ten years! Shit! And ever since then I've had it in my mind that I'd like to run another marathon, and now I need to fully realize that it's going to get harder and harder the longer I wait.

My career doesn't particularly allow for a huge amount of career planning. Sculpting jobs are rare. I don't know what I'd do, for sure, if this job went away. I might have to shift to a completely different track. And on some level I feel like I ought to plan for that eventuality, but it feels really weird to do so. Even as I say that, I automatically remind myself of how incredibly lucky I am to be able to sculpt every day, and how fortunate I am to be an American and not an Iraqi or a Rwandan. No one is trying to kill me. In the greater scheme of things I have NOTHING to complain about. But it is human nature to be aware of the difficulties of one's life, no matter how trivial those difficulties may be. In my case, there is the awareness of mortality. Ha ha.