We've had two days of beautiful cold fog in SC, completely blanketing the town from the hill out over the bay. Some of my favorite moments living here have happened while I'm on the bus, looking out over miles of fog with the odd building or bluff poking out. Granted, it still hasn't rained to speak of, but I'll take this over the stupid (Shakespeare called it "garish") sun any day.
I was trying to figure out this morning what it's really like as you get older. For one thing, you find almost everything outside of a prescribed set of routines really tedious. For another, you always feel tired. It's not just the routine exhaustion of sleep-deprivation and overexertion, however, which is something that plenty of us were familiar with when we were younger. It's a kind of petrification, a feeling that your body is made out of stiff, listless matter whose default state is STASIS. Psychologically, you have the benefit of a kind of caution that most young people (young me included) are too stupid to have figured out, and you come to appreciate close friends at a much deeper level, while having comparatively less enthusiasm for meeting new people. You become, in short, a crotchety pain in the ass.
11.06.2007
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6 comments:
Sadly, it is all beginning to happen. I can't imagine what I will turn into after another 30 years or so of this process. Scarry!
umm....you're not even thirty yet, are you?
No ma'am. I'm 29. But then, I've kind of been a crotchety old man since I was about 23....
Who said "We do not stop playing because we get old. We get old because we stop playing."? I think there's really something to that. I mean, yes, there will inevitably be less overexuberance towards random stuff, but the inertia I so often feel I think is largely due to my forgetting to jump up and down and run around in circles (literally and metaphorically). At this point, I still am sometimes able to shake it off to some extent when it occurs to me to do so. Being silly is still a wholly worthwhile activity which just requires more focus now.
A friend asked me, as I walked into our physics class a few years ago just after my 30th birthday, "So, is the whole world in black and white now, and does everything smell like cat crap?" If I can focus on questions like that, I may survive a certain portion of this aging thing.
Other than being sleepy earlier, the thing I've noticed is that my certainty that I'm wrong is far stronger than my belief that I'm right... about whatever the subject. I had not noticed this until I started the teaching gig, and man, teens are so strong in their convictions and positive that their beliefs are the correct ones. I remember being that way, indignant rightousness ruling my guts at age 15. I'm definitely more willing to listen to someone else's reasonings now, and give them the benefit of the doubt.
This is not to say I still don't get irritated with assholes.
It has been pointed out to me that I am a crotchety old lady at the ripe old age of 26. I hate being out late (except for special occasions) and I hate loud noises. I have to do all of my errand running at once because a day consisting of TWO trips out of the house is aboslutely unacceptable. If I dont stop at the grocery store on my way home from work to get dinner fixins, Im ordering a pizza. And my usual Friday evening elevator conversations go like this:
Them: "Got any plans this weekend?"
Me: "Nope"
Them: "Oh, well Im sure you'll come up with something."
Me: "I hope not."
Fuck everyone else. Being old is awesome.
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