Weeknotes 110

I turned 42 this week. While I have no specific feelings about the age of 42 (beyond the cultural significance some of us may recognise in the number), I struggle with birthdays in general. The reminder of mortality that comes with a birthday wholly overshadows the celebration.

I’ve experienced age on a curve, I think this is fairly common. I spent the first 20 or so years of life watching the number go up with excitement, in anticipation of the new entitlements and permissive features it unlocks (big school, high school, smoking, driving, voting, drinking, renting a lorry!).

Then sometime in my twenties the excitement turned to concern. I fell into the trap of using the number as a comparison point (at 26 Jimi Hendrix had recorded and released Electric Ladyland, “a display of musical virtuosity never surpassed by any rock musician” according to one critic. At 26 I still didn’t really understand the difference between a typeface and a font). The advent of Facebook at around this time didn’t help; an unavoidable horror show of the successes and achievements of distant friends and peers.

In my mid thirties the concern became dread. Nothing, however good, that happened on that single day could even begin to outweigh the existential angst I felt. Couple this with being able to remember my parents in their late thirties as old and very uncool, birthdays in my thirties were the bottom of the curve. It was now inescapable: I was an ‘old’ grown up, and not a very cool one either.

You’d expect now that my forties would be even worse. The number grows, and with it so does the other signifiers of age - grey hair, aching joints that seem to track with damp weather, and the inability to eat a meal later than 8pm and enjoy an uninterrupted night’s sleep. But actually, no. I still find birthdays hard, but the dread is mostly gone, and we’re back on the other side of the curve, probably around concern. The older I get, the less the number seems to matter.

What I’ve learnt about this middle part of aging is that the comparisons don’t really work any more. Forty for one person is wildly different to forty for another. Lifestyle factors count for far more, as does health, and the existence of a good support network. Luckily, and I’m doing my best to recognise how lucky I am, I have all of those things, so I’m experiencing my early forties as a time for gratitude.

A March birthday is a blessing, it’s a milestone – signalling milder weather, budding plants and lighter evenings. The day, is as ever, arbitrary, but if I can spend it with the people I love, and maybe do something a bit bold to remind me of the joys of being alive, maybe I won’t struggle so much with the bigger numbers ahead.

This year we spent my birthday at Aberdyfi, we had fish and chips on the beach and I jumped off the pier. The cold water was shocking but exhilarating, and once I was out and dry I wanted to do it again. Like life really. Here’s to future birthdays.

Watching

We went to see Hundreds of Beavers on the UK live tour. A nearly two hour, low budget, slapstick treat in glorious black and white. If you’ve ever wondered what silent films might look like if they came after video games in the timeline this might get close. The live aftershow fist fight with a beaver was an unexpected bonus.

Listening

I lost an airpod (the left one, goodbye lefty) so not a lot this week, but Motion City Soundtrack has been on in the office a lot. Incredibly bright and optimistic sounding early 2000s synth-pop punk, with incredibly dark and pessimistic lyrics.