Short answer, no! Longer answer below.
Well I'm still alive so it didn't end. I haven't died, though after training I can smell that way on occasion. I haven't grown up either, still managed to hurt myself training and play silly games with my son enjoying them as much as any other child would.
I have been 41 for a short while now and there is something to be said about not having a 0 at the end of my age. I am not getting people asking me how much I was dreading turning 40 or how old I must feel any more, I don't even get people looking at me in astonishment at the fact I will happily admit my age which was in some ways worse. I did have a couple of people saying that it will hit me harder when I reached 50 but I had that when I was 30 about turning 40 so I seriously doubt it.
There are a lot of reasons people feel age to be significant and not all of them are bad.
The passing of time brings us ever closer to the end of our lives, dark and sinister maybe for some but for me this is more about what I leave behind. I want to see my son grown up and happy, if he has children I will likely want to see the same for them too. Death means I don't get to see them again, so I won't be there for them if I am needed. That stings more than it should because in truth I seem to be very good at not dying even when all evidence says I should have many times. I am immortal until proven otherwise.
The young at heart. I never fully understand this term, maybe I have always been too old at heart to get it. To me it is always a pretence. I am physically capable of far more than most half my age, I can act the fool with the best of them, I am not young and have no illusions about this, which makes this even more confusing for me. I see people declaring they are young at heart who seem to be using it to describe the fact they are jovial and happy, as if being older makes you less happy. Others use it as an excuse to be selfish and drink like they could when they were younger. The young at heart seem to feel the passage of time is an insult to their eternal youth.
The waiters, not the people bringing you food and drink, these are the people who were waiting for life to bring them something worth having. These people get to 'milestone' birthdays and look back wondering why they didn't get the breaks. Truth is we all get them, the trick is spotting them and going for it, then of course being willing to pay the price for them. I took the road less travelled because I saw what started off as a small opportunity that became a way of life for a few years and set me into a totally different mind-set. The cost is that while the others who walked the more conventional trail have nicer houses that are mostly paid for I don't and with the property market being as it is I likely never will. I don't like it but that is the cost of me taking the opportunities I did.
There are more of course but I don't intend this to be a novel.
Milestone passed. 40 was a mixed year.
I hurt myself being stupid training as already stated. This means I will not be achieving this years targets, though in all honesty they were a bit ridiculous anyway.
For the first time in many years I decided I wanted to build up a bit and be more aesthetically biased than pure functional as I normally am. My wife has put up with me for 15 years and I felt that it would be nice for her to have me looking more appealing for her. The balding old man look isn't what she went for when we first met and there's not a lot I can do about the disappearing hairline but I can work to ensure that beneath the rapidly greying body hair is a physique she likes.
Fortunately she was pretty happy with me as I was because this is not looking realistic at all. In fairness we all have genetic limits on how much muscle we can build without intra-muscular hormone supplements and I am almost 1.5 times my original body weight even with having to slip into remedial work, which seems to be my limit.
When analysing the math it appears the additional weight I was able to gain was far from the 50/50 muscle/fat split and more like 20/80, so I was gaining weight but not much lean mass. I have dropped some weight again now and most of that has been the excess blubber so I do look prettier, if not bigger.
My son started at a school rather than being home educated, which wasn't an instant thing. We were told in no uncertain terms he wasn't suitable for state education, which in fairness to me means the state aren't providing a suitable education and support. Subsequently we took to educating him at home. When at a group of sessions designed to help parents with children on the Autistic spectrum my wife was directed to a school that specialised in secondary age children on the spectrum. After a great deal of sessions, forms etc. we got a SEN (Special Educational Needs) statement, which said this school would be best for him, we were a respectable second there was no third.
We then spent a great deal of time grilling the school on what they would be able to provide for him, concerned that they would be either a glorified nursery providing virtually no education, or be as bad as the school he had attended. They made all the right noises but we were still concerned.
The good news is the SEN was spot on, he loves it and we are starting to be able to just enjoy being his parents again. Something you don't always realise when home educating in a way that actually includes education is how much it can damage your parental relationship. Our son had started to see us as omnipresent and probably always on his back because the parts he was remembering were the critiques over the fun.
Because of the lack of stigma attached to being 41 it is just a bit of fun. It's going well with my son enjoying school, my training going better than I deserve and life is ticking along happily.
So life didn't begin or end, it just continued. If people are being generous they could declare me middle aged, presuming a lifespan of 82 years or they can be less diplomatic and say I'm just old.
No comments:
Post a Comment