Big Birthday

I just reached the speed limit of birthdays.  It has been feeling too fast for awhile, and now it is official.  My life has been full of half-hearted attempts at achievement, followed by long periods of potential.  I seem to remember a physics lesson about potential and kinetic energy that might apply.  I believe that everything important to know I learned before I was fourteen, including stuff that involved pulleys and springs. 

This might be the first birthday ever when I didn't even get a cake.  Somehow the tradition of chocolate cake has been replaced by expensive restaurant meals.  I must visit a bakery tomorrow and correct the omission.

It is cliche to comment on the aging process.  For one thing you immediately lose your audience.  Those older than you make fun of your anguish.  Those younger still can't imagine what you are talking about.  Also, we all worry about such different things.  I repeatedly come back to a board game I played as a kid, called "Careers" where you had to pick a mix of fame, fortune and happiness, and find the career that was most likely to give you that mix.  I remember I always did an even division, unable to guess which aspect of life might be the most important.  I note that there was no option to choose lawyer in that game, perhaps indicating a basic flaw in my path.

Anyway, as I face the second half of life (!), I promise myself there will be more creativity, more friends, and  more adventures.  There will be more action, less potential energy stored in springs.  There will be more beauty, less cynicism.  Already, it has begun.