So far, I don’t mind aging.

I still have my health. No major injuries to report. No illnesses of which I’m aware (mental illness?). Nothing chronic yet. But then I don’t have health care. Haven’t had it for 8 years. (Has it been that long?) I’m sure the illnesses and injuries and catastrophes are all waiting for the day I do. Then, the shit’ll really hit the fan, and I’ll be standing by the fan, and I’ll get hit with the shit. Which is by the fan.

I’ve watched creases form, in time-elapsed footage, on my forehead. A couple asymmetrical lines right through the middle. As though the wrinkles remembered the mirth, the sadness, the surprise. As if along the edges the skin were fingers squeezing inward. Or cracks from the sun. Or I don’t know. You pick the metaphor.

I’ve noticed that the number of scars, discolorations, and weird spots is steadily growing. Not because I’m rounding up all the usual suspects but because new ones keep appearing at irregular intervals. There’s the hyperextended middle finger: the middle joint is rolled in layers of calcium. Then there’s the graphite mark on my left hand that my girlfriend, then a med student, assured me would go away. It hasn’t but she did. I’m not even sure it’s faded. Also there’s the field of scars running up and down my legs. The  big bubble gum one on my left leg came from the time my calf got compressed by a couple of falling rocks. I think about all the things that had to come together at that moment to grab my leg and then let go.

And now I shall categorize all my weird spots according to shape, size, location, duration, color, hue, likes, dislikes, FB friends…

I see my hair’s gotten longer. Unless you’re dead, you get used to waking up with short hair. Then one day–who knows when–you find it getting caught in zippers (I was thinking of coat zippers but I guess jean zippers too), when you’re biking you can’t turn your head, you sleep with one of those fruffie (sp.) dogs all over your face, you spend most of your time in the shower not masturbating (whither have gone those halycon days?) but playing the harp with your hair, in a manner of speaking. The other day someone told me I looked like Kurt Cobain. Before or after he died, I asked. Someone else–why are people always saying you look like so-and-so especially when so-and-so isn’t all that great (or alive)?–said I reminded him of Jesus. I do have 6 followers on Twitter. But then one is a cafe.

In the morning, I wear sweatpants. Dark blue ones. Saggy as all sweatpants are. (Do tight sweatpants exist, or would that be an oxymoron?) The truest thing one of my girlfriends ever said was that sweatpants are just about the least attractive thing a guy can wear. (She said that after I told her I saw Jude Law wearing frumpy gray sweat pants at the climbing gym.) The rest of the time she was neurotic, paranoid, depressed, and kinda kooky. At first, it was hot. She was also over 30, and that was also hot. I’m sure she’s now living somewhere in Portland.

It’s strange that oppressive tedium hasn’t come with age. Yet. Somehow I look forward to having the same things for breakfast. I’ll wake up in the middle of the night because I had too much tea around 9 the night before. I’ll look at the clock and think about oatmeal and coffee. It’s strange the small excitement, the craving (sometimes it begins before I go to sleep), the deep love for the familiar. An intimation of immortality? Maybe. But there’s also the ritual of the thing. Making coffee is a holy rite. (Body and Blood, my Lord.) All the breakfast things pulled one-by-one out of the cabinet, lined up expectantly. Funny how I’ve never developed a method for making breakfast: no step-by-step manual for maximizing efficiency, no exacting standards for improving overall quality. But I know what I’m doing even though each time I do it differently. My Breakfast: A New World Symphony.

I know I’m lucky that I don’t experience mood swings so much as mood shadings. Sometimes, after coffee I’m like the mad hatter, firing off emails about this project, this great article, this world-changing idea I have. Oh, and the compliments, requests, hellos, reminders, calculations. At other times, I couldn’t be any more unsociable. I’ve been called austere, arrogant, conceited, elitist. Maybe. But maybe I was more interested in the yellowing brick facade outside my bedroom window.

My mood shadings can also be more long lasting, modulated by the seasons of my aging body. For the past couple years, I’ve noted a muted sadness that comes over me in winter. (Or is it SAD-ness? Good to know there’s an acronym for my condition.) Everything seems slower, and I seem less myself or more some other self.

At 32, I’m right in the middle of no man’s land. I finished a Ph.D., 7 1/2 years later, but then didn’t go into The Profession. That means I’m old and I’m young. But not so young: I don’t hang out with 20 somethings. I like Mark Bauerlein’s line–“Don’t trust anyone under 30”–because it makes me laugh. Good thing I don’t. Because they’re no longer adolescents but neither are they adults: they’re “emerging adults.” But they’re not in no man’s land because psychologists have a name for them.

Emerging adults: what a strange category. We don’t say that Jane’s emerging-beautiful or that she’s got emerging-red hair–not unless she’s actually (as opposed to emergently) the butt of a joke. No, most of my friends are actual adults, with marriages, divorces, Pollan books on their shelves, grandiose ideas about social justice, kids, high-paying jobs, not enough self-caricature, schedules, therapists. They’ve got the big things sorted out, and they’re OK with having gotten most of it wrong.

On the whole, life’s pretty good. I sit here and write all day. You get paid to write all day? I didn’t say that. But there’s a fool born every day, so you never know.

Are there worries I have about getting older? Yes, of course. That, with this foul bone and rag shop, I do something of lasting value. That the disappointments don’t pile up to a point where I can’t stand on the countertop. That I’m able to laugh at myself for being ridiculous. That in laughing at myself I’m able to take myself in, all of myself, not just the good bits. That I don’t become overly preoccupied with all the bullshit: the parking spots, the weather, the temperature in the movie theater, the Safeway sales on frozen peas. And that I don’t become a goddamn nitpicker.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about Robert Nozick’s line about self-examination. He says examining one’s life is like painting a self-portrait. I like that. I wonder what it would mean to get the portrait right. How do we do that, and how do we know when we’ve got it? Suppose we do manage to get it right (just right?). Then its truth or beauty or whatever may be really painful–seeing ourselves as we really are, admitting our life failures, taking stock of all our fuck-ups. More like a tribunal of the damned. Maybe this means a little self-deception goes a long way. (Have I done that already throughout my life, in my essays, here?) Like getting Botox injections every 3 months. I wonder whether we need to think better of ourselves just in order to get by. Otherwise, we’d be overcome by sorrow. Or would painting our despair relieve us of despair–like throwing a sponge against a wall and revealing something as if by accident?

Life’s funny. Creatures of habit doesn’t even begin to describe us. Because we’re a lot more but also a lot less than we thought.