You Made It.

On the eve of my 26^th birthday – I couldn’t find 3 better words to fit the given situation. Knowing the situation, a good friend of mine – thanks D – wrote those words in a card. Perfect.

See, the whole premise was that I would pass on – more specifically die somehow – after 25 years of life.

I’ve probably written this before, but whatever. Back when I was in my late teens I was living a pretty unhealthy (and somewhat dangerous) life. Now I’m sure that most kids go through this phase. They test themselves – see what kind of limits their bodies hold up. But I am sure there were nights during those years where I basically got very lucky to live through to see the next morning. Looking back at it now I just have to shake my head and laugh at what an idiot I was – as I’m sure I will do the older I get.

For right now though, I’ve got my favorite boxers on for my birthday tomorrow, and of course I’m wearing my “World’s Greatest Grandma” t-shirt. Perfect for me. Assuming I don’t somehow go through cardiac arrest in the next hour and a half, I’m going to be solid.

26. Time for me to leave the mid 20s and enter in the mid to late 20s. How sad.

I was just talking with someone the other day about how when I was in 5^th or 6^th grade (like one of my neighbor’s children) I used to look at people in their 20s as ancient. Dinosaurs. Now that dinosaur is me.

And I’m feeling it.

2 months ago I jammed my thumb in a basketball game. 6 to 8 years ago, I would’ve done the same thing and within 2 weeks it would’ve been good as new. To this day, 8 weeks later my thumb still hurts. And part of me is worried I broke it.

In a flag football game 3 weeks ago I jumped and dove for a ball that flew through my outstretched arms and landed squarely on my right hip. Even last night when I rolled on to that hip I could feel an inkling of pain.

Getting old sucks. I want to take my brain and trade it in for a new body please. Unless somehow this body is going to get better. But honestly I feel like I’ve now passed my prime. Sad.

I wanted to touch on the past a bit. Because annual things always make me want to reminisce over what’s happened over the past year. And for that, I’m going to skim through my blog post from my last birthday.

And skimming through that post, I realize that it sucked. Damn.

Anyway, I’m going to try and put myself in a frame of mind from April 16, 2007.

One year ago:

-I was accompanying the wife to her running lessons. What a waste of money. We got to see a lot of cool trails around the area though.

-Virginia Tech shooting. Absolutely ridiculous.

-My left eye was twitching (my belief is because of stress). It twitches on and off now. But not as much as it did a year ago.

-The stress was caused by:

1) Losing a few people in my department and having to pick up the slack. Since then we’ve switched managers and have become a lot more efficient. Still there are days…

2) Applying for a home equity line of credit (for money I could use to invest) through Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America, and finally settling with BECU. I love you BECU. You gave me everything I wanted with no hassle at all. Citigroup and Bank of America you guys were terrible.

3) Studying for a technical certification exam that basically became worthless in the summer anyway.

-Being excited about the DC/New York City trip. For all of the excitement/anticipation that I had built up about the trip, it definitely lived up to it.

Now of course there were plenty of other things that happened throughout the past year. But I think I’ll save that for my new year’s post – coming in only 8 months! Wild.

For my 27^th birthday I want to look back on this post and know the mentality I was in as I was turning 26. So here are some quick notes on my frame of mind:

-This is going to be my first real recession. I have never worked (read: had a full time “real” job) through a recession. And it’s going to impact me a lot more than the average Joe because I play the market. Finding a scalable position.

-The market. Wow. Enough said.

-South Carolina. A minimum of 6 months away from home. (For the first time ever!) Leave from a solid job.

-Stoked about the Europe trip. Not stoked about the USD to Euro conversion.

-Just finished helping build a fence. First fence ever built. Along those lines – owning properties (plural) can be a major pain in the ass. Especially when you won’t be living in either of them.

-Getting cysts on my neck and armpit removed on Thursday. I’m hoping they’re not very serious (they shouldn’t be).

-I love rec sports. I always have but right now in my current frame of mind I realize how much joy they add in to my daily life.

I’ve got a lot of things on my plate for right now – which I’m sure will be coming in the next post (I wrote a beginning and middle to the post…but yeah).

My wish for 26 – and this might seem boring, but for tonight it sounds pretty nice – is to put myself on cruise control.

I’ve always felt that I have a pretty strong sense of a life plan. What I’m going to do in life and how I’m going to get there.

At this point in life, I think I’ve arrived at a point where the vehicle is up to speed – and all it takes is a push of a button and you can let everything else do the work while you enjoy the scenery. That sounds very pleasing to me right now.

How I’m living right now, I can handle that from now until about my mid 40s. Life is just dandy and the good times outweigh the bad.

Happy 26^th to me. I made it. I honestly couldn’t foresee myself getting to this point even 8 years ago. But here I am. And I can almost guarantee now that I’ll certainly be here for many years to come.