shadows and fog

To be 26 years old means something. What though, I am not entirely sure, but I have spent the past week now occasionally contemplating the thing, this number now attached to my person. I have contemplated that thing, age, but for the most part have done so with respect to what it means to live a life, for these years to pass by, one after the next, and to wonder exactly what it is that means, whether anything.

The increase in age makes certain modes of behavior seem a bit inappropriate, that at this age I should not still be going out every night of the week and getting really drunk, that at some point that becomes a bit pathetic, though I am not sure exactly where that point is, where the line is that demarcates an indulgence in the joys of youth from an overly extended youth, from a failure to mature and progress. I don’t think that I have reached that line yet, but I know it lies up there around the bend.

I took a picture of myself the other day. The photograph, digital thing, signaled to me more than any other recent event, more than my actual birthday itself, that I am increasing in age. In the photo, my face reveals this thing. Yes, the photo was taken tired and hungover and perhaps makes me look a bit more haggard and worn than I actually may appear in better moments, but in it still I see a difference between this image of myself and past ones, was made aware by this difference, slight as it was, that I am changing in certain ways, aging, and sometimes the reality of that doesn’t entirely hit you despite the fact that every year your age bumps up one more number, despite the fact that we see people around us age, older family members, and despite the fact that we have seen death and know the physical changes that its approach brings with it.

There, on the right side of my face, a distinct shadow, a line, on my cheek.



That I am okay with, the physical signs of aging, these slight changes. I actually like these changes evidenced in no longer getting carded for everything. The problem arises however in that these physical changes and numeral ones make me seek out their correlation in interior changes and lifestyle changes. Is it just the body and the actual age changing? Have I progressed at all in the last four years? And, if so, if I want to try to make that claim, what I would point to as the proof? To what would I direct your attention to say, “Look here! Look at these great accomplishments I have to show for my past few years on this earth”?

And that is where this depression, slight as it is, is emerging from – from the realization that I am not living as productively or as fully as I can. I am unemployed right now and doing the occasional sex work job. This creates too much free time to ponder these things, and free time which I am not even utilizing well; rather, I am using it to do stupid things and non-things. There are changes that need to be made and I am thinking about exactly what those would be and how best to go about enacting those desired changes, how to ensure that the stated resolution becomes a lived-by principle.

I called my temp agency today and hopefully they will set me up with some work for the next couple of weeks, which hopefully should alleviate one current source of frustration, my lack of any real income to speak of. Aside from that, I am going to start waking up earlier, early enough to hopefully be at the gym by ten am. Physical activity, as it always has in the past, should clear this fog of ennui. That is to be followed by time off of the Internet, ideally writing, or at least reading. I really do like living a lot and want to try to do it better, to make the most of this thing.