I’m a day late on this blog, my usual day is Tuesdays. And my birthday fell on Tuesday this year. So you’d think I’d have written this yesterday, but, well I guess I just didn’t feel like it.

The honest truth, for some reason, my 57th birthday was a bit of a mixed bag, and I’m not really sure why.

It started off fairly well. My daughter continued her tradition, since attending college, of calling me just before midnight so she can be sure to say Happy Birthday at midnight. (Technically my wife wished me happy birthday before she went to bed, but that was before midnight, so my daughter wins on the “first on my actual birthday”). My son then came up to my office wish me a happy birthday. And finally the next morning my wife was the third to wish me one.

And of course all the Facebook posts that came in. I really appreciated those. Though, despite trying this year in advance to setup a charity (which in the past has worked well to raise money on my birthday) again, it just didn’t show up. I’m not sure if Facebook changed how they did birthday charities or what. I suppose that’s one reason my birthday was a mixed bag to me. I wanted to spread a bit more joy and didn’t.

But really, I think part of it is, my birthday is a bit of a reminder of something I realized several years ago: statistically I have fewer days ahead of me than I have behind me. That bothers me. I don’t fear death per se. It’s part of life. It’ll happen eventually. And I’ve certainly seen enough of it at work lately. But damn it, I’ve got so many things I want to do! I need multiple lifetimes to do even 1/2 the things I want to do.

And it’s not only lack of time, but the fact that I’m seeing my body age. Yes “age is only a number” but in this case that number is 57 and I notice it. For example, wounds, even as simple as a scratch take longer to heal. My stamina has slowed down. And well, as any guy can say, their refractory period at this age, even with drugs, isn’t like what it was 40 years prior!

There were definitely some nice upsides though.

One was an unexpected gift: an email from the PA school I’ve been accepted to with an academic calendar, so I can start to plan my life in 2025 and 2026 (hint, not much time off).

And then my wife and I joined coworkers at trivia night (and folks, while I was 100% wrong about the USS New York, I think their answer was “wrong” too (in the sense that they made an assumption based on its later historical significance)) and had a lot of fun at that.

So overall, my birthday was fun, but I don’t know. Perhaps the weather didn’t help. The thoughts of aging, who knows.

And 57 is sort of an odd number. I mean it’s not a big milestone like 60 or something.

I don’t know.

But here I sit, at 57 years and 1 day thinking about life.

But not for too long because I ended up deciding to go into work last night and picked up an 8 hour shift. And then sat in on a lecture on poisonous mushrooms given by one of our attendings. So… on my 57 and 1… I’ll spend most of the daylight hours sleeping!