Life as Numbers

I want to know when I got so old.

I'm not saying that I AM old, necessarily, just that I FEEL old. Like the world has been placating me for years, making me think nothing has changed, and BAM! suddenly I wake up and realize that the illusory netting has been yanked away only to reveal significant gaps between what was and what is.

Just as in the story of the frogs slowly boiled to death as the heat was turned up a notch at a time, so as not to alarm them (how's that for a gruesome image of the day?), time seems to lull one into a false sense of "everything is staying the same" as the subtleties of change are hidden to stop the inevitable freaking out and moaning about lost youth, opportunities and the hideous outfit that you swore would never go out of style.

Browsing through some old high school photos of friends today, I had one of those moments of sudden realization: things have changed A LOT. I don't remember everyone looking quite that funny. And we definitely didn't look quite that young. We were OLD. 16 at least. Nearly adults. Old enough to know that our parents knew nothing and that we would conquer the world.

Except, it was all an illusion. Now that I am actually growing old (or at the very least speeding into middle age - after all, the life expectancy when I was born was 77.3 - which means sometime the last week of April 2016 I will be exactly "middle aged"), I realize my parents knew almost everything, the world is only conquered in the minds of youth and poofy hair bows were NOT the be all and end all of style.

The kids I babysat as infants and toddlers are in college. Some are married. Some have kids. I reminisced yesterday about the birthday of a friend I met a decade ago - how we, 10 years ago, hit up TGI Fridays for a girls' night out and a round of frozen drinks. The fact that it has been 10 years and a dozen hairstyles ago made me ponder if I was any better off now than I was then. My greatest fear in life is looking back and realizing I was running in place. And then I think about the numbers ... I haven't even stood still long enough for my bookcase to gather dust.

Since the high school photos, I have lived at 16 separate addresses (if you don't count my stint as a semi-permanent basement dweller at Heidi's or the two summers I spent with my parents) in 11 cities and 3 states. I've lived with at least 50 people - not including Woodstock, Grover, Heidi's clan or any relatives. I have lived with people from at least 20 different states (Utah and Wisconsin being the two states from which the most roommates hailed ... ironically, I've never actually been to Wisconsin).

In that time, I have traveled to 20 additional states, held 16 different job titles at 9 companies (including 4 job titles at 3 companies since I moved to The Frontier), supervised just shy of two dozen people, reported to nearly that many different people and broke a personal record interviewing 40 times in a single calendar year on three different job occasions. I have earned a college degree, been promoted and promoted, volunteered, held countless church positions, made friends, dated, become engaged, been married and given birth.

It's a lot to cram in less than 1.5 decades. In fact, it averages out to a new job title and address every 9 months over the last 12 years and a new company every 15 months. It's no wonder people can only track me down via Facebook! The whole thing becomes rather alarming when I realize I've worked for two different companies at more than 3 years each and had a 3-year stint at one address and a 2-year stint at another address. (The statistics looked much better prior to our migration west).

It makes me feel old, as it is likely with all that change that I've become chronically exhausted. Add in Himself's stats and the whole thing threatens to bring my life expectancy down several decades.

Looking at it that way, the change has been rapid and a little jerky - creating a metaphor between my life and the pinball machine that used to inhabit the infamous "214" where Himself once took up residence. And yet, while the environmental changes have been stacatto, the internal ones have been subtle. It seems like mere moments until closer examination reveals enough subtle change to feel like centuries.

Cell phones were only used in dire emergencies, if at all. They were luxuries few people had. I was the first incoming freshman class in The Great Frozen North to have an e-mail account - a laughable, plain text, FTP-access-only, no attachments, graphics, sounds or hyperlinks e-mail account. Debit cards were a new thing, $100,000 could buy a very nice home in a lot of places and the 90s became the decade of the super model, grunge, platform shoe revival, and the anti-80s.

It's no wonder change has to be subtle. Otherwise, the sheer volume of the sights, sounds and experiences would threaten to overwhelm one's fragile persona. Either that, or one would simply feel like 12+ hours of sleep was mandatory.

That's another thing ... I don't remember needing this much sleep before I started growing old.