Welcome to 2023
Well this is bizarre, isn’t it? It feels like 2016 was just the other day. And yet it also feels like 2016 was an eon ago. Time is a very strange phenomenon. This reminds me of the non-linearity argument about time in Thomas Mann’s “The Magic Mountain” (1923). We’ve gone through Trump, Covid, political insanity, the end of the second decade of the 21st century and the beginning of the third. Life as we know it is both very much the same and profoundly changed. What a thing this pulsing orb called life is, huh?
First: I turned the (exciting; dreaded) forty years of age. I’ve been yapping incessantly about this for months already on both of my Substacks. What can I say: I honestly never thought I’d make it past 21. And yet here I am. A hundred years ago forty was old. Today? I’m just getting started! I see this coming decade as my Golden Decade. I’m writing my ass off. I’m in love. I live in sunny, perfect Santa Barbara. I run and exercise often; Hell, I’m in better physical shape now than I was at 25! I’m over 12 years sober. What’s not to like?
Oh. Yeah. That whole Dad-terminal-cancer thing. Right. Yeah. That.