wherein i battle the aging crisis (sort of)

so last month my aunt randomly found some pictures from my fourth birthday and sent them to me.

 

that would be me and my mom

what’s weird about this is that i remember this birthday, sort of. it was at the chuck e cheese in santa maria. i believe i got a monchichi that year, which i loved. but just looking at the pictures, nothing clicked. i apparently don’t remember any of the specifics of the event. it was like looking at pictures of relatives from a time you didn’t know them: you recognize the faces, because you know you’re supposed to. but there’s no real connection to the images, no solid memories, just a vague ability to put the images in context.

which brings me to another point. i’m turning 29 tomorrow. and that just seems ridiculously old. i feel sometimes like my life is slipping past me, that i’m frittering away the time and soon i’ll be dead and in the grave. it’s especially hard not to feel this way when i don’t feel that i’ve accomplished anything in the past three years: i left grad school, i coasted through one job and am now in another that doesn’t really fulfill me. i have no idea what i want from my life, i just know that i want more than this. i feel stuck, and so i feel like i’m just wasting time. 

but then i got these pictures in the mail. i looked at them, at the person i was, the person i can no longer remember. a person so distant that it’s like me at 4 is not even remotely the same person as me at 29; it’s hard to believe we even inhabit the same body (approximately). and i thought about how long our lives are, and how much we change. we have so many opportunities to start over, to grow and change, to be different people. 

so i’m trying to keep that in mind, when i get frustrated with my life. i’m not old, and (barring something unforeseen) i’m far from death. i have no idea where i’ll go or who i’ll be in the rest of my life, but i know there are all kinds of options.