Turning 44 today. Decades on decades on decades on...

Portrait of the Artist as An Older Man Midpoints. Turning 44.Forty-four is a number with a seam down the middle for me, and I'm sitting directly on top of it, coffee going lukewarm, watching the seam do whatever seams do when no one's looking. I'm sitting at my favorite coffee shop. It is 7:14am. I used to come here every Sunday to write until the pandemic broke that habit. I've never really picked it back up, but I'm here now, and I'm feeling contemplative. I turn 44 today. 44 brings me to an interesting bookend. This time in college, I hadn't made it into grad school, and after applying to 40-some jobs across 11 states, I'd landed exactly one interview. The process itself was pretty great, minus getting lost between scheduled events at lunch (a labyrinth, in retrospect, that I had to wander before the Thing would have me). Don't worry, all reading eye. I got the job. I started that job exactly 22 years ago today, on my 22nd birthday. Today, 22 years hence, I'm still there though the…