47

Or: Trajectory. I started off the morning with an assumption I start every birthday morning with: this age is no different from the last. It’s a number—in many ways I still feel 26, and don’t think about it too hard. “Don’t think about it too hard” is good advice for anything involving numbers and age, but I today I ignored it. It’s feeling a lot like fall this early in the year, I’m feeling some minor malaise thanks to yesterday evening’s flu and covid boosters, and I’ve been missing blogging for a bit now. All of the pieces of a major seasonal reflection moment are there. And then, over coffee, Michelle asked what 47 feels like. So here I am thinking about age, major changes in trajectory, and all the fun stuff in the middle. May, 1998: I finished my freshman year at University of Illinois with a top tier, skipped-all-his-classes GPA of something like 1.8. The University, of course, sent me a nice letter that asked me very officially not to come back. I loosely tried with some…