Every time I see an image of a spaceman (spaceperson?) in an urban setting, I feel a kinship. I often feel alien in urban settings, myself.

Last night, I stayed up all night playing Fallout 76. It doesn’t happen very often that I am so engaged with a game that I will forego sleep and risk the inevitable barfiness of the morning after, but that’s exactly what I did.

As someone with a chronic illness, and one that’s been around over twenty years no less, occasionally indulging a bit of fun is something I’m willing to risk. I generally try to keep my health in mind when doing most things, but, sometimes, staying up all night doesn’t seem like the worst idea ever.

It did, however, provide a powerful reminder that I am getting older and that was sobering as f*ck.

Later this month I will turn 41. Even just writing that I smushed up my face because it seems weird. In some ways, I don’t feel 41. Mentally, I feel younger, I suppose. I mean, sure, in my 20s I was doing the major life things I set out to do and felt my most personally fulfilled (e.g.: musical theatre), but I’m not sure I’d want to still be in my 20s.

In my 30s I was doing okay (I’d had a quite good job for a while until the department I ran was eliminated from the company), but then rapidly went downhill. My chronic illness issues worsened. I gained a lot of weight.

Basically, getting older seems to suck. I feel less and less relevant. The alternative, however, is about as unappealing as anything could be to me. If I could live forever, I’d love that. If I could upload my consciousness to a robot person, I’d love that, too. Basically, if I could become an Exo from Destiny, that’s pretty much what I’d do.

It is a startling reminder of my own mortality when I can’t even stay up all night without feeling like a heaping dumpster fire the next afternoon.

Aging has always been a concept that freaks me out.

I know there’s nothing I can do about it. It’s an inevitable one-way trip I’d never opt out of. But watching as life rushes by…it’s sobering to say the least.

I’d never think this about anyone else, but I feel like there are no more options to be relevant or cool (whatever the hell cool actually is) or of interest. I feel kind of like I’m floating around just telling myself, well, that was a run. It wasn’t a great run, but you made your choices, your mistakes, and now you ride this one out.

I know the future is filled with possibility and that I can still try to do the things I want to do; today was just a stone reminder of the flip side of that optimism.

Maybe I’m not making sense. I will admit that, as I’m probably mentally just back inside Fallout collecting weird things for a nebulous purpose like filling a campsite with teddy bears and plungers.

Basically, for me, getting older is weird, a little depressing, and something I clearly don’t know how to do with grace. Every November is a little difficult for me because of the annual reminder of my own mortality.

If you’re young and healthy, please enjoy the f*ck out of today for me.

Today is the youngest any of us will ever be, again.

Terrifying.

I guess I’ll spend the day thinking about that while wandering the Wastelands in Fallout. It seems oddly, and fittingly, appropriate.

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How do you feel about age and aging? And how old are you? And are you healthy? I’m curious how all those things play into how people see age.

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P.S. The image above is Dreamer Astronaut by Karen Cantu. I love it.