It's a little bit alarming how stealthily and sneakily your youth can get away from you. Not to say that I'm OLD. I'm not, especially by modern standards. But here, in this no man's land between college graduation and full blown adulthood, with PTA and retirement plans and kitchen renovations and such...that's where your youth seems to find the perfect environment to make a break for it. Why am I writing this today? Well, mainly because I woke up unable to trek much further than the distance from my bed to my couch due to back pain, and find myself home from work, trying to figure out whether said back pain is the result of playing tug with my dog or from being certain that I could tote my heavy load of groceries in one trip rather than two. And also, incidentally, trying to decide which of those causes would be more pathetic. I'm prone to blaming it on the dog.
Anyway. Perhaps you don't acutely notice the signs because mentally, you still FEEL young. I do. Yes, I want those adult things, and some of them I already have. But I still FEEL like Katie at Ole Miss, who goes to rock shows and eats out with friends and plans vacation trips and gets excited about something new and cute to wear to the Grove (though thankfully, that something no longer involves quite as much effort or sparkle as it did in undergrad). But lately, in a personal world where I've gotten a little more reality than I'd like, I've started to slowly grow aware of some things that are missing...things that used to be givens for me. I can no longer spring up from an Indian style position on the floor. Just one extra beer or glass of wine can suddenly lead to a massive hangover...and that one extra is tacked on to an overall tally that is CONSIDERABLY diminished from my undergrad or law school days. A day at work in shoes that aren't super comfy or supremely broken in leads to unavoidable pain by 5 p.m., and even a day out at Double Decker in flat sandals leaves me with sore ankles and calves. And a late night out for a concert or gathering on a week night? Yeah. If it means that I'll be showing up at work on less than six hours of sleep, it's probably not going to happen.
When I look at all of these little signs amassed together, it's shocking. The only conclusion I can reach is that I've let myself get old. I've LET these things slip away, or build up, or what have you. I've eased into an everyday life where I am so sedentary and such a procrastinator that these things are inevitable. I guess the good news is that a lot of this "youth" can be reclaimed. I know many people much older than I am who don't seem to have all these issues. They walk, they eat healthy, they play tennis, they do yoga. I may never be able to work with 100% productivity on less than six hours of sleep ever again, and that's OK. But I'm not going to accept the fact that I'm just too old to enjoy a long day walking around at a festival.
So the question becomes...where to start?
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