Tick-Tock, Mister Wick

The clock ticks! The calendar pages fly off the wall. The sun rises and sets and rises again. Winter is coming! And the wheel turns.

Which is to say, I’m uncmaxxing in my agemogging era, bruh, ngl.

Which is to more to say, oh shit, I’m 50 years old.

As it is my birthday, I feel it necessary to say, no, no, you don’t need to get me anything — but if you insist, then I note a donation to Authors Against Book Bans or Girls Write Now would not be remiss, and then if you further insist that you want to do something for me, I politely note that the thing you can do for me is a thing you also do for yourself, which is buying my books, or even (gasp) preordering my next book, The Calamities, from my local bookseller or yours. No requirement! But hey, pre-ordering is cool because if you’re like me you’re gonna forget you did it and then the book is one day going to ambush you, except it’s an ambush of bookish joy instead of like, a guy jumping out of the shrubbery with a sock full of 9-volt batteries.

If you want some grand rumination on the turning of the wheel, I can point you to a thing I wrote a couple weeks ago, about aging and legacy and melting butter. You should read it! Or don’t, I’m not your Dad.

(I am obviously your weird uncle.)

In a general sense, I’m trying very hard to be sanguine about the five decades I have been allowed to exist on this planet. They were a little rough early on but I settled into a pretty good thing, and it’s hard for me to be mad at where I’m at and what I’ve done. Great family, a successful and persisting career doing what I love, a house, a freezer full of ice cream which will probably be the reason I die early because fucking hell, ice cream is really good you guys. And it’s not just where I’ve been or what I’ve done, I also have… more to do, which is also good! I have plans! Plans within plans! Sharks with lasers on their heads, all that. And fine, probably some more books or whatever.

At the same time, you know, my own father died when he was 63 — prostate cancer got him when he took a carefree gap year off his health insurance (this was pre-ACA, and it’s why I believe the ACA would’ve saved his life). So, by that metric, it gives me thirteen more years before I go.

Now, I recognize it doesn’t work like that. I certainly intend to beat his number and keep on kicking well past that point. But he died fairly young and my son never even met him. I didn’t meet my grandfather — either of them, actually — because they both died young. So, yeah, mortality is on my mind there just a little bit.

And the body is keen to remind. I am definitely in my “I hurt myself by sleeping” epoch, now. Things ache. Randomly! They just ache. I have learned the phrase “achilles tendonitis,” a problem I obtained by mostly beating plantar fasciitis, another phrase I had to learn. I beat the one thing and caused the other, I guess? Who knows. Also I think I have arthritis? I might have carpal tunnel? My ear rings all the time? (To be fair, it has been ringing for decades, so that’s not an old guy thing, it’s a “my ear is broken” thing.) I find myself on the lawn, waving my cane at planes, yelling about chemtrails? Okay, maybe not that last part. Yet.

It’s not all bad. I’m still running — not metaphorically, I mean, I literally run (aka jog, aka gallumph sweatily) and last year I really upped my game a good deal. In years previously I ran a 5k every month — last year I was doing one most weeks. So in a lot of ways I’m healthier now than I’ve ever been. It’s just, I can feel the machine breaking down, you know? It’s like a washer or dryer kind of juddering across the floor — it still works! Still gets the clothes clean! But it makes noises now. It’s doing stuff you didn’t tell it to.

I know my doctor is gonna wanna put me on a buncha meds soon — for high blood pressure (which is only high when I go to the doctor’s, weirdly), high cholesterol (my family has had high cholesterol genetically, as we’re pasty Eastern European types, but none of them had heart issues), maybe a GLP, I dunno. Hey, whatever, fuck it, at this point, get me on that statins-beta-blockers-cocktail. I have an upstairs and a downstairs bottle of Advil, so I’ll just take it when I take those.

See, even now I’m doing what old people do — we talk about boring health shit. My wife and I went out to eat about a year ago and they seated us next to a table of The Olds, and their entire two-hour conversation was about serious medical procedures described in graphic detail. Am I that, now? Shit. Shit!

Whatever. It’s fine. I’m gonna keep writing books till my fingers fall off and then I’ll write them with my hand-stumps until they stiffen to a chitinous lump and then I’ll just yell my books into a little mini tape recorder and mail them to you all individually. Gonna keep traveling. Gonna keep eating ice cream with the secret hope it’s actually really good for you and Big Pharma Doesn’t Want You To Know This One Trick Of Eating Ice Cream. Gonna keep living and loving till the living and stops and my loving turns to undead rage, whereupon I will stagger upon the earth, my fierce hunger for human flesh driving me ineluctably forward.

For now, I’m writing the sequel to The Calamities, called Chaos Reigns. I just turned in copy-edits on my next middle grade, The Boy Who Dreamed Of Doors. Then I’m out of contract once again and given that a writing career is a series of cliffs you gotta jump over like Evel Knieval, I best get to building the next ramp before I crash against the rocks in fire and blood. I’m also working on a The Staircase in the Woods film script because, fuck it, why not? There’s maybe some interest in me doing it, so away we go.

We’ll see how it goes.

So, I guess here’s to 50? Onward and upward and all that. One day closer to death. Yadda yadda yadda.

Cheers, folks, and thanks for being here.

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