I'm 50

Half a century, yeah?

Crazy.

Not my age, but that time really does fly when you’re having fun.

Age is a funny thing. It affects people differently, I mean.

Some watch the number going up and equate it to the sand in their hourglass running down. Others get melancholy for days gone by, missing the friends, freedom, and body they had in their 20s. (I can, after a fashion, get on board with the latter. As I told people at my birthday party last weekend, mentally I still feel like I’m 30, but my body feels old and ill-used. Every bit of its fifty years.)

So, while I’m not feeling scared or midlife-crisis-y, fifty does seem like a good time to pause. To take a little stock on the occasion.

I have regrets, sure, but I’ve made my peace with the tally marks. The trick now is not to add to them.

I am profoundly lucky.

I have a wife who is my lover, partner, and friend, whom I love very deeply and who is fierce in the love she returns to me.

I have family—both blood and found—and friends who have my back in all things.

I have fans who support all the silly little stories I write, draw, or tell.

Fifty finds me extraordinarily thankful.

I don’t have kids, never settled down enough to, so the stories I write, the pictures I draw, and any music I play will have to serve as passed along wisdom.

Such as it is.

But I think, to me, age has mostly just always marked the chapter number that I’m on, in a book whose length I cannot guess. Its cover is worn, bald in spots (ha, ha), faded with time, but some of those chapters, man.

They were an adventure.

And, I mean, I’m only fifty.

I can’t wait to see what I get up to next!

Until next time,

A.C.