Reminders that you’re getting older are never fun.  Like when you’re talking to someone about a song or TV show, and then you realize that they weren’t even born when you were listening/watching…in high school.  Or when you’re standing in line to buy the new Xbox 360 game and realizing the people ahead of you and behind you buying the same thing are all 20+ years younger than you.  Today, my reminder is dealing with being at a bar until closing time during the week.

I am exhausted.  4 hours of sleep after a number of beers (but not a ridiculous amount – not enough for a hangover) and I feel like I’m running a marathon, with each 30-minute increment a milestone no different than a runner’s mile marker.  Hey look!  It’s 10 am!  4 miles down!  It’s all I can do to look and sound relatively normal.  The alarm this morning had me standing and staring at it like a caveman, trying to figure out why puny box make noise, me smash. 

In the mythical Time That Was, I’d swear that I could’ve done this and gone to work, no sweat, been fresh as a daisy and ready to do it all over again.  I think a lot of people think and act that way, that when they were 20, they’d have been fine.  But the more I think about it, the more I think it’s bullshit.  I didn’t have a real job when I was 20, not a responsible, respectable profession at any rate.  I’d sleep 12 hours at a stretch and didn’t care if I blew off work, since it didn’t matter.  As for college – please.  It is a WORLD of difference between going somewhere where people expect you to know what you are doing, show up on time, be responsible, and get things done, and if you don’t, you could lose your job.  In college, even the most difficult, participation-heavy class doesn’t approach the focus needed for a job, and the worst that can happen is a bad grade on participation for the day.  Wow.

So you know what?  Yeah, I’m older.  I’m also doing something my younger self never could have done, the little punk.  I’ll make it through the day, a little tired, and go home and take a nap.  No biggie.  That punk couldn’t hold a candle to me.