Turning 57 in the year 2024

Earlier this month I had a birthday, which I prefer to think of as “completing another solar orbit.” Today I’ll continue with this blog’s tradition of birthdayblogging: a bit of reflection, some memoir, and a touch of futuring. (previously: 2023, 2022, 2021, 2019, 2018, 2018, 2017)

This isn’t easy to write about.

Turning 57 is an odd milestone. It feels like… nothing in many ways. The number doesn’t trigger any events. There’s no symbolism around the non-event, nothing in the culture, nothing in policy nor law. Instead, the non-milestone makes me look ahead to the major events, like 60 and 65. Those dates loom large, but 57? It’s a big shrug.

Maybe it’s better instead to consider the date as a time to look hard at myself.

At my office desk.

As a kid I didn’t imagine my 50s well. Then, being 50 was just part of the general category of “old,” which meant “anyone over 30,” I think. I supposed I would attain that age, among others. In my teen years I wasn’t sure I’d live that long, because I didn’t think most humans would, given the specter of thermonuclear annihilation. Once I hit my 20s and nuclear war fell away with the USSR, I viewed being 50-odd as one more slot in a hopefully productive life to come. Which it has turned out to be.

50s, 57: what did the last year mean, that foggy and numerically unremarkable…