Battling Joe Frickinfrack And The Art Of Walk On

Look back in wonder...

Today, I completed my 50th circuit around the sun. Fifty times, I've made this 584-million mile trip. 

Fifty.

They say it's not the years; it's the mileage. Yeah, so... that's 29.2 billion miles. I've been around, man - and that's just the miles I've been carried by the earth. Add to that all the endless walking that I've done, and the total is surely hundreds more. Now, although I haven't the energy or the clarity to reflect in any meaningful way on the prospect of turning fifty, I naturally find myself asking questions like "What have I done?" and "How's it going?" 

I've walked. My miles have been aimless. I've gone out of my way to avoid most of life's challenges, and as a result, the rewards I've received have been scant - by society's standards. But it has always been MY walk. MY challenges, or lack thereof. MY rewards. Once or twice, when I walked into utter imbroglio, that too was MINE.

So I'm not going to sit here drinking Cruzan and Coke, watching "Rick and Morty" and waiting for tonight's suddenly-relevant "Saturday Night Live," and waxing nostalgic about where my walk has taken me (or where it hasn't). I'm nostalgic all the time, so turning fifty really is just another birthday. I was pining for 1983 by the end of 1985. I missed the Soviets before the wall came down. I still play Pac Man. My iPod has thousands of songs from the eighties. Wallowing in the past is so much a part of me, it frankly would be more noteworthy to find me not looking back.

That said, there has been an uptick, lately. How could there not? This is the "How's it going?" section, and I'll make it really brief:

All around me, it's going very, very badly. I don't even need to get into the politics of today. Unless you are a billionaire, it's going badly. The global three-ring shit show has only just begun to begin. But that's big picture stuff. How's my walk going? 

Who cares? I'm walking. I've never stopped. Trains come. Paychecks come. Good drinks, good meals, days spent staring at the sea. Little victories and setbacks and blah blah blah. Fifty years' worth have come and gone. I'll say this: I like it, here. I think I'll keep walking.

I have everything I need. 

I walk with [Maris]. 

I also have a bunch of balloons. It's not every day you turn fifty, you know.


This post was prompted by my friends at Our Write Side, who gave us "imbroglio" for this week's Two-word Tuesday feature.