40 Posts by 40 Years Old (i.e. 6 days)

I shared the (SOMEWHAT) tongue-in-cheek post which follows with my Facebook friends yesterday, as a sort of “last hurrah” post; I do plan to take some time off of my personal FB page, where I’ve done most of my “writing” the past few years, after my “milestone” birthday next week (a mostly random-if-symbolic, but ultimately convenient, time to do so).  I hope to focus a bit more this coming year on writing, or at least on figuring out what kind of writing I want to do.  Anyway, I thought I might as well share this, and the subsequent ~40 posts I plan to share there, here as well.  I hope you enjoy, or that you at least don’t stop reading the blog! 

Friends, in exactly one week, I will begin the long, slow march into decrepitude, a journey which begins when a person leaves their 30’s behind (a young-ish sounding series of numbers) and enters their 40’s (numbers which ring with the faint sounds of creaking bones and carry with them a whiff of camphor oil and freshly-pressed, pearly-white orthopedic socks).

And for those who keep insisting that their 40’s are or were their best decade of life, please understand this: you cannot be trusted, for Senility has certainly moved in, tipped the moving company, unpacked all of its boxes, and is rummaging through your mind’s fridge at this very moment. I love you, but fact is fact.

Along with the sobering realization that I have one more week before I become a virtually-obsolete burden to my family, I realize that once my 40’s arrive, I need to spend whatever time I have left doing something other than posting inane, overtly-exaggerated musings on life and family on social media. Likewise, my weakening arteries cannot afford the stress caused by getting emotionally entangled in some oft-misguided (and often hateful) screeds from The Social Webs.

So, I’ll probably take an extended vacation from Facebook and pursue some tasks more worthwhile, such as clearing a space in our medicine cabinet for all of the pills I will certainly now require, and finding a general store outside of which I can sit, reminisce about the 90’s and curse the hippies with their “Virtual Reality” (“When I was a kid, it was just called ‘Reality’ and it was boring and painful but it was real!”) and their “Digital Assistants” (“I don’t know who this ‘Alexa’ is, and I certainly don’t ask strangers to order my toilet paper!”).

Anyway, as usual, all of the above is but a long-winded introduction to an ambitious undertaking I am going to . . . undertake, while I still have the mental faculties (not that you would be able to tell the difference, mind you): From now until my birthday, I will attempt 40 POSTS. This has never been tried before, by ANYONE, and will certainly be a record! (NOTE: This is actually done all of the time by everyone.) My math tells me I’ll need to average . . . carry the 4. . .ignore the ridiculousness of the decimal . . . probably more than 5 posts a day! And, at that volume, most if not all will certainly be less-than-stellar. It cannot be helped.

We’ll call it #40by40. Because hashtags are a thing.

For those who have “enjoyed” these posts throughout the years, thanks for reading. For those who don’t at all enjoy these, and yet are reading this out of some, I don’t know, weird kind of sneering voyeurism . . .thanks for reading – I’m too old and too near the day where I’ll settle in with my new roommate Senility to hold grudges.

And so begins the end . . .