Another trip around the sun and another batch of things learned.

This post is a day late because I've been on the road and pushing way out of my comfort zone for the past couple of days and learning a lot in the process, so here is my slightly belated birthday post (with the apropriate soundtrack, of course). I just turned 38 years old. Those seem like simple, empty words but they're anything but. Over a third of my expected lifespan is gone now, which is not an easy thing to admit to oneself. Looking at it one way, I've spent that time just trying to figure everything out - learning the basics, learning which rules can be broken, which can be bent, and which need to be obeyed, and (generally speaking) what the hell is going on. One would think that one would have gotten a start to things earlier, mastered the introductory levels (as it were) and moved on to the more challenging stuff. Thinking about it more, however, things don't actually work like that. The hard stuff begins right from the get go, drawing that first breath, learning to walk and talk, and then learning to deal with the world and all it contains in the context of school. Life gets harder and more complex the older you get without realizing it because the hard stuff becomes easy, and you stop noticing it because it's now second nature. New challenges come up to replace the stuff you've just mastered, and the cycle repeats itself again and again and again. And so here I am, about a third through my life (give or take) figuring out what to do next. I've come to decide that ambition isn't inherently a negative thing - ambition can take many forms. Ultimately it's the goals you set for yourself and how you want to achieve them. Ambition can be healthy. And ultimately, I need to find another way of achieving my goals because I think I've gone as far as I can with the old strategies. I need to start thinking in different angles. And, ultimately, I'm planning for the long term. I want to have something that I can live on when I don't or can't work anymore. I'd like to not have to worry. I'm going to put the rest beneath the cut to save everybody's eyes.For many years I dealt with a weight problem. I spent many years, much of my childhood, overweight and dealing with all of the health and social problems that brings with it. Eventually, slowly, I started to shed that weight and work to keep it off with hours at the gym, lots of cold water, and willpower. Lots of willpower. By the time I started undergrad in college I'd pretty much lost a high school freshman's body mass and was somewhere in the neighborhood of 150 of 160 pounds and eventually hovered (though never really stabilized) around the former. However, I didn't exactly do that in a very healthy way; for many years I also showed many of the outward symptoms of anorexia nervosa - constant fatigue (though I used willpower and horse doctor's doses of coffee to keep going), insomnia (going days at a time without sleep was not unusual), very fine hair which was perpetually thinning, and a distinct intolerance of cold (which lead to wearing sometimes eight or nine layers at a time, as some of my old BBS friends can attest to). I think I was living 1200 to 1400 dietary calories a day for upwards of ten years and, looking back on things I think the way I dressed was meant to conceal as much of the harm I'd been doing to my body as I possibly could. A few people I knew repeatedly expressed concern. One in particular used to compare me to the Jack the Pumpkin King, on account that you could count the calluses on some of my ribs. As I get older I find myself putting weight back on here and there. A little on the front, a little on my thighs, a little on my back, a little on my upper arms regardless of how many hours after work I might spend at the gym, or how many miles I do on the treadmill or stair climber (which isn't many right now; I'd be lying if I didn't admit that I lost a lot of endurance while not going to the gym through the holiday season for reasons outside of this post). It keeps me awake at night. I keep a close, close eye on just how many notches fit through my belt buckle and I fuss about my shirts constantly. Every once in a while I catch myself "forgetting" lunch or drinking just a little too much coffee so I can't finish my lunch... it's all too easy to slip back into old, bad habits. Sometimes on your trip through life you lose your way. It's not always an obvious thing; it's too easy to go left when you should go right, or take an early exit instead of a later one (those of you who've ever driven with me behind the wheel for longer than ten miles are undoubtedly chuckling as you read these words). Sometimes this leads to serendipity, but sometimes it leads to subtle forms of misfortune that can cause one to forget what they were doing and where they were going. When I was working on my first major, I mean really major project I had to put some parts of myself to the side so that I