I don’t remember where I read or heard this fact, so it may be completely inaccurate. But I’m not reporting the news or anything here, so with that caveat here goes:
Every seven years, the body completely grows new cells. So by the time that you are my age, you have gone through… five cycles of new cells and am in the midst of my sixth round.
That kind of scares me in some ways, but I remember the following when I start to think about it too much. First, I don’t feel exactly any different than I did when I was younger. I know that I am older, I see it in the mirror and I feel it in my back and neck. There are days now when my wrists hurt from when I spend too much of my day working on the keyboard.
Yet in my mind, the idea of aging one year to the next hasn’t really caught up with me I guess the way it does some folks. Maybe because I haven’t had a “I’ve been back home” moment that has shocked me at the changes. I’ve lived in so many different places that honestly I don’t hold onto the nostalgia for “home” in that way.
In 2018 I did the math, and at the time I was 33. I had during those years moved from one place – dorm rooms included – dozens of times. Somewhere I think around the same number of moves per year.
The difference between now and then? I’ve found a sense of stability.
Maybe that is a good thing, being settled into a role and place and with a somewhat decent routine on a daily basis. Do I know in my heart I can be doing better, achieving more, giving myself a break as well? Yes to all of those things.
Will I do so in all cases? We’ll see. I’m only human, after all.
I think of the lyrics from the 1990s sitcom “Step by Step” sometimes when I’m having one of those days when I can’t seem to get my crap together and be the news/sports version of myself.
For reference:
2021-22 was a rough year for No. 36. A lot of good and bad happened.
For instance:
COVID lingered and left us all feeling antsy and blue. More people died. I eventually got it back in January right after MLK Day celebrations in Cedartown, and my brain hasn’t felt right since. I question whether it is paranoia over having it, or actual after effects of the virus on some days. Others I feel too exhausted by 2 p.m. to do much more than wonder where all my energy went.
It’ll come back by around 8 p.m. or so, but by then most of the useful part of my day is gone.
Maybe the return to Daylight Saving Time will make life easier. I’ll be able to get more accomplished with additional daylight. Who knows.
But then, other good things happened too.
I launched this website finally, for instance. And have future plans to make it much better than it is currently for the few subscribers out there paying their $5 a month to enjoy it.
I do appreciate your contributions, and hope you’ll stick with me. I have a lot on my plate, but I don’t intend to allow myself to neglect the day-to-day posting much longer of all of the projects I have launched since starting down this journey in 2020.
Kevin the Editor, after all, is only one of six sites I’m now operating one way or another.
Polk Today of course is my original site, and thus far the most active of them all. Then you have PolkSportsWire, PolkSportsWire Fan Zone (still needs some love and attention, to be honest) and now Paulding Today and my corporate site, Myrick Multimedia. To some, that seems like a lot of daily work.
But you aren’t thinking about this in the way I do. My brain functions in slices of time these days. How many minutes do I want to spend looking for a few items on Facebook? How much time does it take to type XYZ? Design this site? Go after this idea and see if it will work?
Instead of simply using every moment of my day to type on one thing and get bored by noon, I’m using much of it to also learn how to undertake new tasks. Like designing WordPress themes from scratch (the underlying software that runs all of the websites,) and getting used to the idea of designing t-shirts and stickers. One day I might be managing a server and trying to figure out security certificate problems.
The next day? I’m doing something completely different and running errands.
Maybe that was the theme for my 36th year. Learning how to use my time in more than just typing all day and night.
I don’t want to end up like Jack in The Shining…
When I was 22, I used to think of 37 as getting older.
It is true that 15 years hence, I no longer feel like a 22 year old. I’m more experienced in the world than I was at that time. I don’t look at life with the rose-colored glasses of a young man just starting out in the world on his own with optimism for what I expected to achieve in the future. My desires are simpler now, my anxieties about what could happen to me have dimmed as I have experienced bad and good.
Maybe the idea of cell regeneration is correct. Maybe the brain has to replace what was there before to allow us to understand who we are in the moment, be that person instead of someone else. It is an idea I’ve repeated regularly to anyone willing to listen: you can’t be anyone else but yourself. But you have to decide who that person is going to be, and whether you like them or not.
Being Kevin isn’t easy. But it is much harder to be someone you aren’t.
A lesson I’ve learned the hard way, but am taking to heart more so than ever.
Maybe I’ve learned the value of “Step by Step’s” Chorus. If you are willing to take it one day, one step at a time, everyone has the opportunity for second chances and constant reinvention.
That’s what year 37 looks like for me, in a nutshell.
If you liked this item, you might want to read “Birthday Boy” which I wrote a number of years back.
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