As of today, there are exactly 40 weeks until my 40th birthday. I've thought of all the ways I could start an official countdown, all the angles, all the ways this number wreaks havoc. There are 40 thieves, 40 year old virgins, 40 ways to leave your lover (or is it 50?), 40 days of Lent, a weekly top 40. But barring some good playlists I could throw together, I don't think I have a full 40 of anything.
When I was a kid I never really gave myself anything to strive for by the time I was a certain age. For most people that certain age is 30 or 40 or 50.-- No one ever uses anything past 50, because that's just sad.-- But I never gave myself such deadlines, I just sort of--lived. I never really thought about where I'd be, what kind of life I'd have. I did (and still do) have my neuroses about certain things though. I thought sure that someday I'd wake up with a mullet and white high tops in my 40s because that's what all the old lady lovers I saw looked like. (Full disclosure: I am currently growing out an accidental mullet. Juliette Lewis has always been my hair muse, and this time my musings went a little too far. I feel pretty confident that it'll be grown out by the big bday though. I mean that's like 10 months. Fingers crossed.) I also once had this fantasy that I'd be explaining why no one ever married me to a Rolling Stone reporter over black coffee in a hotel lobby. On the flip side of that I also thought I'd probably be a 40 year old divorcee with red nails smoking cigarettes in a dark bar with a lot of wood. There's still time for that one.
So what kind of trouble can I make in the next 40 weeks? What do I need to get done, what do I need to undo--what do you wanna know? We've got 40 weeks to count this down, and I don't know what happens when we get there...
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