According to Douglas Adams, 42  is the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.

It’s also the age at which Elvis Presley died alone in his bathroom, a sad, bloated caricature of the awesome force of nature he’d been a mere two decades earlier. Don’t panic indeed.

Now, I know what you’re thinking, but it’s okay. I’m not particularly upset about my birthday this year, in spite of that thing about Elvis. Not like I was for my 40th, anyway, or even my 41st last year. I guess I’m resigned to being officially middle-aged now; to borrow a line from my main man Rick, it is what it is. But even though I may be coming to terms with the 40-pluses, I can’t imagine I’ll ever really enjoy my birthdays again, the way I used to in my teens and twenties. There’s just too much baggage now, too many disappointments and regrets. Too much understanding that a single lifetime isn’t enough for all the things you want to do, and if you avoid making tough choices when you’re young — as I did — you might not get the chance to do some of them. The truth is, I passed up a lot of opportunities and wasted a lot of my youth because I was afraid of making the wrong choice and getting stuck somewhere I didn’t want to be. And also because I didn’t have much self-confidence, and just didn’t believe I could do some things. And because I was too distracted with stupid shit that in retrospect didn’t really matter that much. Every birthday now is just another reminder of how damn stupid I’ve been about a lot of things. And that, like Elvis, I’m a long ways from the hunka-hunka-burnin’-love I used to be, and I am vain enough to be bothered about that. I’ve even recently noticed myself making old-man noises when I get out of bed and try to stretch the soreness out of all the bits that don’t quite want to work first thing in the morning. When the hell did that happen?

Classic mid-life crisis, I know. Cliche’d and boring if you can’t relate, depressing if you can. And probably pretty pathetic-sounding if you’re one of the lucky ones who’ve already had yours and passed through to the other side. Honestly, though, I often wonder if I’m ever going to get past it, because it seems like I’ve been struggling with a mid-life crisis since the morning after my college graduation. I woke up that day at the age of 22 and had a full-blown panic attack about what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I still haven’t figured it out.

Things might be different if I were more contented with my day-to-day existence. But sadly, things haven’t changed much for me since I wrote the following, some three years ago:

I don’t know how things got to be this way. It wasn’t so long ago that I had endless afternoons for wandering through toy stores in search of the latest collectible action figures, or for driving around with my sweetie, or for writing or blogging or simply being. God, I used to spend hours working on stories, lost in worlds of my own imagining and feeling like that was exactly where I was supposed to be. But now… now it doesn’t matter what I’m doing or for whose benefit, I am constantly aware of a clock ticking, a deadline or appointment approaching, always feeling the pressure of a to-do list that never seems to get any shorter, and lamenting more and more frequently that I have become a very boring person. I cringe at the thought of social engagements that ought to be pleasures. I even have a hard time with movies these days, because I often find myself thinking that I ought to be doing something more productive with the time I’m spending in front of the screen. Movies. My refuge and my love for longer than I can remember. I can’t tell you how depressing that is. My life isn’t supposed to be this way. I can’t even recall any more what I used to imagine my life was going to be like, but this damn hamster-wheel existence I find myself trapped in certainly wasn’t what I had in mind.

It’s that sense of urgency, a constant background level of anxiety about all the things I’m not managing to get done, that sends me into my periodic funks. I feel it throughout most of my waking hours, and it’s utterly draining. Paralyzing, really. It keeps me from doing everything from mundane chores to the things that really matter. I don’t exercise anymore, because I don’t have time. I can’t tell you when I last whiled away an entire afternoon reading, or managed to get through an entire DVD in one sitting. And you may have noticed how rarely I post here anymore. People ask me all the time why I don’t just make time to write fiction, or whatever it is I really want to do. They don’t get that I can’t. My default setting these days is “overwhelmed.”

If you’re feeling like getting me a present this year, another couple of hours of sunlight per day would be great…

And yet, my mood today really isn’t that dire. I took the day off from work and I’ve been catching up on some long-neglected stuff around the house and listening to music and playing with my kitty-boys, and tonight I’m going out with The Girlfriend for some yummy clam chowder, and all that makes for an okay birthday. I just wish I didn’t have to take vacation time to scrub my damn toilet…