This is 50?

It doesn't feel any different, turning 50. Not as much as I thought it would. It's a big number, but it's not the milestones that grind you down, it's the ongoing slog through life.

I did get a nasty cold just before my birthday in January, and a cough lingered on for weeks afterwards, which means that so far my fifties have been one of fever and hacking. But other than that, I still feel like the same idiot I've been for decades now.

I know in my brain that I'm a very different person from the young fool running about in the 90s, smoking away his 20s in a haze before actually doing something with my life. Everything good that has happened in my life came from the decision to go to journalism school when I was 29, but even that is more than two decades ago now.

I thought I was supposed to be getting more conservative as a I get older, but that hasn't happened. Maybe it's because I've been locked out of any generational wealth, still living on every paycheque and still nowhere near owning my own home, but it's mainly because my hatred of bullying and injustice has only got more rock solid over the years, it hasn't been eroded away by fear and loathing.

I may have lost some of the enthusiasm for the media I consume, not as all encompassing and it's taken me a while to figure out I don't need to rage about the most superficial of things, but I think I'm getting there.

And that undying love for a good comic book or movie or tune, it's still there, I still get so happy finding  a book I've been looking for, and some I've been hunting for decades are still out there somewhere (I will have you Lovely Biscuits, oh yes, I will have you). 

The moments when I walk into a random store, and see the Superman v Flash treasury edition going for a song, or finding that one Shooter/Byrne issue of The Avengers that I've been after since 1979, that's when I feel like the same old nerd I always was, and probably always will be.

Here's to the next 50 years, right?