It's my birthday and I'll cry if I want to.

So this is it, the big four-oh. Double that up and I'm in a personal care home with saliva eking from my mouth and shit in my pants. I have reached my "peak," oh, not my peak in life, that was years ago, I've reached my peak in years. I think back to when I turned twenty; I remember it well. I was riding my bicycle home from Canada Packers and I was all in a panic. For God sake, I was no longer a teenager. I had to start acting like an adult. What was I going to do?

I didn't have much of a life back then, no girlfriend and I lived a miserable home life with a grumpy old father who dried his plates in the oven but refused to use the dishwasher. Those were dark days and I really took stock of where I was in life and where my life was headed. What did I want to do?

First I decided I wanted to get smart. I wanted to be a genius so that even if girls hated me, they could at least agree that I was the "smartest in the room." Where does one start being smart, though? The library? I hated libraries; I hated reading and I couldn't write worth a damn. I decided I had to go back to University but little did I know at the time I would spend the rest of my twenties and half my thirties going to university and decent chuck of that actually working at various libraries. Fate is a cruel mistress.

But lo and behold, I loved it. I loved the university life, but after fifteen long years I had but a lowly B.A. to my name. So I had to find work and I found lots of work. I always said, the only thing I did better than get laid off was find other jobs. Here's a list of where I worked since age eighteen:

Kildonan Plastics
City of Winnipeg (Sanitation Engineer)
Eaton's (Receiving)
Canada Packers
Eaton's (Ladies Shoes)
Tip Top
Suregain Feed Mills
Cafe Earl's
City of Winnipeg (Golf Course Maintenance)
Superstore
University of Manitoba Archives
James Richardson & Sons Archives
Brandon University Archives
Purolator Courier (AM dock)
Purolator Courier (Baggage handling-Greyhound)
University of Manitoba Science Library
University of Manitoba History Department (TA)
Cancom (Baggage handling-WestJet)
ATS (Baggage handling-WestJet)
Probe Research Inc.
University of Winnipeg Library
WestJet (present)
University of Manitoba Bookstore (present)

So, as you can see, I leave a lot of this out, otherwise my resume would be ten pages long. And really, what does it all matter at this point. I'm forty now, I gotta start looking ahead, like to retirement, old age, drooling and shitting. What is real scary, in only twenty years from now I will be sixty. SIXTY! That sounds bad. Will I smell like old man? Do I smell now? Will I shake my fist at the neighbourhood kids and tell those "young whipper-snappers" to get off my lawn. Will I discuss endlessly the intricacies of a piece of toast? Yikes, I have to stop talking about this.

But here's the good part about turning forty: you're not as dumb as you were at twenty. Let's face it, you cannot help learning stuff through life and the greater variety of life you experience, the more you learn. I have no regrets that I never followed a designated career path. Careers are over-rated, I mean, who really wants to spend forty years doing the same damn job? I'm also pretty fortunate that I'm still kicking at forty (beat that all you twenty year olds) and that I live a pretty comfortable existence. I think I'm pretty lucky, but learning is an age long process so considering I only started considering getting smart at twenty, buy the time I'm sixty I should be a Nobel winner or at least one of the guys that finishes well back that you never hear about him again, like the guy that invented dryer balls or something.

So there you have it: my initial thoughts on turning forty and a lame excuse to write in my blog.