Happy birthday to me! I have made it to 54, which now officially places me in my mid-fifties, and also firmly in middle age. One more year and I will get to choose from the next tier in the “your age” dropdown menus when e.g. signing up for a new social media platform.

This past year felt like coming out of a long hibernation, and I expect the upcoming year will continue that trend as we continue to adjust to whatever the new normal is, assuming enough stability for any one narrative to assert itself as “normal”, which frankly is asking a lot of the world at this point in time.

The last book I read as a 53-year-old was Jim Harrison’s Returning to Earth, and the first book I am reading as a 54-year-old is Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Collected Novellas. Thus do years end and start on high notes.

Not much else to report at this time. Life is busy, and enjoyable more often than not.