44, or, La plus ça change...

...is how old I am today. Some facts about my life at this, the halfway point (if I'm very lucky and the damage hasn't already been done):

• Education/Employment: Gainfully employed in my field, tenured, and about to go up for promotion to full professor
• Housing: a very nice (albeit small) one-bedroom cottage apartment in a good neighborhood within walking distance of half a dozen coffee shops
• Transportation: Trek Lexa entry-level road bike
• Relationship status: happily unattached
• Most recent international trip: Last summer, to Italy, for a yoga retreat and intensive language courses
• Best recent accomplishment: Book award
• Thing that needs to go away: I can't believe I started smoking again. Crap.
• Overall state of mind: utterly content

At 33:

• Education/Employment: Just got a job offer and will be headed out to Grit City next week to look for an apartment
• Housing: Tiny attic studio in the student ghetto that I actually fixed up to be pretty nice... but damn it's hot. And I can be counted on to bash my head against the slanted ceilings at least once every six weeks. And I caught a mouse under the sink -- which is an improvement over the poisonous spiders in the previous place I lived, but still. A mouse.
• Transportation: Trek 530 hybrid bike, about 10 years old
• Relationship status: complicated
• Most recent international trip: Mop-up research trip to Blargistan, during the winter 18 months ago
• Best recent accomplishment: Defended my dissertation!
• Thing that needs to go away: See above, re: "relationship status"
• Overall state: relieved and a bit at sea

At 22:

• Education/Employment: Just completed first year at a fancy four-year college after two years at community college; working two food service jobs (a fancy restaurant and a coffee shop near school) at about 20 hours a week apiece.
• Housing: Downtown puddletown apartment in a great 1930s building, shared with a roommate. In this arrangement, I am in the role of obnoxious slob.
• Transportation: incredibly heavy 5-speed bike (circa 1978) + city bus.
• Relationship status: [redacted]
• Most recent international trip: 7-week solo trip to Germany, Austria, and Switzerland two years ago
• Best recent accomplishment: Accepted to junior year abroad trip to Munich
• Thing that needs to go away: As with most college students recently turned 21, I am drinking far too much alcohol (spoiler alert: A year in Munich is not going to help in this regard...)
• Overall state: Pretty screwed up, though blissfully unaware of how much so.

Looked at that way, it looks like I've done better for myself than I've any right to. Happy Birthday to me.