I need more sleep. I get winded more easily. My knees throb simply from sitting at a desk too long. My hips are kind of wonky. I can’t sleep on my back anymore. I went swinging the other day — swinging on a swing set — and was ill for 45 minutes afterwards and had to lie down. Sometimes I completely lose where I am or what’s going on. Wait, I always did that. Still, the point is, I’m old.

I’m old, and I sort of feel it. 25…a fifth of the way through already, if I live to the conservative age of 125. My high school reunion is in three years. The other day, my roommate was napping in the office of our apartment, and I was napping on the couch. It was a nap party, and no one was having any fun. That’s not true, it was unfortunately spectacular.

Being old isn’t all bad. Athletically, I feel as good as I did in high school…the problem is what it has taken for me to reach that point. I have to eat right, which means I can’t gorge myself anymore, one of my favorite pastimes. I take a daily regimen of fish oil, vitamin supplement, and glucosamine for my knees. I work out three to four miserable days a week, but carefully so I don’t throw my back out or shatter my coccyx. The last thing I need is my shoulder to give out during a bench press and have the bar land on my larynx. That would be how I would die.

Most importantly, with an increase in age has come a grown in my emotional and mental maturity. It took me some 20 odd years, but I’ve sort of found myself. I know what makes me happy and who I am. I couldn’t be the idiot I am on the show without that. I’m more calm, less prone to anger, and more reflective. I think more clearly and am more patient. I’m also inexplicably more emotional, a blessing when it motivates me to go out of my way for others, and a curse when a Taylor Swift song makes me sad or I can appreciate the tragic character arch of a Grey’s Anatomy character.

Things that scared me once, from relationships to taking risks, don’t really affect me all that much anymore. I’m willing to put my heart on the line. To take chances. To trust. To jump out of planes. All of it has come from age and experience. And at least I’m confident in knowing that the next 25 will be better than the previous. There have been ups and downs, and I wouldn’t say it has all been easy. But it has definitely all been worth it.

Listen to that; I even write like an old man. In my next few years, I look forward to developing an irrational taste for scotch, sitting in my rocking chair telling grandchildren how we never had floating cars when I was a boy, falling asleep everywhere while I snore into my boring book, and chilling on the porch waiting to tell hoodlums/postal workers/my (grand)daughter’s boyfriend/rambunctious children to get off my grossly unkempt and mostly dying lawn. And then when that’s all done, dying in my sleep simultaneously with my amnesiac wife right after she has a moment of clarity and the memories of our ridiculously happy marriage came flooding back to her. Can’t wait.