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Oh Fudge, I'm a little over a month from being 57 and that means I am only 3 years away from working on Oh Shit I'm 60! (unless God decides to take me to the big comedy show in the sky before then - fingers crossed). So I am starting to think about the kind of stuff I might be talking about in that show and none of it is good. Hopefully it might be funny in comedic terms but in life terms it's nothing but decline.
To think I was upset about turning 40, when I was in the prime of my life, with no responsibilities, about to be with the love of my life and embark on the podcasting journey that would rescue my career. There's lots of good things about my life now and being a dad is definitely the favourite thing I've ever done (if you can ignore the constant fear of something going horribly wrong), but I never got this tired, even when boozing every night (probably because I got to sleep in past 6.30am) and my body functioned more or less properly and I had two balls.
Whilst my ageing genitalia still more or less functions as long as you crank it up for a while like the engine of an old-timey car, it's a shadow of its former self. I could use this thing multiple times in a day back then (and not just for weeing), but now it's single use at best and it's shooting dust even then. In lots of ways it's good that libido and ability declines with time and I am no longer chained to that idiot, but I'd still like to have the choice and the ability. And it would have been nice if there could have been some kind of written notice warning me this would happen.
Maybe connected and maybe not is that there also comes a decline in ambition as you get older. Again in most ways this is a good thing - the stuff I wanted and hoped for as a young man was of little worth, though I am still on the path that he forged. He was so desperate to be a comedian and be funny at every turn and threw himself into it. I am still into comedy and have no choice but to continue with it, but I don't have the same drive to create and whilst I haven't lost all my mirth, it's no longer the driving factor. Sometimes I feel like stopping all together. But mainly I enjoy this life and am happy with my modest success and only occasionally frustrated that it's not going better (and more usually astonished that it's going this well).
In your late 50s you have time to reflect on your life and mainly the mistakes you've made and I woke up in the middle of the night tonight full of angst and worrying that I hadn't been as good a person as I hoped and believed. Of course like very stupid human on this earth I have acted selfishly and thoughtlessly on occasion. But every now and again one of the acts of idiocy pops into my brain at about 2am and makes me question my whole being. They are never big things and in the cold light of day they don't hold anything beyond mild regret, but who is right about that? The boisterous day me who believes he's a nice guy or the paranoid night time me who possibly sees the unvarnished truth. He used to turn up a lot more when I was drinking, but was then much less coherent, just filling me with nameless dread, rather than making me obsess over me failing to ring back a woman I'd kissed in 1998. I am sure she didn't care at the time and doesn't remember it now, so why is it popping into my head in the middle of the night and making me question my whole (admittedly already fairly negative) self image.
We're all trying to live up to a standard that no one manages to hit and the maniacs doing the properly bad stuff usually don't have a conscience and sleep untroubled.
Oh Shit I'm 60 will either be the funniest or most depressing show I've done. So let's hope God takes me sooner rather than later.
RHLSTP is returning to Birmingham on 20th October. Thanks for your support last year Brum. If you keep turning up I will too.
Book here.
