Nicholas Laughlin's blog etc.

If one keeps a journal and looks back on it the days are packed enough with incidents and people and events, joys and fears and a hundred small triumphs and tribulations--as the days have always been. But it is the living through it all that gets quicker and quicker. Someone has pushed the fast-forward button....

The quiet pleasures, the private delights, the sitting in the garden ... or reading as evening falls, matter much more now. Going out in society, to parties and receptions, to any gathering except a meeting between close friends, becomes increasingly a burdensome chore to be avoided at all costs....

I have noticed a surprising development. As the years go by the beauty of ordinary things again becomes more sharply focused. When I was very young every day revealed fresh miracles of a shining world. Then there was a long period in the press of strenuous ambition and coping with the clutter of life when one lived without revelations. But now they begin to come again.

--Ian McDonald, writing in today's Stabroek News about the approach of another birthday (no link, because Stabroek has no permanent archive).

My feeling of early-onset middle-agedness is gently reaffirmed.