For a few years now, I’ve tried applying to various Survivor seasons with the hope of syncing up my age with the exact season number I get cast on. It’s even been part of my audition tape hook: “Can this 46-year-old survive Survivor 46?” and so forth.
As of next Wednesday, I think I’m officially out of luck, unless they take a few years off after Survivor 50 next spring. (Which they won’t. After the ascension of Probsty God-King in the mid-season episode of 50, things are only going to speed up, not slow down.) I’ll probably keep applying to Survivor anyway, with less and less chance of ever succeeding. And even though I am very likely to die, if they ever actually let me play.
A few notes on the above. First, allow me to assure you: yes, I would die. On today, my 49th birthday, my body is less the crude matter into which my luminous form is packed, and more a loose sac of malfunctions, sloshing around together in a kind of viscous suspension. Pretty much every mistake I make right now, physically, comes with it the strong potential to reveal itself to be the game-ending move. Climb a fence? Game-ending move. Miss a tomato while chopping, and hit thumb instead? Game-ending move. Sleep soundly, but in a way that could in any way be described as “funny”? Game-ending move.
I am not complaining about this — repeating for emphasis, I am not complaining about this. This is the deal, and I sort of love it. The shelf-life on these bodies is like, what, forty years? I am way over warranty. I mention this only to point out that by any reasonable assessment of my physical capacities, to put myself on that beach with Jeff “Sexmove” Probst and ask myself to compete in a physical challenge, would almost certainly result in the kind of game-ending move that doesn’t just get one medevacked out of Survivor, but actually ends The Game.
That time Bruce banked his head off a piece of wood in the very first second of the very first challenge, back in Survivor 44? That’s me, except I somehow managed to do it while I was stepping off the boat. While I was finding my place on the bright-purple mat. How did this person strangle themself with their own buff?? That sort of thing.
So yes, I would die.
(Also, any footage of me would certainly be unusable, given that lovingly flipping the bird to anyone and everyone, including cameras, somehow became my very favourite thing in the summer of 2025. Is it childish and stupid? Yes, but so is turning 49.)
Thing two. It might not be something that some of my current readers are aware of, but I was obsessssssssed with Survivor in the ’00s. Like, the kind of obsession that I leverage against pretty much only just Star Wars and goonin’, these days. So yes, a big part of me still actually wants to step off that boat on that beach with that Jeff, even though I would almost certainly die immediately thereafter. Just to see it! Just to be there doing it! Even if only for a second!
That’s life, pushing 50. If everything is potentially the game-ending move, you start getting real laissez-faire about those potential game-ending moves.
Final thing: a word about words. I talk about getting old a lot, largely because I am, measurably and in fact, getting old. There are those who tell me I have always been old (my mom has tapes of me speaking like a pedantic English lit professor, circa my 5th birthday), and those who instantly react to any version of this conversation with an immediate YOU ARE DEFINITELY NOT OLD OH MY GOD HOW CAN YOU SAY THAT!!! The latter type, I should say, are people who are also old, some not as old as me and some much older than me; and they are fucking terrified of being old, so my mentioning it really freaks them out, for reasons that are entirely personal to them and have nothing to do with the fact that I am, measurably and in fact, getting old. That’s fine.
But I think maybe we would be better-served as an English-speaking public if we had a few more terms for the process of aging, some of which didn’t carry quite the same deleterious connotation. A few different ways to describe aging’s component parts.
That my body is decaying rapidly is not, I think, a subjective assessment; it’s fucking old, and getting older. (My beard? She white.)
That my mind is as alive as it’s ever been (while still, I should say, noticeably losing its grasp on some of the finer points of data management) is, from my vantage point, entirely a subjective assessment, but I still think it holds true; so when I say I’m getting old, re: that, what I guess I mean is “boy I sure have been doing this a long time! This whole me thing. The story goes back a long way.” The longevity itself feels like the achievement — the sheer miles backward that I can see — but there aren’t a lot of common terms for this experience of distance, besides “old.”
As for the heart, the soul, the middle part of whatever this is? That part, honestly, feels like it’s doing better than it’s ever done, precisely because I’ve gotten old, have had so much time to work on it all, so much time to let things go that were no longer serving. Paradoxically, it feels profoundly young, new, like it’s reverse-replenishing itself in a perpetual, interior Fountain of Youth.
This feeling does, as all the songs used to tell us, come with its inevitable, bittersweet tang: it sure woulda been nice to feel this good about myself, this rejuvenated, when I, say, had better-functioning knees. I would have been unbearable, running (literally) around feeling this blessed. What I wouldn’t give to freaky-friday myself into my high school self right now, even if just for a day and a half! But that ain’t the way it goes. At least, not out here, in the real world.
Some principles, c/o A.R. Moxon
This came through the inbox a couple weeks ago, while I was writing this post. The whole piece is worth considering in terms of how we position ourselves politically (that “Big Tent” problem, again). But also, right at the end, there’s a very nice lil’ list of principles, which I hold to be self-evident, and will keep foregrounded in my mind in the year ahead. Perhaps you will enjoy them too.
- Every human being is a unique and irreplaceable work of art.
- Therefore, life is a right of all humans; it is not earned.
- Any part of our order that fails these foundational principles is an injustice.
- Therefore, addressing injustice is always more important than enforcing order.
- Injustice is brokenness, and brokenness demands repair.
- Therefore we will pay the cost of repair.
- We know that brokenness can be fixed, and should be fixed.
- We expect improvement, and we will demand it.
- If our demands are not met, we will issue consequences for the failure.
- We won’t give up.
A few life lessons from a well-preserved middle-ager
But who am I to turn the mic over entirely to A.R. Moxon on this, the anniversary of my birth? Here are a few things I’ve learned that I’ve been thinking about. They aren’t really “principles,” but perhaps you will enjoy them as well.
- When people ask me how I’ve been lately, I’ve been answering that I’m doing really, really good. This is both true and a practice, and the two things are not mutually exclusive. “Doing really good,” I’m finding, is really a matter of having a moment of space every now and again, and spending that moment looking back. I recognize that even finding such moments is a colossal privilege. I also recognize that there are a lot of people who look back reflexively, almost narcotically. That ain’t it. I only mean that… once in a while, after a long walk, look behind you.
- Your job won’t love you back. I’ve been saying a version of this pretty much all the time to anyone who will listen for (at least) the past decade, and I probably sound like I’m undervaluing the energy that a lot of my younger peers bring to their jobs. But I fear what I see as the compulsive element of the way a lot of people in my life do their jobs now: the “I have to do this” vibe, where the reasoning behind the have has long since been forgotten. Work as hard as you want to work, of course; you do you. Just don’t expect anyone — least of all your employer — to give you any of it back.
- One time, my BFF introduced me on stage as “the funniest person he knows.” Don’t ever, ever, EVER do that. Can I give you some advice? Don’t ever do that. Never set your friends up to fail. Never set anyone up to fail if you can help it; but jesus, not your friends.
- My grandpa had it sussed: crosswords help.
- You shouldn’t have to subscribe to everyone’s paid newsletter tier just to keep criticism alive as a vital part of the human relationship to art. This isn’t really advice; it’s just a fact.
- Saying “Can we…” at the start of a sentence where you’re asking someone else to do something for you in which you’ll have no involvement, is the firmest form of asshole behaviour. Grow up.
- As often as you’re able, consider the four reminders. I’m not much of a “kharmic wheel” being, myself, so you can go light on #3 if you like. But 1, 2 and 4 are foundational.
- No video games before bedtime, it angries up the blood.