This could be a companion piece to last week's post, because I'm nothing if not endlessly fixated on the same themes.

I'm almost 35 and I'm still alive. I think this to myself on a daily basis lately and every time it feels impossible. Not just that I'm almost 35, although that too, but that I'm almost 35 and that means I've lived so much longer than I once thought I would. There was a time in my life when I didn't think I would live past 25, and then I didn't think I would live past 30, and now here I am nearly a decade beyond anything I ever managed to dream back then and isn't that nice? Isn't that amazing? Isn't the human spirit's capacity for survival astonishing?