If, that is, today is your 40th birthday. And if, I suppose, you plan to live until precisely 80 years old.

I guess it’s an American tradition to freak out about turning 40, but I’m going to take a pass. For one thing, I just promised a major publisher I would sell them a book, and I’m not sure how to end it. Furthermore, I am helping to run an event for 2,000 people less than two weeks from now. I would say those are far more practical things to freak out about. Having freaked out about those things, a person could then set about doing something — writing that ending, calling in that bomb threat so that the Hunt is cancelled. (Note to the Boston police: I AM JUST KIDDING. PLEASE DO NOT ARREST ME.)

If I freak out about turning 40, what exactly am I supposed to do next? It’s freakage that leads nowhere.

Besides that, I’ve got a great family and a messy ol’ house in a nice suburb. I live about a mile away from my office, which by the way is at a company that produces puzzle magazines. I wrote a book, and people liked it. I think the people who freak about 40 are crushed by the concept of time slipping away from them, and I certainly share that to some degree — where did the time go, exactly? It feels like yesterday that I met the woman who would become my wife. In fact, that was almost fourteen years ago. Similarly, I have almost no memory of my daughter as an infant. It’s like she was born five years old and talking about braiding her hair. The people who do freak about 40… whoa, baby, I sympathize. But despite the sensation that time is an icy hill and I can’t steer my toboggan, I’m pretty content with the way things are working out.

So what’s the agenda for 40? I’m gonna head to my office in a few minutes to do some work on this, that, and the other thing. Then I’m going to come home and make braised ribs in tomato sauce over pasta. Then I’m going to hope the Giants give me a surprise birthday present by winning a playoff game for the first time in this century. At some point along the line, I am going to eat the aforementioned braised ribs. And then, I guess, I’m going to start keeping an eye on 41.