I turn 28 tomorrow.

It feels weird to say that.

Something I've noticed over the past year is just how old I feel. I'll jerk a part of my body too quickly and suddenly it will be sore for the rest of the day (or longer, if I'm unlucky).

My health in general has been weighing on my mind as of late. My wife and I purchased a stationary bike recently and I've taken to riding that. Right now I'm doing it three times a week for about thirty minutes. My plan is to work my way up to daily rides.

I always forget how good I feel after exercising. I'll wake up in the morning and have no desire to get out of bed and get on the bike. But once I finish my ride and the post-workout endorphins have kicked in I ask myself why it was so hard to get on the bike in the first place. And yet, without fail the cycle repeats itself each time.

I think this is where the routine of exercising comes in. If I wake up every morning and hop on the bike, eventually—at least, I hope—it will just be a given and not something my mind will try to bargain with me over.

Another feeling I've had over the past year is this ever-present sense of urgency to everything. I don't fully know where this comes from, but it really pervades every corner of my life. I'll be out on an afternoon walk with the dog and have this visceral awareness of time passing me by. Or I'll be washing the dishes after dinner and feel like, much like the dishwater, that my time is being washed down the drain.

Speaking of time, it seems to be passing by me at a breakneck pace. What feels like five minutes has really been fifteen, a week is gone in an instant, and the months come and go before I feel they're halfway through.

Is this what growing old is? The realization that your time on this planet is finite and that your expiration date—once so imperceptibly far off in the future—is now looming on the horizon as you hurtle towards it at an accelerating pace?

I think the best way to sum it up is this:

27 has been marked by the crushing weight of my own existence.

So where does that leave me?

As I'm deep in the throes of grappling with these feelings, I find myself starting to question what really matters and what I want out of my life.

The things I want to do could probably fill a multitude of lifetimes. Seeing as I'm stuck with just one, the only recourse is to brutally and relentlessly cut out everything that doesn't carry its weight.

I see 28 as a time to refocus on the things I think are truly important.