When I first moved to Calgary, I was in my early 20s and felt like I had my whole life in front of me.

I had just graduated from a small liberal-arts university in New Brunswick, and Calgary was booming.

I was able to find a job pretty quickly, and moved into an apartment in Mission, one of this city’s trendiest neighbourhoods.  

It was an illegal basement apartment, but an apartment nonetheless.  Thanks to a sturdy metabolism, I could go out until all hours of the night and any of my major dietary needs could be serviced at a CPU.  In many ways, I was like a 24-year-old Ralph Klein.

I recently went out to Hifi club and realized that at some point in the past few years, I had changed. Maybe it was the fact that no one was wearing clothes that actually fit, or that I couldn’t talk to anyone because the music was too loud. Also, I was sober because I wanted to get an early start on the next day.

But somewhere between the skinny jeans and shards of broken bottles on the floor, I realized that, yes, I’m now old. No, not like alderman old, but I’m definitely feeling older than when I first moved here.

With the final months of my 20s officially on life support, I’m left pondering the biggest question of all: What do old people do in Calgary? Presumably, they are the ones who buy all the early-bird tickets to the Calgary Folk Music Festival, so that will be good. But, then, I guess that I too will now have to join them in yelling at people to sit down during high-energy performances.

Even though I’m mostly bald, I can still see the grey hairs beginning to poke through, which automatically causes me to make reservations at Olive Garden and vote in this spring’s election by mail. And my dream of spending a wild weekend in Las Vegas will likely turn into a weeklong sojourn in Tucson, meaning those tequila shots will now be replaced by golf shots.

And what about living arrangements? I guess being old means that I can’t have roommates anymore, doesn’t it? And if that’s the case, how can I afford to continue living in the city’s trendiest neighbourhoods?

I’ve always wondered why people end up in the suburbs. For the first time in 30 years, I know why.

Mike Morrison is the perfectly bald head behind Mike’s Bloggity Blog. He also tweets regularly from @mikesbloggity.