58

A year ago, I wrote about my misgivings about my 57th year.  Well, I made it through; today I'm 58, and not a moment too soon.

I spent the last 10 days of my 57th year sick as a dog, I mean flat on my back sick. I don't think I've ever missed an entire week of work due to illness, but I did last week.  I wasn't sure if I was going to hit the finish line on my 57th year, but here I am.

The privileged world I live in suffered celebrity deaths and a celebrity election in 2016. Outside of my privilege bubble, much of the world lives in virtual slavery and/or unimaginable poverty. To them, 2016 was just another year of toil and hunger.

According to our friend Wikipedia, 58 is a Smith Number. Ironic, no?  A Smith number is a composite number for which, in a given base (in base 10 by default), the sum of its digits is equal to the sum of the digits in its prime factorization.^[1] For example, 378 = 2 × 3 × 3 × 3 × 7 is a Smith number since 3 + 7 + 8 = 2 + 3 + 3 + 3 + 7. In this definition the factors are treated as digits: for example, 22 factors to 2 × 11 and yields three digits: 2, 1, 1. Therefore 22 is a Smith number because 2 + 2 = 2 + 1 + 1.

I have no idea what any of that means.  I wish I was the kind of person who understood higher math, but I missed my moment for that.