you're not a kid anymore
Today it hit me: no, it wasn't my age or my sense of mortality. It was more like everyone else's...
I was sitting in a meeting with seasoned dev professionals. In this company, I am barely on the credits. I'm like "key grip" or something, and these guys are headlining acts. So I listened. Hard. What I realized is this is completely different from perhaps 5 years ago, when everyone (in my meetings, at least) was 20something, and reactionary, and clueless. When I listened hard in those meetings I learned vocabulary. I learned what was going on. In today's meeting, I learned how things go on, and why. It was advanced battle strategy tactics when all I was expecting was brute force. I was very impressed.
The image I had was of the ocean. Very unpredictable place. You can get a boat and row yourself around on the top, but that don't mean anything. Compare that with someone who has evolved gills, and has learned all the different whale dialects, and has several successful symbiotic relationships with a variety of species protecting them or making life easier. This is what being a seasoned professional looks like, at least to someone like myself who is still in the rowboat.