Fourward
On turning 41…
Last night, I was reading some of my own previous birthday reflections.¹ They’re fun, I highly recommend writing them.² Less so, reading them. Except for your own purposes. Anyway, I turned 41 this week.
It’s a weird birthday in that it’s explicitly not a big birthday. It’s the one after a big birthday. Rather, it’s more of a “oh this is real” birthday. I’m actually in my 40s now. I still don’t really feel that way, but I am.
I’m someone who always thinks a lot about time. I’ve long considered it the most valuable resource. As you age, you naturally think about it more. But I believe we’re all thinking about it more these days because the pandemic truly fucked with our own personal relativity. Things that happened five years ago feel like they happened twenty years ago. That kind of thing.
For me, personally, the time dilation is even more acute because I have a toddler, one who has grown up most of her life under the cloud of COVID. It feels like we’re finally turning a corner there — or, at least, moving on (for better or worse) — and so again time is top of mind. What should we do now that we can do basically anything and everything again? It’s both a bit terrifying and terrifyingly exciting.
It’s what I expect to be spending much of my 41st year thinking about and hopefully acting upon. That, plus the usual goals of trying to be healthier and, of course, writing more.³
¹ When I started writing these birthday missives nearly a decade ago, I was probably writing them on a MacBook Pro that operated at around 150 degrees in my lap thanks to the Intel chip inside. Now I’m typing this on an M2-powered MacBook Air which is not only far more svelte, but silent and cool. And the battery seems to last at least 5x as long.
² It’s a nice way to capture your frame of mind at the time, if nothing else.
³ Speaking of writing, while I’m worried about Twitter itself, it’s pretty clear that Revue, the newsletter platform they acquired, and where I run my current newsletter (and my OG one!), is in fact not long for this world. So it’s likely time to reboot 5ish.
