Forty
The astute reader may have noticed a tiny, but significant change to my front page bio. After ten good years, I can no longer claim to be a "thirtysomething" man.
I still remember updating that from twentysomething. At the time it felt like something I would never have to do again. Yet here we are.
For at least a year I've thought about the post I'd publish here on my fortieth birthday.
It would be smart, thoughtful and wise. Everything you'd expect from someone who has spent four decades on this planet. I went back and forth on what it would look like, before I — as I inevitably tend to do — got short on time. I then hurriedly put together what can only be described as a poorly disguised listicle with advice on how to stay sane which included things advice like "brush your teeth" and "exercise".
At the end of the day — my birthday, which was on 18 October, that is — I couldn't even get around to publishing that post. Because I was busy doing other, far more enjoyable things.
And I'm glad.
It was nothing but posturing in an attempt to signal that I had, indeed, reached some imaginary bar. A minimum for how thoughtful, reflected and wise someone turning forty should be.
If such a bar does exist, safe to say the entire ordeal served to prove that I've yet to reach it.
Perhaps that can be a good thing. Because if I have aspirations for my forties, it is to be more accepting. Of the world at large, of my circumstances and, not least, of myself. I tend to be too hard on myself.1
The result is spending too much time being down about not living up to imaginary ideals, and too little time enjoying the here and the now. Too rarely do I do things I enjoy doing for the sake of enjoyment rather than an aim of realising some random, yet oddly specific goal.2
What's the point if you're not striving for something?
I might be forty, but I still don't have an answer for that. And that OK. I don't need to have all the answers. Everything doesn't need to fit in to a grand plan for life, or some magnificent vision for the future where all your dreams are realised.
You can do things just because.
I can, too.
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Merely writing that paragraph goes against my basic instincts. "You're not too hard on yourself. You're too soft on yourself. It's why you're such a loser who'll never amount to anything of note!" is screaming at me from the back of my mind. The thought of writing something that goes against that voice in the back of my mind is challenging enough. The thought of publishing it makes me cringe and feel physically unwell. ↩
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Even writing this sentence, the thought of just doing stuff without some overarching plan of where I want to go and what I want to achieve feels entirely alien. Again, the voice at the back of my mind is screaming. "It's pointless!" it yells, reiterating that I'm week and this is why I'll never do anything. Where does all of this come from? I don't know. ↩