On Turning 47 | Giving Myself Permission to be Myself
I give myself permission to be a living, breathing, learning, failing, succeeding, complicated human being. For if I don’t, there’s no point in celebrating a birthday.
On Turning 46 | Removing Gravity
Things had been heavy. The weight of failure, the weight of doubt, the weight of responsibility, the weight of disappointment, the weight of guilt, the weight of anger, the weight of annoyance. The weight of the blankets I tried to hide under. So much gravity. But this year has been a year of removing that gravity. I welcome this forty-sixth birthday with open arms and the bearable weight of still being alive and what I’ve managed to learn in the last three hundred and sixty-five days.
On Turning 44 | It’s Time to Grow Up
So tonight, at the time of this writing, I am two hours shy of my forty-fourth birthday and I’m going to dip into the past just a bit, just to the last year, to consider what I’ve learned. And then I’m going to close the door. But before I do, I’ll make sure it’s unlocked and the windows to the past are well Windexed, so that I don’t forget the lessons—all of them—and where I came from and who that boy was and continued to be.
He was tired of carrying her weight. Her financial choices and responsibilities. Her alcoholism. And he knew she was tired of his drug abuse and laziness and porn addiction. And Train played. And the guy kept talking. “Thing is, man… if it weren’t for divorce, I’d have student loans.”