Finally Forty

Today is my fortieth birthday, and as a blogger with 10 years of history to look back on, I actually remember writing the post I wrote on my thirtieth birthday, and many others since then. My 32nd birthday seems to have been my first documented case of always feeling like the youngest person in the room, something I still struggle with now (see the title of this post for more evidence of that!). My 34th birthday had me writing about some new health challenges, after I'd already been struggling with other health issues. Both 36 and 38 caught me referencing my few strands of grey hair. But I hadn't gone back to that 30th post until recently, because I knew I had some wishes that I'd wanted to fulfill back then, and I couldn't remember what they actually were.

Back then I wrote:

This will be decade, G-d willing, in which my second child is born, and when the BusyBee will go to kindergarten. Hopefully, we'll be able to do further renovations on our home to create our version of a dream house. There will be weddings and bar mitzvahs to attend, and I hope to finally see Europe. There won't likely be any more formal education, so I'm interested to see how I'll keep learning.

Well, it's turned out a lot like I did imagine it to be. Max is almost 10, and BusyBee, known to all of you now as Hannah, is in eighth grade. We finished renovating the house two years ago and haven't grown tired of our new space at all. There were lots of weddings and Hannah's bat mitzvah, and trips to Paris, Israel, Disney World and a totally unanticipated in any way work trip to Hong Kong and Singapore. And while the formal learning has indeed stopped for me, I never imagined blogging conferences, The Having It All Project, producing two shows and having a blog post published by The New York Times. I couldn't have seen 10 years ago that "writer" would become such a part of my identity, even if it's a too often neglected part of who I am these days. And I definitely couldn't have predicted being with the same company for 12 years now, in a role like the one I have - I didn't really know roles like mine existed then.

It's much harder to see what life might look like for me a decade from now. It's likely that both kids will be out of the house by then, but so much will have to have happened to make that possible. I'd still like to travel more, and I hope my health remains close to as good as it is today. And if we're asking for things, I'd really like my Jetsons flying car that turns into a brief case in the next decade, please.

But mostly, I feel really lucky to have lived the 40 years I've had so far. There isn't much that I'd change if I could, and I think that's a good way to feel at this point.