30

I just turned 30. I kinda try to do an update every year, though I’m not sure if I’ve been super deliberate about that. I vaguely feel like I must have one for when I turned 20, but I don’t know for sure. Regardless, 30 feels like a particularly important milestone to commemorate with some reflection and introspection.

I’m writing this on my phone. I didn’t have a smartphone until I was 21 going on 22, so I couldn’t have written 20 unless I did it on my computer. Technology is one thing that has changed pretty dramatically in the past decade.

I now have “an audience” – over 20,000 followers on Twitter, something like 800-900 subscribers on YouTube, maybe 400+ on my tinyletter. People invite me on their podcasts and interview me about things. That’s pretty cool. I’ve longed believed that this would eventually happen for me, but I’m not so sure that I was certain it would happen before my 30th birthday. I was mentally prepared for it to take another decade or two. So I’m grateful for this. It’s a pretty great audience, too: thoughtful, introspective, tender, supportive, curious. I’m blessed beyond my wildest dreams. Which means it’s time to dream bigger.

I’ve written an ebook that’s sold over 500 copies- and I haven’t even shipped a version that I’m truly proud of yet. This thing’s got legs! I believe that it’s tapped into something substantial, something I believe that thousands of people will want to read and internalize. It feels pretty good to be where I am right now. I have a vision, a Mission that I believe in, solid amounts of proof that what I’m doing is working…

31

It’s 2021-jun-07-1347, the day after my birthday. I spent most of my birthday with my family, which was pleasant, but I didn’t quite have the time or space to sit down and think about my life – which is what I actually like to do on my birthdays. So I’ll be doing it now instead. 

31 doesn’t really quite real, not in 2021 when we’re in the second year of a global pandemic. I think 30 felt very real (did I write that on my last birthday? Did I write anything at all on the day of? I’ll have to check afterwards.) I don’t like that it feels like I’m – we’re – in some sort of arrested development, like the world hasn’t really been moving, things haven’t really been happening. I know that can’t possibly be true but that’s how it feels. It’s an interesting feeling to investigate, though. Like, could there be any truth in it? The pandemic definitely put a dampener on some things, I’m thinking particularly of music and video. What good music came out in 2020? WAP was the most distinctive thing in pop music. I loved that Hayley Williams did Petals for Armor, and Taylor Swift fans will probably think of it as the year Folklore came out, but what about music in general? I’m sure there’s stuff, I’m talking about how much of it reached me, as someone who doesn’t particularly make a deliberate effort to seek it, but does keep an eye/ear out. 

I think @vgr said something somewhere like, there’s less serendipity when people aren’t out and about as much. Yeah- that quarantine is too scripted. It’s the opposite of lively and interesting. Everything gets dull. The smart move is to try and lean into this, to use this opportunity to switch gears and do things that benefit from the general slowness and dullness of things. And maybe I’ve done some of that but I don’t even feel like doing it, I feel like I got a lot of that out of my system over so many years in my teens and twenties and that now was supposed to be a time of action for me. Well, there’s no sense grovelling and whining about it. I have to accept the things I cannot change, blah blah. See, I’m in my 30s, I’m wiser now. I don’t linger as long in things. Ha ha.