Turning 40

One of the hardest things for me is to recollect about things that have happened personally. I would be the world’s worst memoirist, since my memories are always clumped together into blobs. Picking apart the details in a way that provides accurate accounting is nearly impossible for me. Clarity of mind is not a strong suit for me, nor is having enough patience required to write something that isn’t dashed off or feels frivolous overall. Much of my daily work revolves around reviewing dense documents written in bureaucratese, so it seems reflexive that I don’t want to put in time to get serious when writing about, or even just for, myself. This is where I’m at 40.

My thirties were a decade of constant change. When I turned 30, I was adrift and alone, spending most of my time doing three things: hoarding books, drinking heavily, and daydreaming about the future without putting in the work. In a serious state of depression, I believed that I was going to be lucky if I made it past 35. Adding uncertain dread from the 2016 election and some failed short-term relationships only caused me to amplify into a gross blend of pessimism, nihilism, and cynicism, going further into my own self-designed hole. While not totally hermetic (still met with friends at least once a month), I felt isolated yet still decided to crawl back out somehow. A mix of spiritual seeking and night classes were decent changes that got me started but that only took me so far, especially once I realized how agitated and damaged everyone else seemed too. “Great,” I thought. “I’m screwed, aren’t I?”

The dread only intensified with 2017 once the election was over and I was mostly trying to find new ways to distract myself. By February, I gave up on the spiritual search and just returned to being an atheist. I was also still too poor to pursue a Master’s, knowing that community college only went so far. It was here where the major shift in my life occurred. Early March, on a whim, I reached out to someone I knew in passing who was hosting a game night with their roommate to ask for an invitation. I won’t lie and say I wanted to go because I enjoy games (usually ambivalent) but there was someone I had a crush on who was marked as a Maybe. I took a gamble to see where this went.

Funny thing: that casual acquaintance is now my best friend, my spouse, and the best improv partner you could ever have.

I’m not interested in providing minute details about the courtship but that game night changed my life literally. We gelled and weeks later, I asked them out on one of the weirdest yet most appropriate dates I ever had. Everything afterwards happened at ridiculously fast speeds. By September, we were already living together in our own shared apartment and got ourselves a cute puppy (still cute, still with us) by November. It wasn’t without troubles, since I was wrestling with my hoarding along with a strong resistance to meaningful change. Yet being with this person meant so much to me that I knew making those changes were only net positives. I’m overall healthier, wealthier, and more enriched by life than I ever could imagine when I was 29. There might still be some stress but turning 40 means I’m now happier.

My original plans when writing this piece on turning 40 was to provide an overview of what happened year-by-year but, frankly, that would require more time and a lot more pages. Between marriage, travel, pandemics, job changes, moving around, and just living through these “interesting times,” there’s so much to recall that even specific months could be 200-page books themselves. While I’m certain that I’ll always be a shit memoirist, that’s a project better left for years from now (or at least as a series of separate essays).

The glow-up I received during the last ten years makes me feel more bullish about what I’m capable of doing, even if the world around us appears like it’s constantly on fire every passing minute. I still don’t know what to expect since the universe is nothing but chaos but I feel that I’ve got a lot more interesting adventures ahead. The future may bring me plenty of heartbreak and misery but it’ll also bring a lot more laughter and excitement. 

I’m now in my forties. I finally and truly feel alive.

I’m not much of an artist but here’s a self-portrait.