Starting Over

I was told that as soon as you turned 30, your back would hurt.

I wasn’t told that you’re also expected to have life all figured out. At 39, I don’t think I’ve come close to figuring it all out. Am I supposed to?

My 30s were strange. I entered the decade with a long-term relationship of eight years, a pre-teen daughter, and a steady career as a barber. I was on the “track.” I was doing the things adults are supposed to do.

Then the world tilted.

In an episode of the Chris Williamson podcast, Matthew McConaughey dropped a quote that hit me like a moth on a late-night stroll:

“The ironic tragedy is that life has to be lived forward but only makes sense looking back.”

Too bad I heard this a couple of years too late.

The Tragedy of the Mid-30s

By the time I hit my mid-30s, the “steady” life I knew had dissolved. I became a single dad to a teenage daughter. The pandemic fractured my clientele, disenfranchising me from the only career I’d ever known. The only life I had lived as an adult was in shambles, and I had no clear line of sight on how to make it work.

At that point, I only knew how to look forward. I didn’t know that I could look at life in reverse without falling into the trap of rumination and despair.

I was growing up, but as Walt Disney famously warned, I was also forgetting. I was forgetting the “why.” I was so busy trying to fix the “shambles” that I lost the wonder—the same childlike wonder I feared was buried underneath the rubble of a failed life.

Rebellion at 39

At 39, I now stand at a threshold.

The societal expectation for a 39-year-old is to be polished; predictable; finished. Instead of letting the story of my 30s be directed by tragedy, I’ve decided to take this final year in a different direction. It’s a direction that carried me throughout my childhood: the recovery of “why.”

My rebellion at 39 is against the rush toward the finish line of adulthood. It’s against the noise that constantly beeps at us to be “productive,” insisting that an insane level of output is the only metric for success at this point in life.

How am I taking on this rebellion? By hand. With a curious mind, ancient Stoic reflections, and the tools that have written tales as old as time: pen and paper.

It’s taken some time, but I’ve learned that when life feels like a smudge of ink on paper, the best thing you can do is relax. Take it one letter at a time. Slow down. I’ve started to look back at life and not mourn the life once lived; instead, I find the “remnants” worth remembering.

Why I’m Sharing This

I’m building this corner of the internet for the “Everyday Jan.” For the people who yearn for that feeling of newness in life.

This blog is an exploration of my final year in my 30s. We’ll reflect on moments in life through the lens of philosophy to add calmness to our minds, and the stationery that makes us feel like the architect of our lives.

I’m documenting the tools I currently find and use to redesign my life and stay grounded over on my Start Here page.

We’re going to remember who we were as children before life told us to grow up and leave that childlike wonder behind us.

When did you stop playing as an adult? Tell me one thing you miss about how you viewed life from before you “grown up” in the comments below. I’ll share mine with you.