Well, I'm Turning 44.

A Birthday Post Because I Can: Context Collapse #317

Image via DALL-E

So. I’m turning 44 this week.

Well, crap.

I’m not angry that I’m getting older. I’m not freaking out at another notch on the calendar. I’m just… very, very amused and grateful.

10 years ago I had just moved from my hometown of New York to Los Angeles on what was more or less a spontaneous adventure. Now, through a bunch of equally unpredictable life changes, I own a home in suburban Chicago and work as a consultant.

It’s about as massive a change from my old life of working as a journalist as possible. I’m a husband. I’m a dad. I’m a small business owner. It’s a different life, but it’s a very good one.

Without getting too deep in the weeds of the past, both of my parents were out of the workforce by the time they turned 44. My parents both became disabled by then; drug abuse and mental illness hit my family hard. Very little of that was fun.

I grew up with the full expectation that by the time I was in my forties, I would be unemployable with a long trail of poor life decisions behind me. That was the bridge-and-tunnel NYC world I came from; although members of my extended family did very well for themselves, the situation with my parents and my friends in the neighborhood was a whole lot of food stamps and unemployment and self-sabotage. I fully expected that to be my pathway too.

But everything turned out much better than I expected. It turned out that I was pretty good at running a business and working on ambitious projects. I’m really good at P&L sheets. I’m really good at project management. I can write decks and give presentations and draft white papers and scope a proposal in my sleep. 14-year-old me and 24-year-old me would be very, very surprised by that.

Things can be volatile and wacky running a small business and professionally helping agencies and marketing departments unfuck their problems, but they are also very fun. In the professional world, loving your job is a very good thing.

The only problem is that I got myself into a trap. Instead of finding time to write the things I want to write and drawing and making videos and doing random creative stuff for myself, I‘m spending all my time putting together incredibly polished creative work for clients instead.

Which I love! Don’t get me wrong. I love client work and getting paid well to make stuff is damn amazing, but I forgot to make stuff for myself in the process.

That was a mistake.

My gift to myself this year is carving out time for the non-work creative things.

Anyway, any job where I’m able to write myself a birthday newsletter is a good one. I’m looking forward to some really good birthday cake and doing some new things.

With that said… have a great week and here’s to the next one.

-Neal