29

Is it weird to consider this a lost year already? Or a ghost year maybe. I'm in between being young without any responsibility and being old with a lot of it. There was all this time...before now. Now there is less of it. I had a decade of my twenties to get my shit together. As I enter the last year of them I wonder if I've only made more shit to sift through. But the purpose of life isn't to get through it. Before 29, I tackled life. I ran at it full force & tried to make it mine. I tried to own it, control it, mold it into a reality I could handle. A truth I could face. I want it? I got it. It's a helpful attitude for running a business. But life is malleable. It surprises, it throws curveballs. Shit happens. Your heart changes. Someone you love dies. It can be unfair & cruel in a split second. Life doesn't respond with a participation trophy.

Life is a reflection of how you show up with the time you have here on Earth. Everyone loves this metaphor when the reflection staring back is celebrating. Or when it is youthful. Sunkissed. A little buzzed. Where it gets interesting is when the reflection staring back is hard to face. Maybe you were the one that was wrong. Maybe you were the one who's trying to figure out where you fit in all of this. This being any number of things; family drama, relationships, a new team, a growing family, your community, whatever. Or maybe you love where you're at but when you look around there is no audience cheering you on. If no one sees a happy person uploaded, does a happy person exist? I can tell you with absolute certainty that yes, happy people do exist even if you don't see them.

I'm not talking about the bright white happiness we all consume yet know is bullshit. I'm also not talking about its opposite; inflated & triggering news that isolates, separates, & ostracizes. I'm talking about the dirt-under-your-fingernails kind of happy. The deep belly laughs only your brother can bring out in you kind of happy. The introducing your cousin to a passion of hers & showing her it is real kind of happy. The sharing the bed when you thought you'd only ever be a mattress hog kind of happy. The in-flight, airplane mode, how the hell am I above the clouds, kind of happy.

When I was in grade school my mom would take me back to school shopping around this time of the year. (This might seem like an immediate curtail from what I'm saying but stick with me. It's related, I assure you.) It was enough to have a first day of school outfit and some other items to fill in what I had grown out of over the last year. It would get to the big day and I wouldn't wear the new items. I'd keep them hung up with their tags in my closet for weeks. My mom noticed and asked, "Why aren't you wearing the new clothes we picked out for you?" To which I responded, "I don't want the newness to rub off. I don't want to tarnish them".

There's a phrase for this. It's called foreboding joy. It means putting off joy thinking if you let it seep out in little increments, it will never go away. You'll have stored up enough joy by holding off on feeling it so when the opposite rolls around, you'll have enough to combat the impending doom you're sure is coming for you.

So maybe year 29 is knowing challenges are inevitable regardless of how hard you try to be the best version of yourself. The challenge is not related to who you are as a person, challenge is a standard item that comes with living. It's inescapable. But holding off on expressing joy out of fear it will go away is only hurting one person's reflection. And it's the one that needs to matter most to you. The bravest thing you can do is look yourself in the eye – in moments of both challenge & joy. To another revolution around the sun.

May it be a good one. xo, Em