I’m 40 now. Almost dead.

So, as I approach my final years (RIP), I’ve been reflecting a lot on the past decade and what I want going forward.

On my 30th birthday, I moved to Chicago to kick off a new, stressful, and fruitful trajectory in my life and career.

In that decade, I took some risks, took advantage of some big opportunities, worked hard, had some big wins, lucked out, and burned out.

On paper, our net worth quickly went from negative to a couple milli. We got a new house. New cars. Traveled a lot. It felt like success. Not quite "made it" success, but definitely success..

After buying the house, we immediately started remodeling it, which turned into the biggest set of personal construction projects that I've undertaken. It was fun, stressful, rewarding, and I learned a ton from it.

While focusing on my career, our house, and "what's next," my creative and fun-loving sides took a huge hit. My mental health suffered from stress, burnout, purpose, over-thinking, anxiety and depression. I was in my own head, all the time.. and the loneliness of the Covid-19 pandemic certainly didn’t help.

Early on, Kari was diagnosed with a life altering disease, which brought us much closer together, but it also put a new spin and a bit of stress on everything - especially the pandemic.

In my thirties, I developed a lot of gray hairs, aches, and some wrinkles. Old balls.

But I’ve started to grow out of the slump a bit. Prioritizing yoga, therapy, socializing, and leisure has helped a ton.

In my 20s, I put an acceptable, but lower amount of effort into school and work, but a ton of energy into creativity and fun outside of it. I always hated when people let their work define them, and I let that happen for a good chunk of my 30s. It was good, bad, and something that I hope I'm over.

So, I guess with where I'm at, I’m looking forward to what my 40s bring. I hope it’s a continued focus on leisure, creative tinkering, and physical activity. I think that my goal for the near future is happiness. Not "success." We work to play, right?

The other day, someone was talking to me about the amount of years that you have left for certain activities. How many more winters will your health be good enough to snowboard? How many more holidays will you prioritize seeing your family? How many more random weekends will you plan to visit friends? Realistically, there’s still probably quite a few. But it was a nice reminder to not take time for granted.

Another person reminded me that leisure is not wasting time, it's spending time.

These are both things that I've struggled with and will try to remember going forward...

Fuckin forty.

It’s weird to feel both, completely the same and so much different than I did 10, or even 20 years ago.

Wild.