I have turned 39. Turned. Rounded the edge to 39. 39, the almost forty. The epically almost. ALMOST.
And on my 39th birthday, I got a message that I had won $650. For filling out surveys. Really. Really? Yup, really. I usually don't do that kind of thing (I won't win, so I shouldn't do it), but somehow when I filled them out I thought, shit, I've got something to say that they want to hear, so I'm gonna win that money. And I did. The. Fuck?
And you know what I realized? I realized that all of the things I didn't enter, didn't venture do because I thought I wouldn't win... I could have won. But I never did. I never won because I stopped myself from ever trying. In my mind I had lost before I had even started.
Before this starts sounding like a motivational speech that a high school football coach might deliver to his group of rag-tag losers, let me say that none of this should be particularly epiphanic. I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I can be pretty insightful sometimes. Sometimes.
How can it be that I made it all the way to 39 without calling myself out on my bullshit? WHO ELSE HASN'T BEEN CALLING ME OUT ON MY BULLSHIT, BUT SHOULD HAVE? YOU? YOU OVER THERE? Did I need more than 10 years of therapy only to NOT GET TO THIS?
Or is it true that I had to "come to it myself"... because, really, that is TOTALLY UNSATISFYING and I dare say really fucking late. I could have come to this at 29 and still had a really productive decade behind me. But no.
As much as I hate to say it, are THEY right? The people who say with age comes wisdom? I think that doesn't fully describe this scenario. I'll work on a catchy headline to try and describe my utter lack of emotional ability to, in a timely manner, recognize this easy truth...:
With Age Comes Giving Less of a Fuck About Failure
Optimism for No Good Reason Might Have Changed Life for the Past Ten Years
I've Done a Lot of Shit, But I Should Have Done a Lot More
"I like to sleep too much!"-- Local Woman Laments
Too many amazing things have happened to people around me-- random people. Now these amazing things are going to happen to me, too. (I happen to have just finished watching the last few minutes of the Muppet Movie with my son... and I may just be high on Muppet fumes), but all Muppet-related disclaimers aside,
I'm Gonna Do Some Shit. And It's Gonna Be Awesome.
