32

There’s something powerful when you can name that it’s a time to rebuild or rethink. To fully enter and give yourself over to the space of not knowing, being fragile, needing to change, needing input and expertise. It always helped me when coaches over the my childhood years of soccer named a year as a “rebuilding year”. It’s a different headspace with more experimentation (people playing in different positions and combinations), more hard conversations about what each person needs to work on, and more gnarly practices of sprints and drills to come together. 31 was a rebuilding year that has both humbled me and helped me trust myself even more. That trust comes from having to rebuild so much both physically and emotionally with my body and my relationships. As soon as I recovered from my back injury, I was plunged into achilles tendinosis that I am technically now healed from but still ramping back up from. I know what needing to do daily PT, daily stretches, daily care routines feels like. I feel very close to this part of the Automattic creed right now: I am in a marathon, not a sprint, and no matter how far away the goal is, the only way to get there is by putting one foot in front of another every day. There were many days in 31 where I could barely walk for 10 minutes and today I both biked for almost 12 miles and hiked for 4 miles before writing this.

I feel both more anti-fragile and more in touch with how fragile life is. I feel more sure over what I want to have impact me compared to the larger external forces I ultimately have little control or say over (from politics to my current job). I feel more in my body and able to move through the world in a way that feels more in line with how I want to live. For most of the year, taking trips felt out of reach–plane rides too long to sit on and city streets too far to walk on. I know one day in the future I will return to that state and I might do so repeatedly until age catches up to me. I feel that fragility deeply now and it makes my days of walking without thinking feel like pure magic.

Having my birthday over a sabbatical (not even the halfway point!) is so luxurious. I didn’t know what day it was today and I’ve loved having so much time outside away from my computer with loved ones. It was hard to find time and desire to sit down to even write this–that’s how I know I’m doing something right. There’s a tangible excitement and deep gratitude for the opportunities I have in my life with my relationships, where I live, what resources I have, my job, and where my body is at. After a year of grief and rebuilding, I want to remain close to that feeling of aliveness and what helps fuel the feeling.  

At the same time, I feel such loss today. The loss of another year without my grandma. The loss of my brother, Andy. The loss of my work in the WordPress community (for now). The loss of so many dear coworkers. The loss of time to heal and to grow closer in more relationships I care about in my life. My mom turns 80 this year and I feel in my birthday the grief of the years passing that I’ll still have with her and my dad (and my birthmom). None of them are getting younger nor are my Uncles and Aunts, most of whom I’m not terribly close to. Nor are my siblings! Nor are some of my friends I long to rebuild with after hurt and pain took its toll. This loss of time is so profound for me and I want it to be something I let myself feel deeply. None of us know the time we have on this wild planet and I never want to lose sight of that. So I sit with my partner’s 92 year old grandparents and feel how close they are to the end of their lives. So I ask my Uncle questions about what it’s like to look back on his life. So I make an extra trip out to go visit another Uncle after a health scare. So I plan a 2.5 week birthday roadtrip for my 80 year mom. So I have hard conversations with both parents. So I book an outrageous trip with friends. So I write postcards to varying kiddos in my life under the age of nine. So I live and I say what I mean and I re-examine what I think I know.

If today is any indication of 32, I’m in for a treat. I woke up to a group text I’m in with my partner and two best friends where each had shared a hilarious video of each of them replicating Pooh dancing to a pitbull song, a video that for some reason makes me laugh so hard. I then sped down to meet up with Kelly for a coffee outside bike hang, exploring a new (to me) park in Seattle and meeting some new folks. I felt my body’s strength as the ride felt mindless to do (something I couldn’t do last year). I then biked to my partner’s apartment, just a 15 min walk from mine, and was greeted by a beautiful card she wrote as well as more beautiful cards for me to send to others. We headed out to Cougar Mountain to stitch together a hike and more time outside. As soon as I publish this, I’ll clean myself up and head off for nachos and margaritas, followed by a delicious cookie cake and ice cream. I imagine I’ll catch the sunset and maybe even swing by Volunteer Park for another telescope hang to see the moon. These everyday moments have been so interspersed with pain during 31, both physical and emotional, that to do them with such ease and want to do them at all feels worth celebrating in and of itself.

Again and again, I ask myself to stay open and stay with this life as it is. That’s my wish for this year ahead. As I wrote last year, here’s to another yearcade (year that feels like a decade).