birthday

Lordy, Lordy – Thoughts on turning 40

/ Shane / 2 Comments

As I have said before, I am not generally one to get stuck on milestone birthdays. I have always been fortunate enough and that makes me feel pretty good about birthdays (or maybe it’s just because I lost my hair so very, very long ago, so I’ve had no choice but to get over it). This year, for starters, I have a wonderful, healthy family, a nice house, a good job (with a surprise promotion just yesterday!), and I’m the healthiest physically I’ve been probably since high school. So I don’t exactly look back on my 30s with a lot of regrets.

All that being said, there is something about the big 4-0, and I have found myself dwelling on it a lot more than I thought I would as it approached. Not specifically the birthday itself, but just getting older in general. It seems like in the past 6 months or so, I have felt a million new aches and pains. Maybe just because it has been on my mind, I don’t know.

But it really does feel like, for the first time, I’m starting to feel “old”.

For whatever reason, when I think of “parents” or “the previous generation” I always imagine the people who would sit in the stands at like middle and high school sporting events. I don’t know why, but in any case, I can’t help but acknowledge that that’s me now, you know? (Side note: we had kids relatively young, and thank god! Parenting is so exhausting, that I seriously cannot imagine doing it any older. How could I accomplish this with any less energy?!)

I suppose the cliche is to say I feel younger than I am, and that is both true and not true. I just went over all the reasons it’s not true, but I think it’s also fair to say that I still spend time making memes and reading comic books and playing dungeons and dragons and I fall asleep nearly every night thinking about programing robots to fight other robots, which….I don’t know exactly what a 40 year old is supposed to be doing, but I certainly wouldn’t have guessed it was that stuff.

Even with all that, there is something about the number 40, though. Yesterday, if I were talking to someone who was, let’s say 24, I would have (optimistically) thought, “Well, they’re in their 20s and I’m in my 30s, so we’re not SO different in age!” But suddenly today I have to instead think, “They’re in their 20s and I’m in my 40s. That’s a 20 year difference!”

That is a lot of aging to experience all at once.

So, you know, here I am. Middle aged. Bald, with a kid in middle school, but also probably living a better life than I had imagined I would. Struggling sometimes with parenting, but also super fulfilled by my career and hobbies, and learning new things every day. Wishing I had more time, but also happy with the way I spend my time and money.

Now just wait until I hit 50…

 

My 30s: One Last Time

/ Shane / Leave a comment

I should probably save some of this angst for next year’s birthday post, but as I enter the last year of my 30s I do find myself reflecting on the impending big 4-0.

I have never been one to put much stock in the “milestone” birthdays, but as I am turning 39 it occurs to me that maybe that’s only because I haven’t really hit any big ones yet! 30 didn’t seem like a big deal because I *felt* like a 30 year old. I owned a house and had a second kid on the way. But I don’t know that I’m ready to be a 40 year old, and I’m suspecting to feel the same about every milestone birthday from now on.

BUT, I am going to see Hamilton (again) tonight (for the 3rd time), so it seems appropriate to say to my 30s:

One last time
Let’s take a break tonight
And then we’ll teach them how to say goodbye
to say goodbye
You and I

One last time, 30s. Let’s make this a good year, shall we?

A look back on 2017

/ Shane / 1 Comment

My birthday being so close to the beginning of the year, I’m usually feeling pretty retrospective around this time.

I think this is the first time that one of these hasn’t been all sunshine and rainbows, but I’m not going to lie: 2017 was a hard year. It is not lost on me that I’ve lived a semi-charmed kind of life up until now, and that my problems tend to be of the “first world” variety. I’m not trying to say that I have it harder than so many people. But, you know, I only have this one life to live, so.

I’m generally a pretty upbeat, optimistic kind of guy, and stress usually just kind of rolls off me. So maybe I’m just not used to dealing with it, I don’t know. But I do know that 2017 has been, by far, the most stressful year of my life and, in retrospect, I have not been handling it well.

There was the drama of buying / selling houses, the tremendous amount of work we’ve put into said new house, and just generally having a one year old running around, to say nothing of the mugging and subsequent identity theft. (You might even be surprised to learn there are other things that I don’t even share on the blog!) And honestly, parenting the big kids has gotten quite a bit harder too, partially because of all the activities and things they do, which require a lot of time and effort on our part, and partially because as they get older, their problems (and the remedies to those problems) get more nuanced and complex.

(Just to talk about the mugging for a second: on one hand, I would say I’m well and truly over it, and it doesn’t impact me anymore, and on the other hand I would say that it’s been 9 months and not a day goes by that I don’t still think about it.)

So there are good days and bad days. It is certainly true to say I have probably cried more in 2017 than the previous 5 years combined (probably more in the last MONTH than the previous 5 years combined). I think maybe I had my first ever panic attack. But there have been a lot of good things too, not the least of which is my health. I ran not my customary one, but TWO 5ks this year. My weight has been maintaining somewhere around PRE-COLLEGE(!!!) weight. I have three very intelligent, very unique children, and a wife that I love very much, and we live in a house that is so amazing that I am consistently embarrassed by it.

I find myself reminiscing fondly for a time life was simpler (like, 2016 forex). At the very least I’m hoping for a calm, uneventful 2018, after which we will look back on 2017 and see it for the aberration it was. Just one blip on the radar, not the beginning of a trend (please not the beginning of a trend; I can’t handle another 2017!), just a one time course correction before everything settles down.

In the meantime, I am reexamining everything. Typically my approach to difficulties is just to keep my nose to the grindstone and work as hard as I can until I get to the other side. Just keep those legs churning. It has lately occurred to me that that approach only works if I am pointed in the right direction. If I’m throwing myself into work in the wrong direction, that is, in a way that is not recognized or appreciated because it’s not what everyone else wanted or expected, then I’m actually just digging in deeper and making the problem worse.

So my New Year’s resolution for 2018 is to realign and strive for Zen. Hopefully, if nothing else, I can learn some lessons that will help ultimately redeem 2017 into something worthwhile.

Here’s to a peaceful, calm, Zen 2018!

Happy Birthday to Ollie

/ Shane / Leave a comment

The year of first grade is such a big year, and Ollie has changed so much. Reading and writing, having real friends, just being like a person rather than a little kid. He has real interests, he has things that he’s good at and things that he’s not good at, likes and dislikes…he’s not a baby anymore.

At the same time, though, there are so many things about him that are exactly the same. Do you know how many pictures I have of Ollie making a goofy face? He’s still goofy, still such a sweetheart.

ollie_goofy

One pretty significant change in the last year is Alex, and how much he loves his big brother. “Oliver!” he tries to say the moment he wakes up. “Oliver! Oliver!” It is so…heart warming to see the way that he looks up to his big brother, and I’m interested to see how that continues to develop.

Here’s to another year, buddy. Hope you continue to carve your own way in the world.

ollie_nice

(Photos courtesy Jeremy Sanderlin)

Happy Birthday Evelyn!

/ Shane / Leave a comment

IMG_1328

(Photo credit Lauryn Marinho)

You know, it is getting pretty difficult to live up to Mrs. Evelyn’s birthday plans. As readers of this blog well know, she has always been a “big idea” kind of gal, and as you can imagine her birthday is no exception. Luckily for us, she finds ways to spread it out as much as possible. (“We can do that on my actual birthday, and then for my party we can do X, and then we’ll have my birthday with the family…”)

Oliver certainly did his part, working on present after present for her in his room for weeks. His gifts ranged from meticulously copied chapters from Harry Potter into custom made “books”, to all of his legos, to a caterpillar made out of pipe cleaners and an egg carton, to stuffed animals he rescued from the “give away” pile, all buried under a metric ton of tissue paper.

So far today I have only gotten one, “It’s my birthday, you have to do what I say!” which, to be honest, seems kind of low.

It’s so easy to jump on kids when they’re bad, but ignore them when they’re good. Evelyn is so good so often, and I don’t say it enough. She is:

  • So responsible. You almost never need to tell her something twice; when you tell her to do something, she does it.
  • So helpful. She’s always willing to jump up and help you (maybe not in the way you wanted, but help you nonetheless!)
  • So empathic. She absolutely cannot stand for Alex to cry. It physically pains her.
  • So independent. She has strong opinions (especially when it comes to clothing). She makes her own lunches. She practices the piano every day. She keeps track of her brothers. She’s basically like a little adult.

In the past year Evelyn has learned 1) she really enjoys baking, especially inventing her own recipes (she can make her own scrambled eggs!), 2) she never wants to be caught ANYWHERE without a book to read, and 3) she does not want a rabbit. I know she is looking forward to 3rd grade and going to the “old” school BY HERSELF.

My favorite things to with Evelyn are read her a story at night and listen to her play piano. I love how excited she gets about theater, both as an actress and just watching other people perform.

I can’t wait to see how she grows in the next year!