This is fine.

Today I’m 39. I’ve been looking forward to being 39 – since three times itself is nine, and also, it just seemed like it’d be a pretty killer year. It has yet to live up to hype.

I’ve been feeling very fragile lately — extra anxious, losing patience really quickly with the kids, prone to frustration. I wasn’t really looking forward to having a birthday like this. But, if I’m very honest, each year is only what we make it, and I am who I am — this is all I get to work with, so I need to work with it best I can.

If nothing else, today is an opportunity to reflect and think about how I want thirty-nine to trend, so that when 40 comes around it’ll be the balm dot calm.

Here’s the direction I’d like to continue moving this year:

• Hold my children on my lap, now, while they’ll still let me. Make sure they know they’re safe and loved, even when I’m not being lovable. Even when they’re not.
• Continue to grow at work. I’m sure I’ll (keep) making mistakes, but moving forward is important and can’t wait for perfection.
• Mentor more women, in either formal or informal situations.
• Continue reshaping by changing my relationship to food (and wine) and increasing my normal daily movement (a bit challenging at the moment). I’m down 25 pounds of fat and up some amount of muscle. Looking forward to the increased freedom.
• Stop being afraid of the basement. It holds up the house, we need it.
• Continue being visible. It’s to me to state my views and correct misunderstandings clearly and openly — this mainly applies to work, where I have been working for about a year on representing myself transparently on an anonymous workplace blog we have. But I think it also matters here, on my own blog, and in social situations. People can’t agree with me if they don’t know what I think! And I can’t learn more if people can’t discuss nuance with me.

I’ve had a fairly nice day, and only spent a little bit choked with anxiety, and it’s far from over! It’s nearly 5pm here, but because of the shifted schedule I work now with COVID-19 and children home and all that, I don’t start work until 2 or 3, and don’t finish until 8 or 9. Then I do end-of-day childcare stuff. So my day doesn’t usually end until midnight or so. So it’s early! But here’s what’s happened so far:

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I’m not sure what the next couple days and next couple weeks hold. I don’t know if we’ll go back to school this year (I don’t think so). I don’t know if daycare will open over the summer (I don’t think so). I don’t know when I’ll be able to balance my life to better prioritize work. But I do know that right now my family is prioritized, and while it’s exhausting, I will look back at the way 39 started, and I’ll be jealous of the time I have now.