There’s something I’ve Google searched at least four times in the last month: ‘days until August 24, 2025.’ Why? That date will be my 40th birthday. I didn’t think I gave a heck about the milestone (that word gives me the ick), but protest though I will, it’s got me by the locs and it won’t let go. But I want to do something different with it instead of anxiously counting the sands of time.
The word that has been pootling around my brain since the start of the year has been alignment. Though it sounds like the most vomit-inducing phrase to say, I feel like I’m on a journey of alignment in the lead-up to the age. I finally know what I’m working towards in each of the sections of my wheel of life, and I want to spin each part of that web into… not gold, but at least, something more than it is now. The aim is not perfection. I’ve lived too long to think that any age, label or status leads to life utopia, but I do want more.
And how else for me to document this journey, but with the written word. My life of words. Something to read back and reflect on and share in the moment, just to see what comes. To track the moments, because these moments are our lives and the micro-musings are the vital threads of action and thought that we often forget to attribute to the outcomes, decisions and huge realisations.
This is mainly for me. A selfish endeavour shared with candour, because I have always believed in the power of our lived stories spoken out loud (or typed on the internet).
I don't know what I’ll type or when, I just feel this pull, so here I am. Let’s see what comes.
T minus 511 days…
You will never know how much it is bugging me that this isn’t beginning on a rounded number. I mean, 500 days to 40, just sounds right, hey? But alas, creativity, like life, doesn’t abide by our ideals of rounded numbers or starting on a Monday, so here we are. And where better to start this series in my mind, than with failure.
A few days ago the following thought came into my mind, “ but what about the freedom of failure?” In my current season, failure equates to freedom in some areas.
A relationship I was in came to an end. It’s made me confront feelings about having children biologically, as even though I’ve felt fairly ambivalent about having my own children, I find my brain constantly serving up should statements and “are you sure?” questions to things I’ve felt quietly quite certain about for a while. Not realising it at the time, I did some of the most important life work I’d ever do at the dawn of my thirties. That work was to divorce myself from the label and the idea that I had to be a mother—and also that it was only available in the terms that had been prescribed to me.
Maybe my ambivalence makes it easier to deal with in this area, but it’s in this one alone. There is pain and regret and disappointment that stands in many others.
I pined for my shoulds to arrive in my twenties and thirties - willing them to materialise, instead of wondering if they ever truly belonged to me.
I find that work of combing through and considering what is true continuing now. The circumstantial truths that are newer based on how life is panning out, as well as what has always been true - both the lived loudly and that which has been shrouded and covered up but is unveiling itself as the years go by.
Anyway, back to failure.
I’m not concerned about being a parent and less concerned about being partnered. I don't own a home. I work hard and I enjoy the work I do, but I wouldn’t necessarily say I’m a career person. I haven’t climbed any particular ladders. I’ve misspent money. I’ve missed opportunities. Those relationships haven’t worked out.
It’s obvious now. For all to see. For all the years I was clinging to the idea of control, trying to convince the masses that I knew what I was doing and what the eventuality was going to be, you could have called me Pharell Williams, because I was just frontin’ - and I can stop now. Thank God.
By society’s standard— and a few of my own, I am a failure. But I find it the most freeing thing. There’s no expectation and the shoulds are off of my shoulders. I’m on the other side of it, and instead of “when?” or “"what now?”, the question is a curious, open-ended and pleasantly phrased “now what?” that in this moment, feels like freedom because the answer can only come from me.
I can decide what I want, what I work towards and what I want my life to look like. It isn’t all roses, as freedom can feel like riptide. Where do you go when everything is a possibility (but you’re funding it all yourself)? I don’t know.
I genuinely don’t have much of a clue about where the next 511 days will lead me. I know the markers I’m looking out for and the words that will be my anchors as I go. If I reach 40 feeling the most aligned and connected and honest and true version of me, which I already think I’m doing a good job of, I’ll be really content for that to be the launchpad for a new decade. The threads are there. They may be frayed, but that’s what the next period of weaving and strengthening is about. I don’t see that I have anything to fear if all of my decisions come from the truest parts of me. Then, it’ll just be for me to live them out, be in each moment and take in the experiences.
I already consider that I have a head start in actively rejecting the shame attached to another label: I am a failure. I am free.
I’m a failure too and I am free. 379 days for me and I intend to spend them all loving on me the best ways I know how. Thank you for this inspiring post!
Love this - I also did some maths, I’m 693 days away and relate to so much of what you’re saying. There is definitely a freedom that comes when you switch to “what now?” Dan and I have landed on travel and pets for the foreseeable ❤️