And in the end it will all be fine.

I haven't written here as much as I used to for a lot of reasons. For starters, I have a job that keeps me rather busy. Way back in the day when I started writing here I had a job that was so dull and boring I could finish all of my tasks for the day within my first thirty minutes in the office, which left an awful lost of time for crafting blog posts.  Two, in our current state of social media influencers and paid/sponsorship posts, blogs can feel like they are from a different time; a vanished era when the internet was innocent. Third, at the end of the day I neither feel my sharpest or wittiest and sometimes attempting to write a coherent post feels like the most daunting activity anyone could suggest even though I have about 300 half-written posts brewing in my mind.  My creativity feels wiped and I'm left blaming technology and my job and overstimulation of all the constant pinging and texting and g-chatting and emailing for feeling like I now have the world's shortest attention span. Beyond all of that though is the simple fact that over the last few months I haven't really felt like myself, writer or otherwise. And I can't explain exactly what I even mean by that.

Turning 40 has felt intense for me - in more ways than I can fully articulate. I know age is just a number, you're only as old as you feel, this is the prime of my life, etc, cliche, etc. but for me at least, there has been something about flipping to this next decade that feels a bit more - fill in the blank here  depending on my mood - than turning 30 ever did. 40 is good in a lot of ways.  I'm more confident and self-assured, I'm far less willing to deal with bullshit.  I break rules a lot of the time (because most rules, I have determined, are just nonsensical.) 40 is also sort of insane and challenging in several ways. My metabolism is slowing down, my back hurts a lot more than it ever did before, I love being tucked into bed by 10pm most nights, I don't even know who half of the celebrities featured in gossip magazines are. 40! I was under this false impression in my youth that I would have all things figured out by 40, but - another cliche alert - the older I get, the less I seem to know. About anything. This world is vast and wild and confusing and simultaneously ugly and beautiful and sometimes, well, sometimes it all just gets to feel a bit overwhelming - in good ways and bad ways. Of course, there is a biological ticking clock aspect to this new decade that I'm whole-heartedly aware of as well, one that haunts me occasionally; one that if I dwell on too long I work myself into a real panic over which does no one anywhere any good.

All of this is not to say I am unaware of the many blessings and good fortune in my life. I currently live in a really spectacular city and have strong roots in another really amazing one (I 'm looking at you, Boston.) I have the world's greatest friends, my dear parents are well and healthy and I know they will always have my back no matter the circumstance.  I know that I am loved. I have a good job that pays the bills, my own health, a good education, and a lot of opportunity at my fingertips. All very good and wonderful things.

Still, some days I feel a little lost, a bit untethered, slightly unmoored.  I am fine - but something is shifting, I can feel it in my bones, but I don't quite know exactly what or where that shift is heading.  Blame the eternal optimist in me, but I do know deep down, it's all going to be okay.  It is. Even though some days I can't decide which way is up or which way I should be moving. Those days are hard and frustrating. And yet.

That's how this whole existence goes isn't it? Some good with some bad, the ying and the yang, the beautiful with the ugly.

So that's how I am these days. I'm good and I'm not, I'm happy and I'm sad, I'm calm and I'm anxious, I'm moving forward and I'm stalled, I'm up and I'm down. I want to write more, I want to get back to having some clear brain space to do that writing.  I'm trying to take it all day by day, navigating this new decade I've arrived in personally and heading into the next decade of the 2000s. Because I love this beautiful life, even when I sometimes feel exhausted by it.