Another birthday, another missed milestone...

Or maybe, an opportunity to give yourself one epic present.

I used to dread birthdays. Each year that passed felt like another 365 days that I’d wasted not crossing off whatever life milestone I was supposed to hit by 18, 27, 30...

I even remember feeling old at 10. I’d hit double digits and had nothing to show for it. Looking back, I can’t exactly remember what I’d hoped to have achieved by that age but let’s just blame Macaulay Culkin (who was only a year older than me and setting the bar way too high with his domination of Hollywood).

At 18, it was because I’d never gotten wasted (which I overly made up for on my 18th birthday party and into my 30s) or had a boyfriend (Ha! I’m so glad now that I saved the relationship dramas for later on in life).

At 27, it was because I wasn’t running a hugely successful media company. (And anyone who was successful in creative fields seemed to have done amazing things by this age or had tragically joined the 27 Club.)

A whole 10 months before I turned 30, it was because I had become the lone, token single friend in my group, and the media company I’d boldly started a few years earlier had left me with a massive debt.

It took that milestone birthday, and the death of someone in our family, to make me realise the reason I felt like I was running out of time every year I got older: I wasn’t living the life I wanted to live.

I felt like I was wasting my life because I was.

I was wasting time in a job that I hated. I was wasting energy pining over the big love of my 20s who didn’t love me. At the same time, I was dating commitment-phobic men and wondering why they didn’t want to be in a relationship. I was trying to build a media company that I didn’t even know I really wanted anymore. I was wasting my life being too scared to attempt the things I really wanted to do.

It all started to change that year I turned 30 and decided to do one thing every day that scared me. I did this for an ENTIRE YEAR. The whole idea was to prove to myself that what I feared was way bigger in my head than it turned out to be in reality. And I did it. It changed the trajectory of my life. (That Year of Fear is a whole story for another time.)

I don’t dread my birthdays anymore. For me, each birthday represents a fresh start.

You know how people usually set new year’s resolutions? That ritual happens on my birthday now. It’s my time to reflect on all the great things that have happened in the last year and write down what I’d love for the following one. It’s not about setting goals, like ‘I want to achieve x by x date’. It’s about visualising the kind of life I want and the cool experiences I’d love to try and promising myself I’ll stop taking life so seriously and just have more fun (a regular on the birthday list).

Which brings me to the reason for this newsletter.

It’s my birthday!

(Look, it was technically yesterday, but as my husband reminded me earlier when he called from work to wish me a happy birthday again, I do like to stretch it out.)

And you know what, in the last couple of years I’ve started feeling a little scared to live big again. Maybe it’s because I have a two-year-old and a mortgage now; Maybe it’s from all that time we spent living in lockdown and then keeping 1.5 metres away from each other. Whatever the reason, doing scary things scares me.

After writing this year’s annual birthday list, I decided the best gift I could give myself is to practise being brave again. Starting by finally publishing this newsletter that has been in planning mode for months (because I was too scared to do it).

As Tim Ferriss had me asking myself (not in real life, I’m referring to his disembodied book voice) through my Year of Fear: what’s the best thing that can happen if you face this fear? And what’s the worst thing that can happen? Usually, the best-case scenario outweighs the worst case.

So, fuck it, here it is! In all its imperfection! My inaugural Substack newsletter, the 3am Huddle: musings on the things that keep us up at night.

Things like, oh you know, getting another year older and feeling like you’re wasting your life away.

I’ll be publishing it weekly, even if it’s not absolutely perfect, because as they say, done is better than never-have-existed.

Having said that, I really do hope you enjoy the 3am Huddle. And if not, that’s cool too. I can live with the worst-case scenario.

Photo by Pineapple Supply Co. on Unsplash