On Turning 37

And avoiding birthday malaise

Today I turn 37. Most would say I have a lot to feel proud of for my 37 years on Earth. I was a professional athlete. Worked for Google. Started and run a 6-figure WiFi business. Don’t have to wear shirts to work, or frankly, many places at all. But as a competitive person, birthdays are always neutral at best.

Neutral because we can’t help but compare ourself to others. Many of my teammates at Vanderbilt have gone on to become multi-millionaire athletes. Many of my colleagues at Google have gone on to raise happy families and become multi-millionaires in their own right.

And while my life is objectively miles ahead of where it was in my 20s, there is no denying that 20% of my peers in college and at Google have commercially outperformed me to this date. My relative failure is tangible.

And in my 37 years on Earth, I’ve paid very close attention to successful people. And one thing I noticed early on was that successful people are almost never satisfied. Many of the most successful men I’ve rubbed shoulders with simultaneously consider themselves God’s gift to mankind as well as miserable failures. The contradiction does not escape me.

But I think the reason this is the case is because sometimes to succeed you need to numb the pain of life. That’s where a God Complex comes in handy. But sometimes to succeed, you need to amplify the pain in life. That’s how many successful people avoid complacency and stagnation.

So it doesn’t bother me that despite being nearly half way done with my statistically expected life, I don’t feel especially proud of myself. The older I get, the more time I spend working to make my own life better, the less concern I have about how I stack up.

Some of my biggest wins in the last year are wins that come with no status or bragging rights. I haven’t consumed THC in about 3 months. Haven’t consumed a milligram of nicotine in 6 weeks. I’m sleeping more deeply and I’ve gained about 20 degrees in range of motion for my left shoulder. And I’m doing my best to play the role of a father to an incredibly gifted 4 year old girl.

Once you realize that nobody’s life on the inside is the way it seems on the outside, birthdays cease to function as a reminder of your relative stagnation and start to function as any other day of the year, with perhaps more meat and dessert.

So cheers 🥂 to 37

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