My Exponential Life
thoughts on the past half decade
This past weekend— April 20th to be exact—I celebrated my 35th birthday.
I’ll admit, Easter’s falling exactly on 4/20 this year made all the weed jokes that much funnier (and not because I was high— Easter Bunny + Jesus + weed jokes = lots of middlebrow humor). Though I’m not sure at exactly what age it happens, there’s inevitably a point at which you wake up on your birthday and think ‘Huh. It’s my birthday today. Cool.’ Yes, you still get that ephemeral, light-on-your-feet kind of feeling that’s slightly metaphysical (and certainly psychosomatic), and you look forward to the birthday cards, some tokens of affection, binge eating, and seeing how many Facebook birthday wishes you can rack up in 24 hours compared to your friends (please, don’t even try to tell me you don’t do that). But it’s a reflective experience more than an experiential one— I can only be lucky enough now to experience that awe-inspiring birthday excitement vicariously through my 8 year old son.
Now, I’m not the type of girl that gets all hung up about age. I wouldn’t go back to my teens or twenties if you paid me, and the slow roll towards 40 really doesn’t phase me. I am, however, a poet at heart, so sentimentality often gets the best me— my brain is prone to creating cinematic montages recounting experiences past (set to various tunes by the National & Morrissey, of course). I’m also a Taurus, so milestones ground by the hands of time help me feel more real, more relative to my place amongst the rest of the universe’s inhabitants. So this past Friday, 48 hours shy of my 35th birthday, I found myself in the passenger seat of the car feeling, well, melancholy.
‘What’s up?’ my husband said.
‘I don’t know— I just feel kind of ‘meh’.’
He promptly pulled into an illegal parking spot on the corner of Grove & 7th ave, and went to get me a Rocky Road cone from Big Gay Ice Cream (this man knows me. I mean really knows me.) I sat, pondering my birthday-imposed slump.
And then it came to me. In your teens, every damn birthday year is a big deal. I’m 13– finally a teenager!! …16— drivers license!! … I’m 18… WOO HOO— I’m 19… one more year till my twenties! Then, in your twenties, there’s the awesomeness of turning 21, the 25th which ushers you past your ’early 20’s’, and then (for me anyway) this amorphous late 20’s phase, marked year by year, until the ‘dreaded 29’, leaving you 364 more days until Life Begins at 30.
Now, I wasn’t afraid/sheepish/distraught about turning 30. But I could have never expected what was coming. Which is why I realized, sitting in the car Friday afternoon, that melancholy was holding strong as my conscious mind did a cinematic rewind on the past 5 years. Half Decade. Watching life’s measuring stick lengthen between chit marks, every event and milestone of the past five years came tumbling through, making truth in what I call my ‘exponential life.’
You see, for my 30th birthday, I got divorced. I hit the button on all that was my ‘Life’ and bailed. My husband of 7 years, my 3 year old son, the house in suburbia & the film company we spent 5 years building. I wanted out. Out of everything, because all of it seemed suddenly wrong or at least, unquestioned. I let go of everything, moved out, declared bankruptcy & planned a move back to NYC. My ex and I kept the film business together because we had to, and wanted to, and as much turmoil as our lives were in, we weren’t stupid enough to fuck up the one thing that was going well.
That was April of 2009. In the succeeding 60 months, the following things have occurred:
** note that ’we’ refers here to my (ex)husband and I, in a separate but together kind of way
- I moved out of our family home to an apartment half a mile away
- I declared chapter 7
- We shot Chelsea Clinton’s wedding
- I shot Nicole Richie & Joel Madden’s wedding & Francesco (the ex) shot Nick Swisher & Joanna Garcia’s wedding. On the same day.
- We let go of our home and moved back to NYC (well, Hoboken). Separately, but together.
- We expanded our film company (slightly) to include a small team of associate shooters & editors
- Our son started kindergarten
- The ex considered moving in with his (then) current girlfriend, then decided against it
- I dated two guys twice (guy #1, guy #2, guy #1, guy #2)
- We brewed the idea for our startup out of our film studio & the ex’s living room (Jan 2011)
- The ex got his wisdom teeth taken out (April 2012). I stayed over for the weekend to take care of our son & help him out. I never left.
- We found the perfect Montessori elementary school for our son to begin 1st grade.
- We moved into a new place together in June 2012.
- We celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary (2012).
- I realized we were embarking on a new company, not a product, had an existential crisis, got over it, and got to work (Jan 2013).
- We shot the weddings of Matt Damon, Jesse Tyler Ferguson & LeBron James (2013)
- We closed $75k of friends & family funding (Nov 2013)
- We picked up our first documentary film opportunity (March 2014)
- Our startup evolved & grew in leaps and bounds, and is a few months away from launch.
- I have sprouted my first few grey hairs. Certainly because of the startup, no doubt.
Whew. Our swift and agile journey, never planned but always somehow logical through the rear view mirror. Our exponential life.
Our exponential life.
So here I am, five years later, on the brink of my 35th birthday. My so-called life that blew apart & came back together again, retaining some but not all of its original parts. Those that remain are a bit worse for the wear but thankful for the experience, and I couldn’t be more grateful, humbled, or happy to have my husband/ex-husband/husband at my side. I couldn’t count on anyone else to keep the pace with me through this crazy journey, and to know when a Rocky Road cone will do the trick.
As Malcolm Gladwell points out, Courage is Acquired. It comes from doing and being and knowing you don’t always know. Here’s to the next half decade, and all it has in store. Bring it.
‘Courage is acquired.’
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