Happy Birthday to me. I am 40 today.

I know 40 is a subjective number in a giant pile of subjective numbers, but this age is hitting me harder than I had expected. I thought I would sail right through. I was rather wrong.

Turning 30 felt easy. I just kept being whatever it was that I had been, and there was no skip in continuity. No greater philosophical evaluation of life or technique. Just the changing of a number. This is different somehow. I suppose it's part of the larger pattern of becoming myself?

In that case, things are going very well. I'm the most me I've ever been. I feel my roles and I love to be in them. I found the parts of me that need to expand, and I'm pushing on the boundaries. It's scary and nice and uncomfortable. I suppose that is what I always wanted to be, whether I knew it or not.

I spent the last half of last year being a caretaker, and I will be settling into that role again in a couple of months. This is an important role for me, and I'm honored to be in that position. It's forced me to address the ways that I take care of myself. Or, more accurately, how I neglect to take care of myself. Like all growth, this is hard and important.

And I have an amazing group of people who want to take care of and support me, the same way they I take care of and support them. And I have a wider community to lift me up, in the same way that I lift them up. It's powerful stuff.

I'm meeting this part of my life well, and I'm lucky to have that. I hope this continues.