Beginnings (and a new name!)

Ringing in the new year with SARDINES and the same old me

Hello and welcome to the new and improved blog — SARDINES! The old name (brb) was chosen at random, without anything resembling thought. I didn’t even know if I’d keep this blog or delete it, but here I am, still posting away. It was time for a change.

SARDINES is borrowed from a Frank O’Hara poem about creativity and process — “Why I Am Not a Painter.” It’s about everything we put into our art, visible and not. Find this poem and a more clarified vision for this blog on the About page.

Now, on to this week’s post…

It’s the first week of January and I’m in a cozy little coffee shop. It’s not one of those sleek, third wave coffee shops that are overly bright and hard and cold. It’s an old building with creaky wood floors, creaky wood chairs, dim lighting, and no WiFi. Beach House is playing and I just finished prepping my new journal for the year. Our social commitments are done (for now) and I’m turning my attention to some apartment projects I pushed off. This is how I’ve spent most of the week — coffee shops, movies, and easing into the new year at home. It feels good.

Said coffee shop, working on this very blog post.

I’ve mentioned before that I’m a freak for resolutions and habit tracking. Every year I see all the anti-resolution posts and, while I totally get it, it’s just not how I operate (though I do like this “gentle January” concept, I must say). I love making a good list and any excuse to build an elaborate Excel spreadsheet. I love dreaming and planning and strategizing…execution is another matter. But January is also my birthday month which, historically, I’ve been grumpy about. 

Maybe it stems from having a birthday so soon after the long holiday season. Everyone’s hit their socializing and celebrating limit without enough time to recharge, myself more than anyone. Or maybe it’s a more run of the mill insecurity. You see how other people are celebrated throughout the year as they post about big parties, dinners with their three dozen closest friends, and seemingly endless tributes to their own friends. It’s hard not to let that sink in, at least a little bit. It’s hard not to wonder if your own people love you as much as all that, even when you know they do.

And the thing is, I’d be uncomfortable with too much attention anyway, it’s really not what I want. I don’t want to be forgotten but I don’t want the big party either. At my first job out of grad school I was able to avoid giving my birthday to the person who organized cards and cakes for the entire time I was there (5+ years). But then I inevitably get sad and melancholy and feel lonely, because even though I don’t want anyone to know it’s my birthday, *I* still know, and there’s no getting around that.

I recognize it’s an impossible position to put other people in. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, I’m gonna be in my feelings no matter what…at least until a few years ago when I vowed to stop being such a grump about it all. I quit drinking shortly after I entered my thirties and then shortly after that the pandemic hit. There were suddenly far fewer parties and celebrations and nights out than before, and also far fewer nights of alcohol-fueled maudlin moping from me.

An It’s Always Sunny meme that made me somberly laugh years back (and still does).

I woke up to the realization that I’d made it through my tumultuous twenties. Not only was I not going to die young, I actually hoped to live a long life. A curious new mindset that meant making some major changes. Drinking was the biggest of those changes but it set off a cascade of smaller transformations that added up to a more stable internal life. As my next birthday approached I realized I wasn’t feeling the same degree of dread as usual and I had a little more space for introspection.

The narrative I’d been telling myself was that making a huge deal out of birthdays was kind of frivolous and self-centered (which…it can be, sorry if you’re a “it’s my birthday month” person). But throwing yourself a pity party is still making yourself the center of attention, just in an annoying and depressing way. So I decided to get over myself, or at least try to. I still get a little stormy but it’s much easier for me to bounce back now. And anyways, somewhere along the way I realized I liked getting older.

I like being in my thirties. You couldn’t pay me to live through my twenties again. I mean, sure I’d like the chance to go back and do some things differently but my day-to-day is infinitely better now. I’m visibly aging, I have aches and pains that I’m starting to suspect are permanent, the infinite possibilities of the future no longer look so infinite, and each day I’m getting closer to the inevitable end, as we all are. But I’m happier, more comfortable in my skin, more confident in my relationships, more grateful for the chance to experience any of this at all. I like waking up each day.

I was thinking about this tension between my love for New Years resolutions and lofty plans for the future, and my discomfort with my birthday and self-celebration. Both are intensely personal, intimate. But where resolutions are aspirational — they hold the promise of a more fulfilling future — birthdays, for me at least, carry with them a reminder of death (though I never even think about this when it’s time to celebrate someone else). And even though I’ve come to appreciate getting older, it’s this day more than any other that makes me wonder if I’m making good use of the time I have. What is “good” use? Let me know if you have the answer…

This line from Mad Men was circulating online a few weeks back (along with this great piece on our fixation on celebrity romance) and it was one of those moments where I realized, uh oh, I’m identifying with Don here — never a good sign. New Years feels like a beginning, birthdays feel like a march toward the end, a reminder of all the plans I had that I failed to bring to fruition. But beginnings? Love those. Can’t get enough. I’m enamored with the potential they hold. So much so that it can blind me to reality and keep me from doing anything at all, all but guaranteeing I’m in the same exact place the next time I stop to take stock of my life. 

I was listening to

A social life, with friends

(great new pod which I’m absolutely loving) and one of the guests said how the advice we give young people — to keep your options open — is actually the worst advice for building long term, satisfying, nourishing, reliable relationships. I don’t know if anyone ever explicitly said this to me, but it was, in some ways, the guiding principle of my life for a long time. 

I didn’t want to commit to a city or a job or a creative project. I never had an innate calling. I was never naturally gifted enough at one thing for it to seem like the logical target of my attention and efforts. I’ve always been kind of good at a lot of things. I know a passable amount about a lot of topics. It served me well as a librarian, actually, but I didn’t want to commit fully to being a librarian either (and now I’m not).

On the one hand, this is a fortunate position to find yourself in. It means that there’s possibility no matter which direction you point yourself. But it can be paralyzing. What if I choose wrong and waste a bunch of time becoming mediocre at one thing when I could’ve become great at something else? How do people know what they want to do with their lives? How do people know when they’ve picked the right thing? I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure I’m not alone in this paralysis.

So this year one of my primary goals is to show up consistently and stick with a few creative projects. I’ve gotten into a somewhat more regular writing routine and in a few days I’ll be wrapping up my second 100-day challenge (more on that next week). I’m practicing moving beyond the beginning and focusing on the middle — the tending, the nurturing, the maintaining. I’m committing.

It’s a cliche, that you’re only young once. It’s something we’re told over and over growing up. But I doubt many of us really hear it until we’re not all that young anymore (which is probably also a cliche). I was rewatching Sex and the City recently and got hit with a sharp and surprising sadness that the chance to be in my twenties and live in New York with my girlfriends was gone. It was one of those things that some part of me always just assumed I would do. But I hadn’t and now I never would.

I turn 36 in a couple weeks. I won’t turn 36 again. For some reason it feels like a big one. I’m decidedly past my early thirties and I’m beginning the transition out of my mid thirties. Before I know it the early forties will be knocking at my door. I don’t have kids, I don’t own a house, I’m one year into a second career, I don’t have notoriety or accolades or influence or wealth. I don’t have (have chosen not to have, in some cases) the standard milestones we look for to determine whether or not our time and efforts have been well spent. 

But things have turned out pretty well for me, despite my own best efforts at times. I have the good fortune to have loyal, loving friends and family. I have (fingers crossed) good health and a reliable job with a team I really like. I have a loving home and an adorable dog. I have enough money to pay my bills and even squirrel away some extra. I have food on the table. I have free time to pursue my hobbies.

I’m pretty lucky and in many ways I feel like I got here almost entirely by chance and the good graces of those around me. I feel like I took the long route and stumbled haphazardly into what’s turned out to be a good life. Now I’m starting to wonder where it could go if I actually committed to it.

A song I can’t stop listening to, as a treat.

Maybe I'll have to feel this on my own
You can get what you want
Experience, and a way home