Birthday Reflections
I turned 43 today.
To write about the unique challenges and gifts of living as a xillennial would be easy. I could write about how some days now I wake up a bit stiff if I slept in a funny position, but I don’t feel old. I could write about how I prefer to age naturally, letting my hair streak silver and adhering to one of my favorite quotes by William Shakespeare:
“With mirth and laughter let old wrinkles come.”
I could write about my choice to remain childless and how I’m participating in raising one of my nephews or how I call my corgi my “dog-daughter.”
Easier still would be to write about how fortunate I feel to have the love of friends and family, and especially the understanding that for me, a good birthday means a chill pace to the day. Some coziness, some relaxation, good food.
Was there ever a more Taurus-rising thing to say? I think not.
But what’s been cycling through my thoughts, marinating as it were, these last few days is how I feel I’ve already lived multiple lifetimes leading up to my midlife years of this existence.
I don’t mean this in the way of hopping into different characters’ heads, though writing stories and painting pictures does sometimes feel like time traveling, embodying another being’s experience, seeing the world through fresh eyes.
Instead, I’ve been thinking about how roughly each decade of my life so far, I’ve shifted to a new primary focus for my curiosity, my career. Now, as a Capricorn Sun, career matters a lot to me, though not in the sense of climbing the corporate ladder. My natal Sun hangs out in my chart with Mercury and Venus, as well as Neptune… so my career has always been about finding myself.
And through each decade of my life, I have found myself somewhat changed, grown, and ever more authentic to the person I believe I came here to be.
This isn’t an entry about midlife transits… I’m almost finished with mine, so you can expect that coming somewhat soon, and it will be more than one entry when I do decide to speak up about those particular energies, but rather, this is a simple reflection not of a life half-lived, but of half a life lived.
Digging for Old Bones
I don’t remember when I first became fascinated with dinosaurs, but I suspect it had something to do with the first Land Before Time movie. I was obsessed with Little Foot. I remember one year for my birthday, my parents gave me a Little Food stuffed toy and I was over the moon. Judging by where we lived at the time, I want to say this was for my fifth or sixth birthday.
But while I was interested in dinosaurs, deeply interested, I don’t think I really honed in on wanting to become a paleontologist until I was about 13 years old. I could be wrong; I know adults love to ask little kids what they want to be when they grow up because sometimes their answers are funny, but I honestly don’t have a recollection of wanting to do this work before my early teen years.
I was in love with the book and the movie, Jurassic Park. I thought it was the coolest thing ever that I was in school with Michael Crichton’s niece. But the desire to pursue paleontology didn’t really cement until I was a bit older, around the age of 13.
By the time I was in high school, I was volunteering once a week at the Yale Peabody Museum, running the fossil cart and helping with gala events like the one to unveil the Chinese Feathered Dinosaurs. I got to meet Dr. Ostrom when he was still alive, and I read the book Raptor Red by Dr. Bakker over and over again. It was a novel about a dinosaur, but infused with the scientific understanding of a paleontologist.
If those names mean nothing to you, don’t worry. I’m not going to quiz you.
I had so many other dinosaur related experiences that I could write a whole essay just about those, but suffice to say I knew everything a kid could know about dinosaurs at the time, and my parents were super supportive. I focused a lot on science and math in school, though I had more of a passion for science than math.
But in college, several circumstances aligned and I began to lose my fascination with becoming a paleontologist. I hopped around from one major to another until my parents begged me to pick something. I enjoyed art history, so I went with that… but I still had no idea what I wanted to do or who I even was anymore.
Enter the Dojo
By age 23, my pursuit of martial arts from late high school on had led me to becoming a black belt. I spent so much time at the dojo — I’m talking easily 20 hours a week. Teaching, working birthday parties (including vacuuming cake out of the waiting room rug and getting peed on by a toddler), and studying, sometimes taking two classes a day and showing up early to train solo.
I didn’t know what I wanted to do with my degree, but martial arts? That I loved.
I always thought there weren’t enough women in the martial arts. Of course, this may have changed since 20 years ago, but at the time there were far too few of us in the area participating in learning on the mats.
I continued my studies, and my work, all the way through third degree black belt in 2015, when something unexpected happened.
Looking back on it, I believe I grew into my Pisces moon a bit more because all of a sudden, I couldn’t bear to risk hurting anyone in practice anymore.
My training had reached a point where there was no way to practice on people without them getting hurt a little. One of the instructors framed it like this:
“Now, all of your combinations will be deadly, but instead of, say, breaking someone’s neck, because obviously we won’t do that, we’ll just compress their spine.”
This was not my favorite instructor. And that line alone convinced me it was time to leave the dojo. My training partners were friends. Many of them like siblings to me, so the idea of hurting them — even though I knew they were strong — became my undoing in that line of work.
Yes, I could have kept teaching. Most students are content to reach black belt, and most children don’t stay in martial arts that long. I may have even been able to carve out a niche part of the pie for myself as a female sensei.
But always, that idea of hurting people I cared about… it came back like indigestion.
Which I was now occasionally experiencing as I entered my thirties.
I was about to turn 33, and it’s only in retrospect that I can see now that my identity was about to undergo another rebirth.
Stepping onto the Page
I’d been writing fiction since I graduated college, but I never treated it as something that might define me in the way that many writers know they always wanted to be writers.
And I’d always been told, growing up, that I had a way with words. My mother instilled in me to read avidly and widely. Stories had always fascinated me, and by this time of my life, I’d completed my first master’s degree: An M.A. in English and creative writing which was part writing, part literature, part linguistics, and part teaching.
So, when it became clear that I didn’t want to teach in the dojo, I started pursuing a path that would align with teaching writing.
And, I started writing more seriously. I submitted stories for publication and started racking up my own file filled with rejections… with some publication credits for short fiction sprinkled in the mix.
Finding a job teaching when I had no actual English teaching experience though? It was nigh on impossible. I’d had years as a special education paraprofessional, but no one in the educational field saw teaching kempo karate as a bridge to teaching English.
Not long before I turned 34, my father passed away.
He and I were close, and now, almost ten years later, I still feel his loss acutely sometimes, though it’s more of a generalized ache that has been woven into the fiber of my being, also with a note of fondness for the time we did get to share.
After he died, I knew I had to do something. I had to make shift. I determined I needed actual experience teaching English, so I pursued a terminal degree. That’s a whole separate story in and of itself as I found my path to an MFA in fiction.
For two years I wrote and learned and taught. I loved it. I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to spend so much time in stories. Following my degree, I started self-publishing some novels. I learned so much about the publishing process, and at the same time, I was becoming a book coach. My life revolved around books.
In the spring of 2024, I published a book that took everything in me to create. I was 41 at the time of publication, and deep in the middle of those midlife transits I promised I will talk about soon. Publishing that book left me exhausted, jaded, and cynical. I barely marketed it. I walked away from writing.
Sometimes, I’d double back. Dip my toes in again. Get on the page again.
But then I’d recoil, retreat. Was I burnt out? Done with writing?
About a year ago, maybe a little longer, I got back into fine arts. I’d studied it in high school and college but never had the confidence to do more with it. I’ve fallen in love with drawing and painting and, recently, declared, as I was approaching age 43, that I would be an artist going forward.
Another decade, another turning of the page.
Turns Out I’m a Polymath
Okay, I think I’ve known that since I knew what the word meant. I don’t remember exactly when I first heard the word, but a polymath is someone who has deep curiosity and cultivates expert-level knowledge in multiple disciplines.
Paleontology and the sciences… I may not be digging up dinosaur bones but I talk about dinosaurs a lot with my nephew. I marvel at new species discovered, and while I may never have reached a point where I was actively digging up dinosaur bones, I excavate frequently when I’m learning, writing, painting, thinking, practicing astrology, etc.
The martial arts… I may not be teaching kempo these days, but I still know how to defend myself. More important than that, I know how to take up space and air in a room if I need to, even when my otroverted self wants to retreat. I knew how to work through imposter syndrome and find my confidence. I knew how to alchemize the fear I’d experienced in practicing the arts during my formative years.
The writer… well, as it happens, I am writing again. I won’t get into too much detail because the time doesn’t feel right yet. I’m also painting and drawing. I’m sharing my artwork — in fact, one piece is about to be in a community show. I have stories brewing and some editing work I want to do. Most significantly, I’ve decided I want a publishing partner, so I will be, when the time is right, submitting my work to small presses.
The time to play small is over. After 43 trips around this sun, half a life lived, I finally understand that I am at my most potent when I make space for all the littler — but not smaller — lives I’ve led along the way.
