02/02/2026
Yesterday, I turned 40. I feel great about entering this new decade and optimistically think it’ll be the best yet. I didn’t always feel this way, though. 39 was hard as I spent much of the year grieving the future that was promised to me as a 90s/00s child: get a good education for a stable future; work hard and good things will happen for you; social change will only push forward—you can be anything you want! If you were born near 1986, you know what I’m talking about.
Instead, progress is moving backwards, words like “polycrisis” are becoming salient, and anyone making a modest living has to contend with the idea of never retiring. Even though I’m ostensibly an adult now, I feel as old as that girl with the crayon box—I’m 9 there. Maybe it’s because I’ve had to invent new ideas for what the future can hold since I was 22 (I graduated college in 2008).
Mourning millennials’ lost promised future sometimes looked like: watching the OC; journaling through anger and resentment; gazing at Raqib Shaw’s Paradise Lost at the Art Institute; checking my neighborhood chat for safety updates; or going to PT for bursitis in my shoulder.
Somehow, through all that processing, I was able to shift my mindset. The good thing about being thrown curveballs your whole life just because of when you were born is that, at midlife, you can choose to throw out the entire fu***ng playbook. Expectations for life milestones don’t seem to apply to the millennial generation and we still have time to figure out what we want to be when we grow up.
The only decisions I’ve made that feel semi-permanent are to stay nimble and allow my interests to get pulled in different directions as time goes on. For example, I never would have guessed, even two years ago, that being a teacher would become a vital part of my art practice.
There’s still so much more to discover and I don’t plan on losing any curiosity going forward. I welcome this next decade with open arms!
