I’m 40, and Therefore Wise

Well, I turned 40, which means that I made it through 365 days of my “Me Project.” My mandates to myself when I turned 39 were to not drink alcohol for an entire year, to do something creative and active every day, to sleep better, to eat less sugar and drink more water, with the goal of getting mentally and physically fit, to get to know myself, to face down some shit, and to let some shit go.

I’d say, CONSIDERING that 229 of those days were shared with a pandemic and two kids and one husband home full-time, nary a job among us, the abrupt end to our small business, etc, etc, etc….I did pretty alright.

Has it occurred to me that it’s my fault that we’re in this mess, because I set out to have a really solid Year of the Sarah, and it turned out to be the Year of the Turd Sandwich for all of us? It has, yes. Of course.

So, anyway. Here’s what I’ve learned.

1. My value and my pant-size share nothing.
2. Asking for people to love me the way I need to be loved is liberating.
3. Mental health is health. I need to tend to it in order to stay alive and live well.
4. I get to choose the most beautiful version of my life and aim for it, it might not make sense to a lot of other people, it just needs to make sense to me.
5. I owe myself most, not least.
6. I don’t have to be good at everything, comfortable with everything, or show up to everything.
7. I’m allowed to be serious, I’m allowed to be silly.
8. I’m learning new skills, and they’re not always going to come with a grade or degree or paycheck, but they’re still valuable.
9. It’s really, REALLY OK to not know stuff, to be bad at stuff, and to admit it out loud, in fact it makes me more credible, not less.
10. No one has it figured out. There’s really no such thing. I just need to be kind and make the next right choice.
11. I can trust myself to figure out what that is.