Congratulations! You Made It to Your 40s

Congratulations! You got through your youth, your adolescence, and your quarter life crisis! You are in your 40s! You are grayer and ache in weird places and appreciate high-waisted underpants. Scrunchies are apparently back. Adam Sandler is a dramatic actor now. It’s... a lot. But you’ve learned so much and finally have it all. Jkjk. But you do have exactly what you need. And you’ve learned so much. Like...

FOMO is a bell curve. When you’re a little kid, you don’t even know it exists. Then it’s the only thing that exists. Then you don’t give a shit about missing out on anything except a solid 8 hours of sleep.

You do not need to keep trying bangs.

This too shall pass. That shitty job. That threenager phase your kid is going through. That breakup that made you think you’d be alone forever. Everything is a phase.

You can block toxic people. Online. Offline. Even ones that are in your family. You might think you’re not good at a sport or a part of your job but you’re good at being you, and part of being you is knowing what’s good for you.

Pants shopping will never bring you joy.

You can’t change people, not even people who came out of your own body.

You will never be a runner and that’s okay.

Kids might be the best thing that happened to you. They might also make you cry for all the wrong reasons. They are the reason you have anxiety now. They are the reason you enjoy nature again. They are fun and terrible and gorgeous and selfish and when they go to bed at night you stare at them because you forget all the shit they put you through while they’re little sleeping angels.

Sometimes work is just a day job.

Don’t buy clothes from a website with no return policy.

Don’t worry about what college you go to. If you even go. It’s all the same in the end.

What I’m trying to say is, all the things you worried about for years? You endured them. You learned from them. And you survived. There will certainly be hard times, times so bad that you will count the minutes and seconds until they pass, but they will pass. Don’t pigeonhole yourself into believing you can’t change. Just look at the star of Uncut Gems.