Winding Down
Dec. 15th, 2023 10:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jakebeYesterday was another lost day, which doesn't feel great. Maybe it's time to recognize that I'll need to put in some serious focus on self-motivation through the rest of the year. I've gotten out of the habit of self-starting, which I was never great with anyway. But if 2024 is going to be the year I finally recover from...well, everything that happened in 2016 I'm going to need to bring my A game.
I'm not sure how other people are about curating their "personal mythology", but it's become an interest of mine over the past year as I move into the next "phase" of my life. All of this is arbitrary, and at the end of the day it doesn't really mean anything -- but it helps me to put my life and personal progress in perspective.
So, there's a rule of thumb that says every cell in your body completely regenerates over a seven-year span. I don't know how scientifically-sound it is, but it's stuck with me as a pretty good marker for the "eras" of one's life. Seven years is a good amount of time to look back on, with just enough happening to dig deep and figure out a general theme. Even still, it exists in this neat continuum. One chapter closes, but another opens, and the edges of those seven-year periods don't really have the distinctive borders we tend to like.
So the "eras" are porous, soft definitions that allow you to look back and see what kind of person you've been for the last little bit. It feels right to be like, my life was like this until I was 7 years old, and these are the changes that took me to 14, and here's what I was like by the time I was 21...28...35. And if you anticipate living to the ripe old age of 70, there are 10 "eras" you can reasonably expect to live through.
My sixth era was 2015 - 2022, or 35 - 42. Looking back on it, I'd have to say it was characterized by a political awakening, a deep sense of anger and betrayal, fear, shock, grief...and ultimately numbness. We were coming out of the Great Recession and all of that business, watching giant financial companies getting bailed out by the government so executives could get their golden parachutes while the middle class practically vanished. Then Trump happened.
Now that I've had some distance from it, that election really did feel like suddenly losing our future. I cried a lot, tried to brace for what was coming, but went under the deluge anyway. The sheer amount of head-in-ass racism coming from all corners -- even from folks I considered friends -- was just too much for me. Four years of the ugliest, most corrupt and hypocritical, anti-human rhetoric just ground me down. By 2020, all that rage and disappointment and hurt just got stuck in my throat and I didn't feel like saying anything.
The next two years were traumatic for everyone, for obvious reasons. But in addition to COVID there was George Floyd and...all of those racially-charged police shootings. The videos, the protests, the counter-protests and utter incompetence of the government to do anything about it.
I came out of that whole experience with the understanding that we didn't really have adults in the room any more and we would have to rely on ourselves and each other. I think, once I had processed my grief for the world that could have been, I got invested in thinking about the world as it was and what we could make of it.
And that leaves me to my seventh era, which started last year. In a lot of ways it feels like I was settling into a new phase of life but I couldn't really put my finger on exactly what that shift entailed. But it felt like...a melding, a sense of completion...like all of my experiences have had enough time to hang out together so that it was all me. And that realization had brought with it a sense of curiosity and joy. I wonder what kind of person I'd be.
So far, I have to say I like who I am. I've been through a lot of hard times and the joy I have for life has not come easily. I don't have any illusions about how difficult it is, and that I'm a black man living in a hostile world. But I genuinely believe in kindness and empathy, and I'm my best person when I live my life that way.
But I also need to be an adult at this point, if I'm to be the kind of person I want to be for the people around me. So that's the work for the next two weeks, and into 2024. It's time to be my own dad.
I'm not sure how other people are about curating their "personal mythology", but it's become an interest of mine over the past year as I move into the next "phase" of my life. All of this is arbitrary, and at the end of the day it doesn't really mean anything -- but it helps me to put my life and personal progress in perspective.
So, there's a rule of thumb that says every cell in your body completely regenerates over a seven-year span. I don't know how scientifically-sound it is, but it's stuck with me as a pretty good marker for the "eras" of one's life. Seven years is a good amount of time to look back on, with just enough happening to dig deep and figure out a general theme. Even still, it exists in this neat continuum. One chapter closes, but another opens, and the edges of those seven-year periods don't really have the distinctive borders we tend to like.
So the "eras" are porous, soft definitions that allow you to look back and see what kind of person you've been for the last little bit. It feels right to be like, my life was like this until I was 7 years old, and these are the changes that took me to 14, and here's what I was like by the time I was 21...28...35. And if you anticipate living to the ripe old age of 70, there are 10 "eras" you can reasonably expect to live through.
My sixth era was 2015 - 2022, or 35 - 42. Looking back on it, I'd have to say it was characterized by a political awakening, a deep sense of anger and betrayal, fear, shock, grief...and ultimately numbness. We were coming out of the Great Recession and all of that business, watching giant financial companies getting bailed out by the government so executives could get their golden parachutes while the middle class practically vanished. Then Trump happened.
Now that I've had some distance from it, that election really did feel like suddenly losing our future. I cried a lot, tried to brace for what was coming, but went under the deluge anyway. The sheer amount of head-in-ass racism coming from all corners -- even from folks I considered friends -- was just too much for me. Four years of the ugliest, most corrupt and hypocritical, anti-human rhetoric just ground me down. By 2020, all that rage and disappointment and hurt just got stuck in my throat and I didn't feel like saying anything.
The next two years were traumatic for everyone, for obvious reasons. But in addition to COVID there was George Floyd and...all of those racially-charged police shootings. The videos, the protests, the counter-protests and utter incompetence of the government to do anything about it.
I came out of that whole experience with the understanding that we didn't really have adults in the room any more and we would have to rely on ourselves and each other. I think, once I had processed my grief for the world that could have been, I got invested in thinking about the world as it was and what we could make of it.
And that leaves me to my seventh era, which started last year. In a lot of ways it feels like I was settling into a new phase of life but I couldn't really put my finger on exactly what that shift entailed. But it felt like...a melding, a sense of completion...like all of my experiences have had enough time to hang out together so that it was all me. And that realization had brought with it a sense of curiosity and joy. I wonder what kind of person I'd be.
So far, I have to say I like who I am. I've been through a lot of hard times and the joy I have for life has not come easily. I don't have any illusions about how difficult it is, and that I'm a black man living in a hostile world. But I genuinely believe in kindness and empathy, and I'm my best person when I live my life that way.
But I also need to be an adult at this point, if I'm to be the kind of person I want to be for the people around me. So that's the work for the next two weeks, and into 2024. It's time to be my own dad.
