Think In Decades

“You can’t accomplish anything of real importance in a year. But you can do anything in a decade.” ~ Someone smarter than me

Ten years ago I was in Cancun, by myself, lonely and frustrated and turning 30. I flew there because I had this consulting gig I’d taken that sent me ‘home’ every weekend, paying for the necessary airfare as a routine part of the contract. As I had no home of which to speak, I flew wherever I wanted. Normally I’d visit friends or family in one city or another, but part of me thought this was a fun opportunity to visit Mexico on my own.

I had hotel points built up from a year of living in them nonstop. Getting a nice room on the beach wasn’t hard as a result. The job I’d taken didn’t care where I flew so long as it was within my weekly budget, so that was also sorted. But as I packed up and traveled alone, practicing what would eventually become my vlogging style, I was miserable.

I bring it up because I just took a very different trip to mark my 40th. I flew to California to spend a few days with my sister’s family and then flew up to the Northwest to show one of my close French friends around the part of the world in which I grew up. And at the end of five flights and hundreds of miles roadtripping, I landed back in Paris, a city that has become my home, and boarded a boat filled with a smattering of people who have become my chosen family.

“How was your vacation?” was the question I got most, both during the trip and immediately after. It wasn’t one, I’d respond, between the nonstop travel and two YouTube videos I made along the way. But the second video, one about 40 things I learned by 40, needed an ending. I filmed that video progressively over the trip, dropping life lessons over dramatically changing backgrounds, from the Eiffel Tower to Petco Park, the Regent Theater to the Wenatchee River.

The lessons were hard-learned. I wasn’t raised by parents who were ready to parent. I didn’t end up the kind of person who learned well from the mistakes of others. Most of the lessons I shared were the kind I refused to internalize until I could no longer deny them. Thankfully I’ve incorporated (or started incorporating) most of them over the last decade. And as I landed back in Paris I wanted to bring the video full circle, ending it where I began: in my chosen hometown. 

As I attached my camera to the boat to get a group shot and wrap up the video, jetlag and sleep deprivation competing to be the most active contributor to my slurred speech, I reflected on my intended point of “Taking stock as you go.” But it was more than that, I realized, as I remembered where I’d been exactly ten years before.

I had been at the depths of my loneliness. I hadn’t started therapy. I hadn’t lost the weight. I hadn’t gotten back into the gym. I hadn’t come face to face with the demons that had chased me halfway around the globe and back again. I made a choice, alone in my hotel on a beach I wished I could share, that I was going to own up to things and start making changes, starting with my weight. I would go on to make more choices, like starting over in Paris, and eventually to face those demons head on.

I look back now and I feel such dread for that past version of myself. Such pride that he finally manned up and started taking responsibility. And I feel grateful he had no idea just how hard it would really be.

It’s really hard to accomplish anything of real importance in a year. I used to refuse to believe that and sprinted everywhere I went, disappointed in the results. Dispirited as a consequence. But you can accomplish anything in a decade. And that’s what I stopped to take stock of before I joined the party to celebrate my way along the Seine through Paris with a bunch of people I love.

Look how much has changed for the better this decade. What can I get done in the next?