38 (Or So) Lessons On The Way To 38

There is something melancholic about birthdays. I’m not the first to notice this. Another year has gone by, a wise man once said, and we can’t help but note how little we’ve grown. “No matter how desperate we are that someday a better self will emerge,” he said, “with each flicker of the candles on the cake, we know it’s not to be, that for the rest of our sad, wretched pathetic lives…this is who we are to the bitter end…..inevitably, irrevocably. Happy birthday? No such thing.”

Marcus Aurelius?

Not quite, although ​Jerry Seinfeld is now a Marcus Aurelius fan​, I am happy to report.

I’ve always loved that scene from Seinfeld (which happens when George tells Jerry to stop being his funny self). I’ve related to it on some birthdays but on others, like today, I don’t. I find I have grown quite a bit during most of my trips around the sun, to the point where I hardly recognize the person who first started these posts a decade ago (you can see my birthday posts for ​26​, ​27​, ​28​, ​29​, ​30​, ​31​, ​32, ​​33​, ​34​, ​35​, ​36​, and ​37​ here). I feel like I have changed a lot in the last year and that a better self has and is emerging.

Anyway, as always, here are 38 things I’ve learned in 38 years.

- I put up my first website a few days after I graduated from high school and I’ve been…