The Last Day

And after all that, here we are.  3,653 days after turning 30 in a cloud of angst and regret, Yer Man will turn 40 tomorrow.

What kind of a decade has it been?  Eventful, to be sure.  Setting aside world affairs – war in the Middle East, economic calamity, BLACK PRESIDENT, the explosion of mobility computing and Apple’s rise to the largest company in the world – it’s been a little crazy for me.  I caught the fever for California, clocked an MVP year in DC, then swapped one household name for another and moved 3000 miles.  I got married.  I got an office.  I got my knee scoped, twenty years too late, and changed jobs two more times as part of what I can only describe as the worst fit of clinical depression I’d had in two decades not tied to the death of a parent.  I got a raise.  I got drugs. I got a Rabbit.  I got an iPhone or…um, six.

Looking back, I’d say that I’ve accomplished exactly one thing on my own in ten years: I luck-boxed into a contract position at Apple which turned into a staff hire.  Other than that, my luck has mostly been other people: the guys I fought shoulder-to-shoulder with from 1997 to 2004, who made it possible for me to make my way in Silicon Valley and survive for seven years and counting.  The boss in California who wheedled an interview with not one but two different post-Apple employers to make sure I wouldn’t starve. The surrogate big sister I never thought I wanted until she moved in with us for a year. The cousins who gave me real honest-to-God blood family again. The merry band of high school mutants that rose from the dead twenty years later to give me back an anchor in the past. The cloud of Cal and Vandy supporters who took my nonsense drivel seriously and made it possible to resume my career as a sportswriter seventeen years later. The coven of geniuses in Cupertino whose vision and drive made possible the gadgets on which I can still make my living fifteen years after Michael Dell argued for shutting down Apple and giving the money back to the shareholders (which might be the best move for Dell in 2012).

And behind it all, every step of the way, from the icy sidewalks of Northern Virginia to the cold foggy deck of the Ritz-Carlton in Half Moon Bay, from the humidity of a Southern highway to the chapel and officer’s club on Treasure Island, from the Caltrain platform to the Jubilee Line on the London Underground – her.  The one who keeps the dream alive, even on the days when I’m not exactly sure what the dream is.

Maybe the things I want for my birthday aren’t things I can have.  But the things I’ve got, I wouldn’t trade for nothin’.

Two years ago, I flew back from a trip to Washington DC to see my old gang.  We met, we hollered, we closed the pub again – but I also got to see their families, play with their kids, and see life beyond the daily battles of seven years ago.  And as the plane was taxiing back into SFO, I heard this song on the in-flight entertainment, and I had one of those moments of epiphany, and I decided – it’s okay to grow up.

And so – forward, as gracefully as I’m capable of, which is honestly not that graceful.  Stick around – if nothing else, the spectacle ought to be entertaining.