Birthday Arc
Four months until Forty
Today is the 24th of October which means it is four months exactly until my 40th birthday. I keep seeing videos on TikTok about the Winter Arc, a 90-day challenge from October 1st to New Years’ Day where participants set goals around personal growth, and I’ve decided I’m going to do a Birthday Arc instead. In the next four months, I want to have a next-level glow-up so that I enter into this new decade as healthy and happy as I possibly can. While I’m not freaking out about turning 40, it definitely feels like more of a milestone than 30 did (which, to my mind, speaks to the increasing difficulty millennials have meeting the same milestones our parents did by a certain age – buying a house, having a baby etc – due to the crushing pressures of late stage capitalism)
I think it helps that I was fifteen when my mother turned forty, and I distinctly remember how much she grew in confidence during that decade. She always told me and my older sister that her forties were her favourite age; that she became more certain of herself, she cared less what other people thought of her, and she felt she looked the best she ever had. Because of that, I’ve never thought of forties as middle age, I assumed it would be the decade I was going to look my hottest and have zero fucks to give. What’s not to like?!
The physical part of this glow-up is probably the least interesting to me but I’ll quickly recount them here. I got