There was a time when I would’ve seen 47 as a numerological milestone—an 11 year in my old magickal system. Back then, I’d have celebrated this age as a threshold. A portal. A mirror year where I’d step outside the 10 and see what evolution had taken place. I don’t think that way anymore, not exactly. The system collapsed somewhere along the way, replaced by something quieter. I’ve stopped needing the numbers to mean something. And yet, here I am—47—and the thought still holds. Not because of what the number means, but because of what the year has been.
This has been the year of making. Of painting, writing, listening, letting things move through me. A year where I committed to showing up each day and letting my insides speak—even when I wasn’t sure what voice they’d use. 249 daily essays. 97 paintings. None of it for performance. All for presence. I used to think creativity was a product. Now I know it’s a process. A relationship. An act of listening and shedding in equal measure. And what I’ve discovered through that process—what I might not have learned any other way—is that wanting less really does lead to having more.
Not more things. Not more recognition. More clarity. More stillness. More of myself.
It’s strange, this shift. I still want things. I want to be better. I want to feel healthy in my body. I want the world to heal its fractures and find a new rhythm. I want to raise my daughter in a way that makes space for her full becoming. I still want. But my wants no longer wear capes or masks. They no longer pretend to be answers. They just sit with me now—gentler, less hungry, more whole. I no longer believe the wanting defines me. It just passes through.
This birthday doesn’t feel like a crown. It feels like a campfire. A place to warm myself and look back at the trail. And the trail is wild. I’ve failed more than most people I know. Some of those failures were loud and public. Some were quiet betrayals of my own values. But I’ve also used those failures like raw material—reworking them, integrating them, learning to be kind to the parts of me that couldn’t yet see. Failure, it turns out, is just recursion in disguise.
And perhaps that’s the real gift of 47. I am no longer trying to escape the loops. I’m learning to love their rhythm. To see each cycle not as a mistake but as a refinement. I’m grateful for the people in my life who’ve walked with me through those versions—who didn’t freeze their image of me in amber, but updated the mirror as I changed. I don’t long for new connection. I’m lucky—I have it. My wife has been on this ride since we were kids, somehow growing beside me without needing to become the same shape. My core circle of friends has remained, even as we’ve all molted in our own ways. That kind of continuity inside of evolution is rare. It’s sacred. But I still feel the ache of missed connections—the old friends who never left their original self, who greet me now like a time traveler wearing the wrong face. They seem to want everyone to stay the same. To remain recognizable. And I understand that. But I can’t live inside a frozen mirror.
So on this birthday, I’m not asking for anything. I’m not setting goals or manifesting outcomes. I’m sitting in gratitude. For the process. For the practice. For the version of me who stopped needing to prove and started listening instead. Wanting less isn’t about denying desire. It’s about untethering identity from outcome. It’s about letting the day be enough.
I don’t know what 48 will bring. And for once, I’m not trying to predict it. I’ll keep showing up. I’ll keep creating. I’ll keep loving and learning and failing in more interesting ways. And I’ll keep letting go.
That feels like enough.