How did we get here?

It has been suggested to me that developing a birthday website and declaring a year of celebrations might be a tad uncouth, self-serving, or lacking humility. (Drama queen and diva have also been bandied about.)

But if I may say this with a straight face, it’s not about me, it’s about you. My friends and family. I basically just wanted a mechanism, an excuse to spend some time together! I swear! 

Let me explain how we got here. At work, my organization puts on a big conference every year--and this year we had to make it go virtual with just a few weeks to go. So we worked with a great group of folks internally--and hired a global design firm to help us think through how to make a virtual event happen. And where we started wasn’t with technology platforms, audience segmentation, or marketing strategies. Instead, in what was familiar to me from my upbringing with a philosophy-professor father, we asked questions like, What is a conference? Why do we gather? How do we want people to feel? We spent a lot of time during our few precious weeks figuring out the why and breaking down to the elements the reasons we would bring people together--only then determining what we would do.

So for my birthday celebration, I asked myself similar questions. By having a big party and an international trip, what had I been hoping to accomplish? What was my birthday party--scratch that, parties--even for? And I came up with a few things:

• Spend time with the people I have collected throughout my life--both individually and in groups;

• See and experience new things; and

• Share a sense of fun, extravagance, and delight.

And so with those goals, I set out to design an experience that would allow me—and all of you—to accomplish these goals.

And so far it’s been great. I spent my birthday weekend and the weeks surrounding it with people stopping by (in small groups to allow for distancing) and doing a bunch of Zoom calls and chats. Lots of laughter and stories were told—just as if it had been a regular old birthday party.

So thank you for all helping to kick things off! I look forward to the rest of the celebrations in the weeks and months to come.

Reflections

I’ll wait to share my actual reflections on being 40 until the day arrives, but check back here for thoughts, reflections, and artifacts from the course of the year. I will even turn over the reins and allow for some guest posts, so please petition below if you’re interested.

I want the pen!

So you want to write?

Artifacts

Here I’ll post photos, recordings, stories, or other things that emerge from our time together—either in the past or over this year. For example, here are photos from 1999, 2006, 2010 (at the aformentioned XXX birthday party), and 2017.