40: The Year of No Fear

Another year gone! Being 40 has been great. No complaints. Well, maybe a tiny complaint that my face takes a long time to unwrinkle in the morning, but I’ve been having an absolute blast. Why? Because I decided to be fearless this year.

PS: I’ve gone back and forth about posting this one for a while, because it sounds so self-congratulatory and there’s a lot going on in the world that makes me worried and think a lot more about my future, and our collective future, than about diving and tropical islands. But: that doesn’t make my positive thoughts about my experiences in the past year less true, so here it goes.

Diving

In preparation of turning 40 and celebrating it in The Maldives, I got my diving certification. I wanted to swim with the manta rays in peace, without being held like a child by a diving instructor. So I headed off to Sri Lanka with my family—it’s a great travel destination for adventurous kids!—and got it done. It was easier than I imagined, besides the terrible sea sickness I had after completing each dive (but it helped that I clearly wasn’t the only one with this problem). I really did end up seeing two majestic manta rays, along with a bunch of large turtles and little sharks. Once, I even saw a huge whale shark. We were on our way to the dive site and as soon as the boat driver spotted it we jumped in and swam after it, which was surreal.

SuperDeluxe vacations

This might sounds bad, but in my line of work it’s pretty normal to go on five-star vacations to exotic destinations. Being so close to exciting new places and having an excuse—and just enough salary—to do it is just too tempting. I never did do it before because it felt irresponsible—both financially and environmentally. I also didn’t want to spend my whole salary on unnecessary luxuries.

Even though travel has long been our main household expense, I just think it’s weird to drop $10K on a romantic midweek in the Maldives or $15K on a family roadtrip through Italy and Slovenia. But I did both this year. Here I wrote about our Maldives experience. In fact, I traveled by air every month (including work trips), which felt totally outrageous but also like a lot of fun!

Marathons

Afraid to become lazy and spoiled because of all the fancy travel and luxury hotels, I also committed to physical challenges this year. I ran two marathons. The second one was in hot, hot Mumbai, which was pretty daunting at first.

After I completed those, I broke my PRs on both the 10K and half marathon distance by tripling my training load and focusing on results. I was tired of my own excuses that I couldn’t train because of minor injuries or busy work schedules or the weather. I toughened up and pushed myself further at every opportunity.

Tattoos

The fear of the physical pain of getting a tattoo wasn’t nearly as big as my worry that I might regret the decision later. So I started with semi-permanent tattoos. I decided to compensate for the lost color and definition in my face by coloring in my lips and eye brows. The subsequent swelling was a huge shock, and I’m still not sure I totally love these alterations, but I’m glad I tried it. It looks fine and it’s just not a big deal.

Next, I went for something permanent: a matching arm tattoo with my sisters. Three birds. It’s cute and I love it, though it will probably be both my first and last tattoo. I haven’t written anything about it or taken photos because honestly, this is not really my thing!

Fasting + dry month

On a more wholesome note, I took my health more seriously this year. My husband and I chose the most alcohol-infused month—December—to go dry. It turned out to be a lot of fun to attend holiday parties and be the odd duck out declining all the celebratory drinks. It gave us a different perspective on how to have fun, and we played more with the kids, which helped to really experience the holiday cheer together. It was also nice to know for certain that we’re not that alcohol dependent after all.

I also tried intermittent fasting for a while, which had a similar effect. There’s no need to mindlessly eat unhealthy food. It’s funny to realize I’m perfectly fine skipping breakfast for a while and that food tastes much better when you think about what you really want and need to eat. Also: I learned about and tried Aryuvedic healing treatments.

Meditation retreat

My most extreme venture this year was probably the 10-day Vipassana meditation course I completed in April. I’m not gonna lie—I was really nervous. I’m an opinionated, anxious busy-body with an aversion to spirituality. I’m not proud to say I got a big kick out of the shock people had when I said I was going to meditate for ten days, ten hours a day, without any talking, reading, or other form of distraction. It was a great experience and I wrote about it a bunch here and here.

Follow dream job

Maybe it doesn’t really count, but I’m also fearlessly pursuing my dream job. I worked hard to land a job within the State Department with the refugee bureau, convincing the hiring managers to make me a DC-based program officer while actually being stationed (for my husband’s career sake) in The Gambia. It was a big dream of mine, because I worked on humanitarian diplomacy before and loved the role of helping refugee populations get access to basic services and advocate for their rights.

With the new administration the scope of the work is narrowing, and my job description has changed a lot from when I first got the job (I’m focused on the remnants of USRAP now) but I stand by my decision. Any job that makes a positive impact in the migration space is dear to my heart, so ultimately it doesn’t really matter how things play out in the short term. Maybe I even get an opportunity to be part of a new wind of change.

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