New passport. Ten years of empty pages to fill out with exotic visas, to record our adventures on. Ten years before the passport expires. How old will you be in a decade? That’s the promise and the threat. That’s also the moment you choose how to look at life.

When I turned 30 my dad gave me a case of wine. I numbered each bottle to drink every year with him at my birthday. I remember clearly wondering in awe at the vast expanse of time until the case would be empty and how old (as dirt) I would be then.  Those twelve years flew by in what feels like the blink of an eye, and dad never saw the bottom of that case. You just never know boys and girls.

Yet the last ten years have also been filled with amazing adventures, with treasures and travels and friends and family. Many, many good times. In fact it’s been one hell of a run.

And that was roughly just the first six months of that period. Yeah, it was that good. So good that it’s hard to do it justice.

There were hangovers, trips, dives, weddings, births and deaths. There was, in short, life. Glorious if a little messy.

You know how they say you’re an adult once you understand what your parents used to tell you? My dad used to say you can see a glass as half empty or half full. You’ve all heard this. At 14 I thought that was complete BS and I knew it all anyways. My teenage stoicism decreed not to see the glass as either but both. Plus there was always air in the glass as well so it couldn’t ever be truly empty.  Paging Dr. Dumbass. Today I get it. So as I reflect on these matters it’s less about how old of a fuck I will be in 10 years, and more about how much living I can pack into that decade.

Thanks for sharing in the adventures by the way (you, yes you), stick around, the next decade should be fun.

Next post will be from Panama.

I choose half full.