‘By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.‘-Confucius

I wrote this just before New Years, but I’m just posting it up now. I apologize for the length.

For me 2009 was like that last drunk jaggoff passed out in the corner when the party is over and all you really want is for him to get the fuck out so you can shut the front door and get some sleep. Because I was so tired man. I was so tired I didn’t know what to do with myself half the time. I kept hoping there was going to be some downtime; you know, I really worked, trained my ass off that year and didn’t expect much in return. But I did want a little downtime, which I am not going to get. Instead the pile keeps on growing and it’s going to roll right into 2010.  So since it’s the end of the decade I thought I’d reflect on what I’ve learned and or gained from another ten years, and there are a couple of things that come to the fore.

The first is how much life can change in such a short span of time. A decade is the blink of an eye: Ten years ago I was barely married with no kids. It was 1999, the Millennium was rolling around, everybody was swearing Mad Max, the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse, and Jesus himself were going to ride in on the back of the Y2K virus, and I had a pretty fantastic New Years Eve partying in Washington D.C. with friends and family. Ten years later and my New Years eve consisted of me sitting on my ass at home watching a DvD, one day into a 10 day stretch of solo-parenting two young children who are out of school for the summer. As New Years eve’s go, that’s ass.  And you look back on it and how it changed so fast and you’re sort of like: “Really? How did that happen? How did I go from chilling in D.C. having a grand time to being thousands upon thousands of miles from said friends and family, with two kids, alone at the end of the decade, kicking it with Jason Bourne?” What the hell happened?

I guess I’ll speak candidly because I’ve set myself up that way when I started this thing, and to do otherwise now would be kind of a disservice. If I speak freely and everything is open and everyone knows everything, in a way that’s liberating. I put up that post before about talking to people, and even if you have someone to talk to it might not be the right person because in life we need different people to respond to us in different ways and at different times. When you get down to the harder stuff that needs talking about, the circle of people shrinks exponentially. Theoretically your loved ones should be the people you can tell anything. That looks great on paper but in reality it’s a different story. I love my parents but my Pops isn’t too big on the introspection and no matter how much I work my ass off as an artist and person, no matter how many shows I have, or books I illustrate  my moms is still hoping I’ll get a part- time gig and turn to Jesus. You see where I’m going?

I’ll put what I’m really feeling on here: That jump from the end of your 20′s to the end of your 30′s is massive. By the end of your 20′s you may or not be married (you’ll still be at a point where no one will care!), still figuring out your career or barely into it, maybe having a ball. By the end of the next 10 years you might be in the process of raising children, trying to make a marriage work, saddled with a mortgage to pay,  figuring out if your career is for you, and if so how to balance it will all those things previously mentioned. You’ll be trying to figure out how to make it all work, make huge ambiguous things work like marriage and parenting, and wondering most of all how to remain centered and true to who you really are, not losing yourself in the middle of all of it. Sometimes there’s so much and you’re going “Is this as good as it gets? Kids work kids work kids work Bills Bills Bills taxes taxes taxes? “ This will sound terrible but in such a pivotal decade so many aspects of fun and levity can evaporate from  life under a ever growing mountain of personal, social, career and financial responsibility. Sometimes you’ll look back on the lightness like a man does his last drink of water when stranded and lost  in the Sahara. Did it really exist? Or is it all in my mind?You can easily start to feel and believe like your entire life belongs to everyone but you; like everyone has part-ownership except the person living it. Your boss, the tax man, your accountant, your clients, your kids, your spouse, your parents. Sometimes I know that’s the case with me.  The pressure just creeps in little by little, year by year. It’s made more difficult because you remember vividly when just as little as ten years ago you had no real responsibility and far less pressure. I know so many friends who are doing just amazing things on a daily basis and that is so hard to watch because having young children can negate so much of that. I live in this amazing country and I’m afraid I’m going to move back to the US one day,  look back on NZ and realize I barely saw the place because I was so swamped dealing with mundane shit.  I made that point about the downtime that I’m not getting, because I’ve reached a point in life where  insignificant things sometimes become the things that matter and really have impact. At this point I’d put down all of my worldly and artistic ambitions just to have a 7 to 10 day period where I could put it all down and rediscover a little levity and have an opportunity to shine a bit brighter on the inside. A week without working on my business, or working in my business, or painting, or kids, or bills, or constantly refereeing stress in my household. Forget about showing in the Tate Modern or The Hirshhorn, just point me in the direction of someplace outdoors and quiet where I can find me again and chill the fuck out.

The last ten years are where  I’ve started to come to grips with mortality on an entirely deeper level, and the realization that no matter how talented I am, and how sincere my efforts, a lot of things aren’t going to turn out as planned or hoped for. Some things will, but some won’t, and how do you reconcile that with the day to day and move forward? How do you let go of your career passions? How do you let go of your personal passions or desires when they run contrary to your station, or your marriage, or your growth as a human being? How do you do these things while maintaining a sense of optimism about who you are becoming and where you are headed? I’m slowly finding my way but it’s a long and arduous process.  And  I’m not talking about just me.  I know a whole range of people dealing with variants of the same question: people who want to have children but probably won’t be able to, people who spent a lot of time in a career only to discover it makes them miserable, people who have had kids only to discover it’s a mistake, people who realized they’d married the wrong person. People who realize that sometimes in this world the nice guys really just were the people who got steamrolled and finished up dead last. Friends who have lost children and friends who got blindsided as their entire marriages fell apart. Those sorts of things can take you around the darkness of the midnight bend and leave you there. I’m telling you, it’s a crazy decade, your 30′s.

The main thing I recall about my 20′s was my unwavering arrogance and sense of self-importance. The amount of ridicule that I applied to the viewpoints of those older than me, in their 30′s and up. That they were old, out of the loop, and really just didn’t know shit. It must be in the human genome because I still know a lot of 20 somethings like that today. Anyway, the main thing that I’ve taken from this decade of my 30′s is a sense of humility. Life will humble you. In your 20′s you often think you’ve got a lot of the answers, and it’s not until later that you gain a bit of true wisdom and realize and accept that not only do you not have most of the answers, you don’t know fifty percent of the right questions. You just can’t imagine the amount of chaos and anarchy that can take place all around you. It can be an emotional war zone and believe me when I say there are casualties of all types.

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