A look back and forward . . .

And thank you.

This isn’t where I thought I’d be at the start of 2025. If you’d asked me in 2019, what do you think your life will be like in 5 or 6 years I’d have said:

• I’ll live in San Francisco in the first apartment I’ve ever owned (purchased in my mid-40s). An apartment I designed down to every detail myself. An apartment I love. I’d have said I will live here until I’m old and need to trade it in for a less stair intensive — 4 flights! — abode in my 70s. I waited a long time to be able to afford it and I chose carefully, and I will enjoy it until I can’t anymore.

• I’ll have one adult child who has graduated from college and another about to do so. And two little ones in public school in SF.

• I’ll work at Levi’s, a place I’ve worked since 1999. Who knows what role I’ll have there. (I’d had many over the years.) But I’ll enjoy it, I’ll be proud of my work, I’ll have colleagues and friends there. In many ways, my social life would center around the place. And I’d be thinking about how soon I might be able to retire. I wouldn’t want to work forever, stockpiling stock options. I’d calculate the least amount I’d need to save to live a comfortable life. Golden handcuffs be damned.

• I’ll be happily married. With two elementary school aged children despite being in my mid-50s. And I’ll be able to enjoy them, enjoy the little things like school drop off and pick up, because I’d be retired from the corporate grind soon and I’d have earned (after decades of very long days) shorter days and flexibility until the actual retirement.

Other than being happily married none of this is true.

• I live in Denver, a city I don’t know well. But enjoy. It’s easier living than San Francisco. I have a lot more space, a yard. I never have to look for parking. That alone has removed stress and added years to my life in time I’ve gained back. My car has never been broken into (it was a monthly occurrence in SF). Youth activities abound. People love kids, there aren’t many place that they are restricted from going. And while the cost of living is rising — as it is everywhere, it is still so much lower than SF that it boggles the mind.

• I have an adult child that graduated not only college but graduate school. I have a second not as close to done with college as I’d have imagined as he took a break after his freshman year, came home to stay with us (bonus time!) and is now somewhere between a sophomore and a junior in art school. And he loves it.

• I don’t work at Levi’s. And I’m barred (essentially) from corporate America. This means that not only can I not get a job I am qualified for as an executive in an established company, but I can’t get consulting gigs or board spots or speaking engagements or all the other very lucrative, fairly low effort opportunities that most people in my position avail themselves of in the twilight of their corporate careers.

• Instead I started my own business. At 54. And so the energy needed is ramped up, not down. The ups and downs are intensified, not smoothed out. My work life is harder not easier as I round the corner to 60 (ugh). It is energizing. And fun. And it’s hard. And we are not guaranteed nor entitled to succeeding. We’ve had a great start. We’re 9 months old and have sold more than 30,000 products and achieved 7 figures in sales. But nothing is to be counted on and we push every single day to get to keep going for another. It’s demanding and exhilarating at the same time.

• I am happily married to a man who loves being the primary caretaker for our young children. And planning our vacations and handling my miscellaneous assigned chores like picking up prescriptions and taking a busted up shoe of mine to the cobbler. I am not embarking on more of the everyday small stuff with the kids because I am busy all the time with getting a start-up off the ground. But my schedule is my own — some combination of it being my own business and the “asynchronous” working style that has emerged post-covid — and so I do enjoy soccer games and school pick ups, though not as frequently as I’d have imagined at this point in my life. (And obviously at the age of 40 back in 2009/2010, I didn’t imagine having two elementary school aged kids but life happens and you either embrace the journey or you don’t. I did.)

I was just reading How to be happy in 2025 by my friend Meghan Murphy. Her life could not look more different than mine, on the surface. She is a Canadian who took off for a less restricted and censorious life in Mexico a few years back. She is younger than I am — in her 40s. But we share a Gen X attitude towards life. She isn’t married and has no children.

Her advice for enjoying 2025 (and beyond) is to embrace risk. Don’t stop taking on challenges. Do things that are scary. Don’t choose the safe path. She writes about her old friends in Vancouver with fancy apartments and nice appliances and 401ks and how unhappy they are. They stopped living and just accrued stuff, not experiences.

Perhaps I was on that path. But covid (the timeframe, not the virus) derailed it. And I am grateful.

So here’s to embracing hard stuff in 2025. And beyond. Here’s to never resting, to taking on the uncomfortable and reveling in the challenges.

Side note for my readers and supporters: if you haven’t yet made a purchase of XX-XY Athletics, now is the time! Until the end of today, you can get 25% off site wide when you use the code INSIDERS25. A special year end offer for our early fans and my supporters. Show up to support female athletes and the protection of women’s sports this year because the fight is far from over.

Just yesterday, we learned that a man will run in the women’s category in the 2025 Boston Marathon. So now men can win in the men’s category, the non-binary category, and the women’s category! What progress!

So get yourself a t-shirt or a cap and get ready to fight for women and girls in 2025!

Happy New Year!