I’m going to be turning 40 next month and it’s been at the back of my mind for the past few years.

It’s a silly arbitrary number as I might live to 100 (unlikely but you never know) or I may die tomorrow. But that symbolic power of it being a midway point in your life still holds a lot of sway.

It’s unlikely I’m going to get to where I thought I would be at 40 in the next month but I still have a lot to be thankful for. I have a great wife and a wonderful daughter. But as much as it makes me feel very lucky to have them, it also makes me feel worse that I can’t do more for them and in many ways I feel like I hold them back.

But I’m struggling with adulting. I lost my job last year and in the midst of a battle with my mental health that is a constant exhaustion. I’m not ready to work full time again but it’s a fairly deserted landscape for job prospects. I’ve started working for myself and I’m just about scraping by but its a battle from month to month just to stay afloat. If I lived in a cheaper city, I might be a little more relaxed but it is what it is.

I’ve had many thoughts about ending it all and they happen pretty regularly but I hope that just writing down what’s going on in my head might help hold me accountable and help clear some of the mental cobwebs that are forming. I don’t know, it can’t hurt and my memory has gone to f*** anyway so it would be good to have a record of it all.

If I’m not going to get to where I want to be by the age of 40, then I want the ‘year of 40’ to be one of some changes and hopefully that starts here. If you’re like me and that magic number is coming up and getting you down, let’s just accept it’s a write off and start from scratch from 40 and day 1.