journal features

lordy, lordy, look who's forty-two

the journal of Michael Werneburg

twenty-seven years and one million words

Toronto, 2013.03.04

Say, I've turned forty-two. Time to write that article that I've been meaning to put together on turning forty.

Also, I can now retire the good-luck charm I've been carrying around for the past year. No more taiyaku for me. Apparently, this 'calamity year' is supposed to have been the worst of my life. I actually thought it was a marked improvement over the previous two years, but then Mari and I had a child during the year, and that's supposed to turn everything around. Thank you little The Girl!

rand()m quote

Meaning is not something you stumble across, like the answer to a riddle or the prize in a treasure hunt. Meaning is something you build into your life. You build it out of your own past, out of your affections and loyalties, out of the experience of humankind as it is passed on to you, out of your own talent and understanding, out of the things you believe in, out of the things and people you love, out of the values for which you are willing to sacrifice something. The ingredients are there. You are the only one who can put them together into that unique pattern that will be your life. Let it be a life that has dignity and meaning for you. If it does, then the particular balance of success or failure is of less account.

—John Gardner