When I was in my last year of college one of the jobs I had was at a shmancy restaurant called Bistro M on the fringe of the nascently gentrifying SOMA neighborhood in San Francisco. I was a hostess, which meant I was in charge of answering phones, taking reservations, showing people to their tables and navigating the politics of the waitstaff who always had outsized opinions about who got what section.The confrontational truculence of the servers cowed me and I began to envy the bartenders at the restaurant their autonomy and agency, nations all to themselves behind the bar, with all the nuances of their job description easily defined and fulfilled, contained neatly in contiguous territory, and most enviously, not as susceptible to the wrath of waiters because no one wants to piss off the bartenders.

But today is not the day to review the history of my old, sordid bartending career. Today is the day I can see how appallingly far in the past all that is—the deep, slow water under the bridge. 

Just as I began to dread going to work every day to deal with the manipulations and passive aggression of the serving staff, a new waitress joined the team. I was instantly drawn to Caramia; she was bold, bright, kind, took no shit, and never complained about what tables comprised her station. She was an artist who made paintings, illustrations and incredible mosaics and collages out of vintage pictures, broken pottery, colored glass and mirrors. And for reasons that are to this day mysterious to me, she took a liking to me. We routinely spent our after-work hours together at Enrico’s in North Beach, where she knew the entire staff, from the dining room to the bar to the kitchen to the busboys. We’d drink gallons of wine and eat fine things and receive a miniscule bill at the end of it all. Such were the delights of working in the bar and restaurant business at the time. 

She was 30 years old when I met her. At 21, 30 seemed wizened to me, but Caramia rightly defied that preposterous notion. She was talented, confident and happy, unplagued by the insecurities and shyness that shackled me until I was unbound by three or four drinks in quick succession. She approached everything she did with joy and confidence. I decided that by the time I turned 30, I would be just like Caramia. 

She and I lost touch after she left the restaurant for another job and I graduated from college and started working as a bartender at a swanky Italian place on Telegraph Hill. But her influence stuck with me, and in my post-college life, in my new job where I was routinely pouring expensive wine for well-heeled people, I began to reinvent myself as a pseudo sophisticate, making myself in the image of Caramia—knowing, saucy, confident. Looking back on it now, I was merely playacting; I didn’t have the maturity or experience to be truly sophisticated, and my social comfort was badly faked at best. I wanted so much to be undeniable and savvy and comfortable in my own skin. But I was none of these things.

When my 30th birthday finally arrived, I had nearly forgotten Caramia. I was taking myself out for a fancy dinner, alone at the bar of an expensive restaurant in what had become the fully gentrified SOMA. I sipped a martini and read a book and nibbled on a complex appetizer featuring scallops and some obscure type of radish, when I looked down the bar, feeling someone watching me.

It was Caramia, standing at the other end of the bar, with that look on her face that said, I know you, but I don’t know how. It all came running back into my mind: how much I wanted to be like her by the time I turned 30, how I wanted to be active in my creative work, confident and warm and funny. And here she was, as if fate had presented her to me like an existential hashmark on the door frame of life that shows you how much you’ve grown.

It had been eight years since I’d seen her, so she was almost 40. In that time she’d gone gray in the best way. She was there with her husband, who hadn’t existed before, and they had a three-year-old son at home. Her smile was still wide and toothy and set off by red lipstick. She still wore her big chunky handmade jewelry. I remember thinking her husband seemed slightly too dull for such a luminescent woman (I more frequently entertained such ungenerous thoughts then). I am certain I freaked her out as I told her a short, breathless version of the story you’ve just read—my admiration of her, my goal to be just like her when I was 30, and wow! here we are, on my 30th birthday, how fucking weird and fated is that, right?! 

I mean, what did I expect, really? 

She was polite and glad to see me but not nearly as excited about it as I was, which is understandable. By the time I was done rambling, it all felt pretty awkward and I slinked back to my barstool, drank a third martini, ate a steak and went to meet friends at Crowbar where all manner of hijinks ensued and were then lost to a Jim Beam induced blackout. (Such was how I once spent my birthdays. Or rather, several nights of any given week.) 

By the time I was reliving the earlier part of the evening from where I lay in bed the day after, smoking in the midday light and wishing I had some coffee in my apartment, I came to grips with the fact that I had failed utterly in becoming just like Caramia; I had hardly grown at all in those nine years. I wasn’t warm or confident. I wasn’t doing anything satisfying or meaningful with my life. Instead, I was constantly stuck in a manic mobius strip of self-doubt and drunken overconfidence. I fluctuated between being cold and moody and expansive and gregarious depending on how much bourbon I drank. I was hardly writing at all and had stopped even thinking of myself as a writer or even a creative person of any sort—a far cry from the successful novelist I’d fully expected to be by the time I was 30 (insert knowing and bitter chuckle here). Having been a bartender for nearly 10 years at that point, I had grown deeply tired of it and the misery the job induced was creeping in even in my off hours. Where Caramia had found a partner and had a baby, I had recently broken up with an alcoholic malignant narcissist (the first one—I used to have a type, it turned out) and was compensating for that stupidity with yet more desperate grabs for connection that really just amounted to poor romantic choices. 

30 years old, lost, with almost no understanding of myself, and totally failing at any form of adulthood. That’s what it boiled down to. 

Yet life continued to happen. 

One year on, I got my first advertising job that would lead me to my current career. 

Four years on, my father died, which sharpened my perspective and taught me that I could survive emotional, existential evisceration by unavoidable realities. 

Five years on I took my first real trip by myself to Thailand, which made me more confident than any other single undertaking up to that point. 

Seven years on, my career expanded and my confidence grew. 

Ten years on I turned 40, and had through experience cultivated a continually deepening sense of gratitude for my family, my friends and my health, which resulted, unsurprisingly, in so many of the qualities I coveted in Caramia. 

Twelve years on, I moved, at last, to New York, driven partially by circumstance, but also will, certain in myself that I could land upright in such a place, even though I was starting off with no job, no apartment, no prospects—just Tenny’s patient hospitality and my meager life’s savings. 

Fifteen years on: Today. 

Today I am 45. 

20-year-old me couldn’t even comprehend 45-year-old me. Nor could 30-year-old me. A lot of what I admired in Caramia—what I admire in several people who I am fortunate to know: competence, resilience, self-assurance—is in my possession…on a good day. Also, incredibly, luckily, I have a true and real partner, a soul connection with good, kind, sane, hilarious, beautiful man. And an adorable dog now too. Not to mention some of the other trappings of adulthood: The financial security and the “real” job; the 401k; the apartment that is more than one room; the well-stamped passport. This criteria is different for everyone. This has turned out to be mine. I couldn’t be happier…on a good day.

But I’m still a mess in a bunch of ways that younger versions of me would absolutely recognize. I’m still prone to anxiety and depression. I still fall into fits of terrible moodiness. I still have ungenerous thoughts about people. My social anxiety has quelled but has transformed into just being anti-social. I’m still given too easily to tears at unpredictable provocations. I still overreact to silly little things. All that and now high cholesterol too. 

This is not shaping up to be the most ideal birthday. I’m working, for one thing, which I try to avoid doing on my birthday, but my other little rituals of yoga, writing, a meal alone, are all still on the table. I’m in San Francisco, somewhat ironically, and not with Ant and Bruce in New York, which is where I’d like to be spending the start of my personal new year. But as it turns out part of adulting is showing up for your professional responsibilities, so I’m here, and feeling lucky to be in a city where I have friends who’ll come meet me for a drink on a Tuesday night.

I’m not entitled to these joys I have, the happiness I experience in my life. So I am all the more grateful for all of it. I finally understand that gratitude fosters an ease of being, the ability to relish in the gifts of each moment, because reality constantly endangers such peace. So, I try to appreciate the fuck out of contentment it in every instance that it exists. 

Yeah, my world is doing okay. I’m happy in it. The big world? Not doing so hot; there is so, so much to worry and rage about. But I’m going to take a little time off from all that today. Because today I'm just going to enjoy being 45. Today I’ll do what I can to make it a good day.