# Forty-one

By [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com) · 2024-05-03

birthday, neat-b, paris, personal, real-estate-development, the-bench, toronto, travel, vineland

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![](https://storage.googleapis.com/papyrus_images/8ea69f069ca4d9f22fdfef081db3c941.jpg)

Today is my forty-first birthday.

I had aspirations of making it a slower day, but that didn’t really happen. I did, however, start my morning “[on the Bench](https://vqaontario.ca/ontario-appellations/niagara-peninsula/beamsville-bench/)” for one of our development projects and that was pretty spectacular, especially with the weather we had. Today has to have been the nicest day of the year.

I very much enjoy my birthdays, but the cadence of them seems to only speed up. It feels like just last month that I turned forty. And so in many ways, birthdays are a reminder to me that it’s important to be decisive and not waste time. Life keeps moving forward whether we like it or not — usually quickly. So it’s best to optimize accordingly.

At the same time, this is probably one of my biggest faults. I’m bad at slowing down and living in the moment. I get restless. Neat B tells me that I am at my most relaxed when we are traveling in Paris and just sitting idly in a cafe somewhere. That sounds right. But I’d like to do more of this at home.

So that’s my birthday wish (goal) for this year.

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*Originally published on [Brandon Donnelly](https://brandondonnelly.com/forty-one)*