Erin Miller

I have officially passed the quarter-century mark.

I am feeling the pressure mentally as the end of my most likely years to create something genius approaches, and physically because I fell on the ice this week while hiking. I couldn’t help but think that in my younger years I either wouldn’t have stopped paying attention to what I was doing or I would have been able to shift my balance and prevent the fall.

Career options such as Olympic gymnast, Olympic volleyball player, heck, even Olympic soccer player are vanishing and little pieces of the world are slipping out of the palm of my hand.

My mom kindly came to NYC to reminisce of her day entering the hospital to give birth to her first kid and to help me over this particular hump. I was throwing my hands in the air and lamenting that my life was almost decidedly a quarter over (and that is if I am lucky and nothing goes wrong) and I hadn’t done anything yet. My mom looked at me and said, “You grew up. What else were you expecting to do?” It was reassuring to hear my mom say that those first 25 years may actually have been some of the more difficult years, that growing up really isn’t as easy as people make it out to be. I have the next 50 years to do “something.”