Elevensies!

Today is my birthday. Although I enjoy acknowledging the day, I’ve circumnavigated the sun many times now and have learned to delight in understated celebration.

Perhaps because of the unexplainable popularity of assigning mystical properties to the number 11–and particularly 11:11–or maybe because one of my dearest friends was born almost exactly 11 years after me or, even more likely, because the doubling of digits is aesthetically attractive, I’ve taken special note when I, or others, have an “elevensies” anniversary.

Today is one of my elevensies.

To honor it, I’ll indulge in a brief recap–

11– I was avidly reading Edgar Rice Burroughs novels and practicing magic tricks. I wanted to be an author, create worlds of my own, or travel the world as a magician and escape artist, inspired by Tony Curtis’s portrayal of Houdini in the classic film.

22– I was living with one of the great loves of my life. We would marry later that year and begin a wonderful decades-long adventure together, growing into adulthood, and raising two amazing children.

33– I was a year into a contract gig testing games at Microsoft (before the DOJ outlawed perma-temps) and six months away from starting a fifteen year career as a full-timer at the company. I wasn’t a techie, having earned a BA in the Comparative History of Ideas in my late twenties, which is probably why I thrived in a middle management position. I enjoy people, which is an asset among folks who, by and large, aren’t very good at dealing with them.

44– A moment rich with potential and harboring the seeds of some of the most significant growth and change I would experience. I met the person who, years later, would become my second wife. I flew to France to join my son who was touring circus schools in Europe and deciding where to spend the next few years of his life. Still at Microsoft, I led the test org for the best product team ever, the original Microsoft Surface–affectionately known as “The Big-Ass Table.” I was juggling for hours every day, taking and teaching circus classes at the School of Acrobatics and New Circus Arts (SANCA), and had just finished a run of Christmas shows for a community theater. In the next decade, everything would change.

55 (Wait. What?!!)– And here we are. I’m happily retired from tech and, after a year as the Interim Executive Director at SANCA, also retired from circus. My kids are grown and have flung themselves wide and far (my son performing around the world from his base-camp in Berlin and my daughter recently settling in Boulder). I am blissfully married to my second wife and happily house-husbanding and stay-at-home-parenting my 11-year old step-daughter. In a circle of elevensies, I find myself writing more productively than ever and still practicing sleight of hand.

The happiest part of my birthday is that people are reading my recent release to Kindle, and that you, kind blog-reader, are here celebrating with me!