40 things I’ve come to think are true

I’m writing this the night before I turn 40.

According to a study of around 25 million US death records, 6.7 percent more deaths occurred on birthdays than expected. Here are 40 things I’ve come to think are true, then, in case I don’t make it to breakfast.

1. The decades are short even though the days are long. I noticed it when I found an old photo of the kids and had no idea which summer it was from. They looked younger. I just couldn’t remember by how much.

2. Time disappears when nothing distinguishes one day from the next. I remember the strange hotel, the missed train and hiking during a thunderstorm. I remember almost none of the Tuesdays I spent answering email.

This is probably why I change things when they start boring me. Repetition scares me more than change does.

3. Toast dropped from a normal table really is more likely to land butter-side down. The table gives it enough time for roughly half a rotation. A three-meter breakfast table would improve the odds and create several new problems.

4. My children still think I’m one of the coolest people they know. This seems unlikely to last.

5. I studied architecture, work in marketing and write about European products. Several things I thought were character flaws in my twenties now pay the rent. I never became particularly good at having only one interest at a time.

6. Italy makes excellent coffee and a surprising amount of bad coffee. Both statements can be true without causing a diplomatic incident.

7. The first years with small children were exhausting and, looking back, brutally short. Bedtime happened about four times every evening. I know I will eventually want one of those evenings back, so I’m currently trying to enjoy the hell out of them.

Reading with my youngest daughter before bed has become one of the best parts of my day. Even when the book is very long and everyone involved knows it is already too late.

8. Angelo Moriondo, a hotel and bar owner in Turin, received the earliest known Italian patent for an espresso machine in 1884 because he wanted to serve coffee faster. His machine brewed in bulk rather than one cup at a time. I like that one of coffee’s most beautiful machines began as a practical complaint about waiting.

9. It has become much easier to produce fifty acceptable options. Taste is knowing which one to keep, what to remove and when the stranger choice is the right one. The making is getting easier. The choosing matters more.

10. Enthusiasm compensates for an embarrassing amount of missing expertise. I opened a coffee shop with no experience and failed quite spectacularly. I started From Europe with Love without knowing much about newsletters, and Late Checkout without ever having run a vacation rental. Fortunately, experience sometimes arrives before anyone notices.

11. Buying books and reading books are related hobbies, but they are not the same hobby. The Japanese word tsundoku describes acquiring books and leaving them unread. I prefer to think of it as building a private library under difficult conditions.

12. Leaving a good job is harder than leaving a terrible one. A terrible job supplies its own permission. A good salary, decent colleagues and a perfectly reasonable life can keep someone in place for years because there is no villain to escape.

13. A drinking straw has a maximum practical height of about ten meters on Earth. Beyond that, atmospheric pressure cannot push the liquid any higher. I had never considered that a straw had an upper limit.

14. If you could fold a standard sheet of paper 42 times, it would be thick enough to reach the Moon. The problem is getting past fold number seven.

15. The Eurasian pygmy owl outside of my window here in Le Marche (Italy) is the smallest owl in Europe and has a funny call — every 2 seconds. (It’s a lot higher-pitched than the normal owl "hoot").

16. My children are 12, 10 and 6. We probably have only a few more years in which moving through the world as five feels like the default rather than a difficult group-planning exercise. I think about that more than I’d like (and planning to do something about it).

17. I like starting a trip by going straight to the most remote place and working slowly back toward the city. A café becomes much more impressive after a few days without one.

18. I’ve never had much of a career plan. I tend to notice something, get curious about it and see where that leads.

19. Most homes need fewer things and at least two more lamps that aren’t attached to the ceiling.

20. A room needs a skyline, with objects at different heights for the eye to move between. Colors, shapes and materials usually look calmer when they appear more than once. A single one has to earn the right to be there.

21. I prefer building a trip around an interest rather than a list of sights. Looking for good coffee, a workshop or a stationery store usually takes me somewhere I would never have thought to visit.

22. Stationery stores are especially good for this. The products are there because they work, the packaging has often escaped several branding workshops and nobody asks whether the pencil sharpener expresses a lifestyle.

23. Very little of what I’ve done was done alone. Sina, the kids, my family and a few very good friends have backed strange ideas and helped with the parts I couldn’t do myself. I’ve been unusually lucky with the people around me. Thank you.

24. A weekly deadline eventually takes the decision away from me. Sunday arrives, the newsletter goes out and the paragraph I was still “improving” becomes somebody else’s problem. Do that often enough and somehow you end up with over 1000 wonderful readers, more than 500 featured products and a map of small European brands.

25. Henry Molaison underwent experimental brain surgery for epilepsy in 1953 and afterward could form very few new long-term memories. He started every day completely new. Over the next 55 years, he became one of the most studied people in neuroscience.

A long life and a long remembered life are different things.

26. A brand using the word “authentic” creates an immediate need for an investigation.

27. The things children remember from trips bear little relation to the things adults planned. I plan the cathedral and the restaurant. They remember a dog near the parking garage, a strange bathroom and a vending machine that sold pizza.

This is useful, although it has not stopped me planning the restaurant.

28. Nobody is as impressed by an expensive object as the person who bought it. Everyone else mainly wants to know whether the chair is comfortable.

29. My favorite rooms pass a simple test: one of my children would start a game of hide-and-seek before taking off their shoes. Good spaces have places to disappear and things you only notice later.

30. I’ve become less interested in what a job is called and more interested in what it does to an ordinary Tuesday.

31. Whenever I’m unsure whether I can carry everything in one trip, I still attempt one trip. Forty years have taught me surprisingly little about this.

32. I can usually tell within 20 seconds whether a shop has been curated or merely filled.

33. Children often begin a story with the least important detail. If I let them take their time, the part they really wanted to tell me usually arrives on its own.

34. This is the cheesiest thing on this list (sorry): The windshield is bigger than the rearview mirror for a reason.

35. I’ve become suspicious of anything described as effortless by someone who has been doing it for twenty years.

36. I’ve learned to ask the question that makes me look slightly stupid. Quite often, everyone else was wondering the same thing.

37. A perfectly reasonable life can still be the wrong life.

Nothing has to be dramatically broken before I’m allowed to change it.

38. I killed 104 other points to get this list down to 40. Most of them felt essential for at least five minutes.

39. Money comes back. A summer with my family doesn’t.

40. Almost everything good in my life came from starting before I felt ready, and almost nothing bad did. That is the whole list, really.

I keep thinking about the difference between a long life and a life that feels long when I look back. Novelty helps, but so does paying attention.

I don’t want to find an older face in the mirror and wonder where all the time went. I’d rather reach it with no regrets and this as my final line:

“Oh, I’ve got so many stories to tell.”

—

Onward and upward.