Here we are again, rounding out the not so round 31. As of a week ago, a married man. If ever I was to still look for the portal to adulthood this would be as likely a candidate as any. Still in total indisputable touch with my youth yet dawning in the realisation that there is no next level, just next tomorrow and the one that follows. Maybe that realisation is adulthood, and in that case maybe I became an adult at 31. Besides a growing affection for layman philosophy, I can also display some of the characteristics of the adult. With my week old marriage license, apartment in suburban Stockholm and Volvo, on a lease no less. Those are a lot of ticked boxes, and I have a feeling there are more coming.
I’m writing from the guest room at Dockgatan in Malmö. Anni is on the other bed leaned against the wall. We’ve had a pre-celebration of mine and my sister’s birthdays today by going out to dinner. It’s a calm evening. We returned from Elba today, arriving there on Monday and spending the week. It was necessary after the tumultuous week prior culminating in our wedding on Saturday 8th of June. It was the most beautiful day in my life and a weekend I would not change in any way. The amount of emotion I felt. From the tension waiting at the altar with Philip and Johan to the overwhelming love as the church doors opened, the genuine sweat and tears of the speakers during dinner and the relief of dancing the night away. There was so much love and gratitude and belonging. It was genuinely the peak and culmination of my life so far, with all the people I have come across and come to adore. I haven’t digested the experience yet and in some ways I hope I never will so that I don’t forget to appreciate and that I too am appreciated.
Our week in Elba gave me and Anni a chance to process this together and it might have been the best vacation I’ve been on. Despite our inherent restlessness we allowed ourselves to land. For me that meant going completely offline, despite the flood of messages following the wedding. For Anni it meant diving into the world of pictures in what she would call her ‘wedding bubble’. I love that wedding bubble for the gleaming purity of happiness that it brings to her eyes. And now here I am, in the last minutes of 31. It’s 22:16.
The European championships are on, but not for Sweden, watching the other kids play from the window with both shame and jealousy. This is my fifth birthday post and I’m realising I’ve never written them in English before, why am I writing in English? Crazy Mama by JJ Cale has been the song, although J Cole, especially Can’t get enough has made a case lately.
As I started my 32nd year I had just fully embarked on an entrepreneurial adventure. A lot of the year has been about discovering this domain, in many cycles of joy, fear and confusion. We started at the SSE Business Lab incubator, taking my largely hidden away Numbery project and bringing it public. We went at it with ambition, bringing on customers and expanding our strategic scope. We had a lot of weekly meetings. In the end I was a bit too alone for our aspirations, and my energy but mostly my enjoyment buckled under the weight. We took on a ton of paying customers to get closer to my goal of becoming a real company, but in the process I think we got further away from the company I wanted to create. I’ve tried to be honest with myself and my partners about that, and now we’re starting to scale back to move ahead.
Sometime during this year I realised that what I had was enough. That ambition can come in an unconventional shape, in shaping that life that I want, shaping every day to be good, rather than suffering for some desired days in the future. As I’m writing, that is my goal. To spend time on what is meaningful. Family, friends, great work, health and personal growth.
Over and out. Oscar 31.
Oscar Holm 