Sometimes a movie can have a real impact on your life.

One movie like that for me is Boyhood, which follows a boy growing up in Texas from ages six to eighteen and, famously, was shot with all the same actors over the course of 11 years as they actually aged. 🤯

Towards the end of the movie, the mom has a bit of a midlife freakout when her son is heading off to college. She frets that all the important milestones of her life are over – two marriages, two kids, building a career. She worries about her next milestone.

You know what’s next?  It’s my fucking funeral!

It reminds me of the chorus to Nirvana’s All Apolgies: “Married, buried!”

Anyways, the son says, “Aren’t you jumping ahead by like 40 years or something?”, to which the mom replies, over her tears:

I just thought there would be more.

That line has really stuck with the last few years. It made me realize I needed to be aiming for something interesting of my own after the kids leave, beyond just my career.

That creeping thought – is this all there is? – has motivated me to work on other things in my life like friendships, writing, music, and hopefully a few more surprises down the pipe. 😉