Forty is the New Twenty, Right?
In which I'm pleased to find, as I turn over into middle age, that the last wayward, frustrating year has actually given me exactly what I need.
This morning I turn 40.
Have you reached this milestone?
I remain confused. A little disappointed, but also hopeful?
However, I’m told I tend to enter all new situations with hope. A naive hope, I’m sure. The weight on my heart lifts with every move to a new (or old) town, I begin each academic program (even each academic year) with the same bright-eyed bushy-tailed enthusiasm I must have started kindergarten with as I pushed past my sniveling mom into the classroom ready to see my best friend and color my squirrel.
Even small beginnings, like the purchase of tools and materials get me started on new projects.
Oh, new projects. How many of those have I started with uninhibited joy only to go off them as quickly?
And it’s these lost projects that cause disappointment.
Not every project is meant to be finished, of course, many will remain in the SOMEDAY/MAYBE folder indefinitely. Many notes will be a mystery just weeks after they’re recorded. Who knows where a phrase came from or why it was noted; what emotion or memory it sparked?
In developing my writing practice over the last two years, I have gotten somewhat better about noting complete thoughts when I’m struck by something, but I’m sure many will still elude me when I find them again.
I began last fall sure that I was over academia and that a PhD was not in my future. That may still be true, but what I’ve come to realize is that I had been relying on coursework and the guidance of mentors to, as it were, keep me on a path, while at the same time I felt burnt out and oppressed by the system.
What I mean is, I had absolutely no idea how to maintain a practice of my own. I had no idea how to seek out reading material on my own. I had no idea how to keep myself writing and making stuff on my own. All of which may have been fine for undergrad and to a certain extent MA coursework, but not for a PhD.
Have I mentioned how I often envy folks who spent their adolescents writing fan-fic or sad poems? How startled I was to learn that some had the mental space and agency to grip onto an author or philosopher, Jane Austen, perhaps, and read her entire oeuvre before even getting to undergrad? Or how inspired in retrospect I’ve been by friends who learned to play bass or guitar on their own time?
Maybe I’m just always yearning for a life that’s not mine.
I can hardly remember what I did with my time when I was young. As a family, we watched TV and visited people (mostly grandparents) and so I spent most of my time hanging out with friends and going along with whatever they wanted to do. I had big ideas about what I’d LIKE to have been doing or PLANNED to do (learning the piano or guitar; reading; journaling) but unless there was a class for it, I rarely got around to it.
And if there had been a class for it I would have grumbled that I was being forced to do it and would only have done what was absolutely necessary at the last possible second.
Even then I suffered from the extra weight of all the things I SHOULD be doing, which included anything assigned. It overwhelmed my brain into inactivity. Nothing releases this weight like socializing. (I found, as an adult, alcohol also does the trick.) When I socialize, even now, my whole brain sort of shuts off as I become fully immersed in the person or people I’m with (which has its positives and negatives emotionally speaking).
Essentially it takes all my focus and energy to be present in that moment so that the endless nagging of whatever I SHOULD be doing shuts down for a bit and much to the detriment of the things that do actually need doing, I always feel quite refreshed after a long natter or a few drinks with friends.
However, too many days like this in a week, and the lack of actually doing things that are important to me in a career or productivity sense, increases depression.
A double-edged sword really:
Abstain from socializing and I feel the weight of the SHOULDS and never get anything done.
Too much socializing and the depression sets in and I never get anything done.
So I both relied on school to keep me writing and reading (though I did as little of that as possible when assigned) and felt overwhelmed by in-person attendance, expectations, and deadlines. All of which kept me from following rabbit holes of interest and developing my own sense of practice (and self, really).
I now know that some of this is my faulty executive function. I needed quite a bit more training on how to manage my time and implement systems that allowed my neurodivergent brain to function with more ease. I also needed to be scheduled for a lot less stuff to give it space to rest.
I often wonder how I might have fared in a Montessori school when young or the block system in undegrad. Trained early on to manage my own time and given the opportunity to delve into my strengths and interests. Later being allowed to focus on one class/topic at a time rather than jumping around thorughout a semester.
I also wonder if it would have been helpful if I hadn’t had to work to eat. But these what-ifs are rarely useful in a realistic sense.
The biggest detriment to my having a career as any kind of independent writer or freelance person, was never learning how to have a creative practice without these external systems guiding me, especially since becoming newspaper or magazine staff was never in my cards. That would have been a lot like school: assignments, deadlines, etc.
Writing isn’t taught, or at least wasn’t taught to me, as a creative practice. Sure my undergrad and graduate profs suggested I write daily, but it took me ages to figure out what that even meant for me and so spent more time bristling at the idea.
I was taught writing as a product, which I’ve written about in excess here, here, and here.
This is exactly why the events and struggles of the last 12 months have been necessary despite the lack of income and unfinished projects: in order to suss out what kinds of things I write and to even begin to formulate a PhD proposal and research track, if I choose to pursue that path, I first had to commit to a consistent, exploratory practice free from external deadlines and assignments.
If I had managed to get myself into a PhD program last autumn, which at one point I was keen to do, I would have been replaying the same old tracks, except it wouldn’t have gone off well. I wouldn’t have been able to fake it like I’ve managed to in my MA programs.
Because I was still more or less that same kid, going along with those around me and doing, begrudgingly, what I was told to do. Independent research would have been impossible.
I was in a survival mode I couldn’t switch off. And the thing is, is that I didn’t know it was happening, let alone what kinds of questions I might ask or systems I might have put into place well before now to dig my way out.
This isn’t to say that the coursework I took, the mentors I’ve had, and the fellow creatives I’ve met and learned from, haven’t been absolutely invaluable to me. They have been, and continue to be, but under the academic system and the way my brain was trained to respond to it, I would never have been able to crack through into MY practice.
So that’s where the hope lies: I now can confidently say that I have a fully-fledged, hard-won, near-daily creative practice mostly centered around writing.
And I am sure I will be wrong about what I need over the next twelve months, as I was wrong about what I needed the last twelve months, but right now, today, my focus is on expanding that practice into developing, crafting, and finishing projects with more regularity. Even if that primarily happens here.
40 is the new 20, right? In some ways, I feel the full-on give-no-fucks attitude middle age provides after years of just barely knowing which way to turn. And that’s the feeling I want to lean into going forward.
What feelings do you want to lean into in the coming months or years? Something as small as cosy sweater weather (which I am also very much enjoying) or as big as the shifts milestones can bring on?
