A Slacker* Looks At 40 (from 46) - What Have I Done?

"'Cause your mornings will be brighter

Break the line, tear up rules

Make the most of a million times none."

- Bauhaus  

It's been over six years since I Turned Forty, so I think it's time to wrap up my look back at the (non)event.  At the time, I was  disintegrating, attempting to get back into some semblance of shape, questioning many of my career choices and still being grilled about my child-free lifestyle.  But I did have a few moments of reflection.  I can't remember any of them, so here are some I made up...

No, no, no.  I remember.  I thought what most slackers* think, especially at their milestone moments.  

I poured a ridiculous - like "Risky Business" ridiculous - rum and Coke, swallowed a teaspoon of narcotic cough syrup and asked myself "What have I done?"

The answer came entirely too quickly.  Like, Mike Damone in "Fast Times At Ridgemont High" quickly (poor Stacy).  But I digress. 

Not very much.  At forty, I had done not very much.

Most of my friends had children, as did two of my three siblings.  I worked for a woman six years my junior who was a CPA, a respected VP in a growing company, a mother of two and squarely on a CFO track.  I had meandered my way to a job which, to be fair, wasn't much more advanced than my first non-retail gig from thirteen years earlier - and which had about the same limited future.  I knew a handful of world travelers and a fistful of published writers.  I knew a man who had been awarded a Bronze Star, had a hospital named for him and who had served as Governor of a US territory. 

My inventory of accomplishments looked bleak, by comparison.

1. Came home in a police car when I was in the sixth grade.  I was only the lookout for the breaking and entering operation, but there you go.  Lesson learned - schools have silent alarms.
2. Went from curtain-puller for the school play one year, to title character the next.  Signing autographs for little kids is great for a young ego.
3. Saw Elvis working on the Chessie System Railroad over a year after his "death."
4. Convinced the guy at Montgomery Donuts to give me a huge trash bag full of 12-hour old donuts, which I inexplicably dumped on the lawn of the head cheerleader at my high school - a girl who did not know my name, and a girl who was out of town at the time.
5. Drove alone through the "Storm of the Century" in 1993 - from Maryland to Key Largo without stopping for more than gas.  Heavy snow until I was well into North Carolina, then the hardest cats-and-dogs-style rain I'd ever seen - hours and hours of it - all the way to Jacksonville.  Next came insane, 18-wheeler-punching wind, flying debris and reports of over 15 tornadoes across Florida.  That was followed by hundreds of miles of gas stations without electricity, downed power lines all over the place and a state of emergency.  When I reached Miami, it was pretty much just me, the power company trucks and the police, on the roads.  It's a longer story than that, but let's just end this with... Worth It.
6. Invented a time machine using yarn, butter and algae.  Can't remember where (when) I left it.
7. Witnessed, in-person, an NFC championship, Cal Ripken's last game, Darrell Green's last game.  Wait.  That's kind of sad.  Saw a Daytona 500 once, but Jeff Gordon won, so that sucked a little, too.
8. Got doused with Heineken at the ORIGINAL 9:30 Club in DC, courtesy of the not-yet-licensed-to-ill Beastie Boys.  Yeah, I'm not young.
9. Was an invited guest at the inauguration of one of my heroes as he became the Governor of the US Virgin Islands.
10. Proved that soul mates exist - by finding mine.  I know!  Weird!
11. Wrote "Zombieland" and "Warm Bodies" and "The Walking Dead."  In my mind.
12. Ran for the US Senate as a founding member of the Egalitarian Party.  Lost, primarily due to the fact that no one knows what egalitarian means.
13. Stepped on a pop top.
14. Survived.  So far.
15. Managed to have a reasonably good time.

Yeah.  I could go on, but why?  I hadn't compiled a rock star's diary of cool stuff, but as I digested my 40th birthday cake, along with some rum, cola and hydrocodone, a warm blanket of contentment wrapped around my aching, not so young body - twice.

I had [Maris].  We had jobs where we were indispensable, well-paid and beloved.  I had good doctors and drugs and the promise of a long-awaited diagnosis and treatment for whatever the hell was wrong with me.  We clung tightly to each other, and to the promise of better days ahead.  We could, indeed, survive.  And more.  We could thrive on this silly - but pretty - little planet.  Good things were still within our reach.  Big things, even.

We would make the most of a million times none.

* Still not really a slacker.  Just ask my boss!    
By the way - this one was inspired by my good friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS, and their weekly writing prompts of "OLD" and "HOPE."                   

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (From 46) - Honey, Where Are The Kids?

This post was orignially featured by my good friends at STUDIO 30 PLUS - but just in case you missed it...

 

About three months before I turned forty, I went out to lunch with a group of coworkers from what had not yet become the Vortex of Doom. As is often the case with my work groups, thanks to my so-called career in and around accounting, I was one of only two men at a table of ten people. I'm used to this. It's nice. So when the topic of conversation turned to children, I was neither surprised nor unhappy. I love kids, and I know that it's generally a good idea to let the people around you talk about what they want to talk about.

One of my newer coworkers asked me the question I had known would eventually come my way.

"Do you have children, Joe?"

It's such a simple question, and yet so very loaded. It needn't be, but it is. Before I go any further, please know that I am fully aware of the intensity of people's feelings on this subject. Volumes of books, research studies, advice columns and websites, television and cinema and blog after blog after blog have been - and are still being - produced on the subject of what follows.

"Nope."

Oh, if only we could say "nope" and be done with it. It usually helps to say "No, how about you," but she had just been talking about her kids, so that wasn't an option, this time. Naturally, her follow-up question was immediate.

"Are you and [Maris] planning on having children?"

I'm aware, thanks in part to [Maris]'s sharing of hundreds of stories and discussions from Etiquette Hell, that to some people, just being asked this question is bile-inducingly offensive. I am not one of those people. I know that 99% of the time, it really is simply conversation.

"Nope."

Here's where it gets a little dicey. Sometimes - okay, once - I've managed to change the subject and derail the question train. That was not to happen on this day. In my experience, there are two ways this will go. If my questioner is boundary-sensitive, or perhaps a man, the next thing I hear will be some (usually lighthearted) quip about how I'm not getting any younger, and "better hurry up and get started." Again, many people find horrible offense in that stuff. I don't. But, more times than I can count, my questioner has taken the other route.

"Why aren't you having children?"

Sometimes, you can actually hear the judgement in this question. The urge to jump up and say "None of your business! Why do you [something outrageously personal and intrusive]???" is almost overpowering, when I hear that judgemental tone. That was not the case, this time around, but what I did hear was if anything just ever so slightly more unsettling. My coworker, whom I still didn't know very well, was UPSET that I wasn't going to be a parent. It was as if I had told her that I had cancer, or a loved one had just passed away. It actually hurt her feelings that I wasn't going to have children. I know this is an extreme reaction. I had never seen it, and haven't since, but it haunts me still.

Now, I know I'm a blogger and we're supposed to be all about over-sharing and whatnot, but this post is already longer than I'd like it to be, and this topic is huge, so I'm going to withhold any serious sharing of my reasons for not having children, for now. I will say that they are numerous and thoughtfully, exhaustively-explored. So meanwhile, go ahead and assume anything you like, on a spectrum from "I can't have kids and it breaks my heart every waking minute" to "I'm a selfish, immature asshole." We'll return to the topic when and if I'm good and ready.

I will share [Maris]'s response to the "WHY NOT?" question, which is "Because I don't want them." But there's is also no shortage of fun to be had with people too interested in one's procreation decision:

"The judge said no."

"Because [Maris] is human and I'm, um, not, and we're just not, you know, compatible. Here - let me show you... Where are you going?"

"Because robots can't have babies."

"Because we're allergic."

"Because we still have stuff to talk about."

"Because she's hot, and we don't want to ruin her."

"We'd love to, but there's this old witch who years ago gave us a win over the cowboys in exchange for our firstborn."

"Because we drink."

"Because we drink enough already."

"Because the mere thought of being pregnant and/or giving birth makes [Maris] want to vomit and cry and hide under the bed for a week."

"Because they talk through Nats games and other important events."

"Because without sleep, we would undoubtedly murder them."

"It's a matter of national security, and that's all we're authorized to say at this time."

"Because clearly we are horrible, horrible human beings."

"To stand in glorious judgement of your decision to have them. Obviously."

I could go on, and I've actually forgotten some of my more amusing and/or biting retorts, so I'll stop here.

Watch for future posts in which we tackle the unwieldy subjects of "Seriously, why?" and "you'll change your mind," and the inevitable tangential discussion of hurtful judgmentalism in general. Someday, I might even talk about how close I came to becoming a parent with my first wife, when two miscarriages stepped in to say no. Yeah. How about that? It might get all kinds of emotional, up in here!

Until then, I remain,
Uncle Joe (the best uncle in the whole wide world)

*And no, I'm not really a slacker. I really do love the word, though.
 

A Slacker* Looks At 40 (From 45) - What Career?

Continuing my look back at TURNING FORTY, it's time to face a measure or two of the career music to which I was listening at the time.  I promise to mention neither the HEALTH STUFF nor the ENDLESS FITNESS RESTARTS this time, although the latter has much in common with my working life.

The truth is, I have no career; I have a series of jobs.  This is an increasingly common phenomenon.  It's not unusual to end up on a career track far from one's college degree or youthful life-plan.  I know a political science major who has turned out to be a successful and indispensable executive assistant, just to name one.  Some career paths, like that one, automatically include some job-hopping to facilitate advancement.

What I saw through the smoky haze of my forty birthday candles was a SERIES OF JOBS with little to no upward movement.  I don't beat myself up too much about this, as plain ol' bad luck gets a significant part of the blame for it; I've been caught up in a ridiculous number of layoffs.  

But at the same time, I was fully-aware of how my choices had led me to be a 40-year old Accounts Receivable/Order Entry Administrator in a small, doomed software company.

Choice One:  Majoring in Business when deep-down I kind of already knew I didn't like business.  I had heard it was easy, and while we've established that I'm not a *real* slacker, it is true that I was not much of a student.  The owner of our local beer and wine store once asked me what I was studying in college, and when I said business, he sighed and told me to expect a life of "taking up time and space."

Choice Two:  Lingering in retail until I was 27 years old.

Choice Three:  Not finishing my MBA.  It was the mid-90s and A) I got some bad advice about them not being worth the paper they were printed upon, and B) with my retail salary and fear of crushing debt, I couldn't afford to finish.

Choices Four through Six:  Doomed biotech start-up, doomed software/internet start-up with imbecilic "visionary" President, and doomed relic from the telecom collapse - one rife with internal turmoil and dysfunction.  Oh well - who knew?

Choice Seven was hardly a choice at all.  It was so much more money and autonomy, responsibility and potential than I'd seen before, and my boss and coworkers were simply amazing.  It was the best fit I'd found since my late teens, and I loved it.  

As I turned forty, I was at peace with the place to which my strange series of jobs had led me.  I wasn't climbing any ladders, but I had come to know that ladders probably aren't my thing.  Could I work harder and be more aggressive and move up a rung or two?  Sure I could, but I had come to value where I was and what I was doing - a lot more than the prospect of fighting for much more.

In our country, we have a tendency to look down at smart underachievers.  I think my problem with that is that we have twisted definitions of achievement.  As I turned forty, I had achieved a good job, with a great boss and the opportunity to take ownership of a process and to excel and be challenged and fairly happy.  I didn't have a career, but I had what I needed.  


To some, that wasn't achievement at all.  To me, it was (and still is) the highlight of my working life to date.

Besides, throughout my life as
Assistant Store Manager,
Customer Service/Sales Representative,
Temp,
Receptionist,
Client Services Representative,
User Support/Training Associate,
Temp,
Order Management Associate,
Call Center Representative,
Order Entry/Accounts Receivable Administrator,
Temp,
and
Accounts Receivable Clerk,
my title hasn't mattered, because in my heart, I've always been a dancer-- I mean, a WRITER!  [Cue John Belushi dancing on the graves of his fallen peers...]       

* Remember - I'm not really a slacker.  I just needed a hook for the title.