40 Fumble

My goal was to start a blog this year, well I did start it…. If that’s what you will call it.  I managed to get 2 posts online, and then 8 months later…nothing. 

I think about writing, and sometimes I do jot down a few things in my notebook, but finding the energy and motivation to fully complete the task makes this just not possible.  But it’s more than that, it is not that I am not creative anymore, it’s just everything feels like it has a dull luster to it.

Some might call this lazy, however I am not a lazy person.  This summer, I added turf to my yard after prepping the areas with hand weeding and raking level, weeded by hand ½ acre of land, laid down a large area of wood panels for decking, seeded and hand watered grass 2 times a day in between pavers until they grew, laid weed barrier in a front planter, laid weed barrier in a back planter, added drip line to our entire deck, planted and drip lined an entire section of plants, trimmed trees, cleared an entire side of the house of bricks, debris, and vegetation and moved them out then leveled and added pavers.  There was much more, just these are the things that come to mind in seconds.  I did all these things while being pregnant, maintaining 2 businesses, and managing 2 toddlers. 

I say this not to pump myself up but to clarify to myself I am not lazy.  Then what is the hold up with the writing??  Why is it so hard for me to just do it?  I am a firm believer if you want to do something, you can, and I really and truly believe that. 

This brings me to ponder the under lying issue of mid-life in general.  I am in my 40s.  I might not be living a normal 40-year-old life as some people kids are grown, or mid-school aged, whereas I am literally pregnant.  Many of my friends do not have any kids. However, I do believe some things are the same with most 40 year olds and no one talks about it.  The 40s are boring and many aspects of the life are stagnating.  They don’t have to be, but they are. 

Now hear me out, you have most likely been in the same career for 20 years at this point.  You are starting to wonder to yourself if you can really do this same thing for another 20 years.  It’s a point where you realize you have completed half of the financially required working years and wondering if you really want to continue this for the second half of it.  Work is a huge part of your life and controls a lot of how you feel and how you live. It’s not uncommon for people to trudge to jobs they hate every day for 15 years straight and then one day just realize, what am I actually doing and why am I purposely making myself miserable?

Friends are changing, in that, you do reach a point in your life when you pair down your friends.  Everyone is different but I find in my circle most people have gone through this cycle.  You start with a bunch of friends, and you don’t count them as acquaintances, but people who you know personal things about, who have your history under lock and key, and who have walked the happy glory days and sad dirty scary alleys with you.  You try to make plans, they can never meet up, they aren’t there for you when life hands you, no, literally throws lemons at you.  As a younger person in their 20s and 30s we tend to find excuses for our friends who don’t have enough time for us or who have grown apart.  But in the 40s I think it’s almost accepted at least as a woman that you are now wise and can let go of all those fair-weather friends and start to pare down to your lifers. You are essentially allowed to become a bitch (for lack of a more creative word). It’s not that you don’t care for these people, and you might still see them once every 5 years, however you just don’t have the interest in investing time in someone who is not going to have time for you.  Managing how you make this friend transition can be confusing, and emotional knowing people who hold a large part of your past will not be in your future.  Friends, at least to me, are a large part of your mental health and help you get through the other life challenges, so this is a big one.

Some part of this mid-life change is realizing time is fleeting.  By now, a friend or more has died in your 20s, 30s, and 40s, and know life is a cruel beast. It can take you at any time.  Your parents and relatives are aging and you’re taking on a new type of role as caretaker and/or starting to think about wills, trusts, and how you will take care of these things.  Morbid, yes. Required, unfortunately. Going to happen to everyone, yes. It’s the sad and hard part of life, losses.

Relationships with a romantic partner wain.  In the US, the “typical” progression is to marry someone in 20/30s have some kids and live happily ever after.  However, if you are now 40, and have done this trajectory you have now been married for 10-20 years and all the factors of paragraph 1 and 2 wear on your mind putting stresses onto the relationship.  In addition, to your career ponderings, you are also starting to ponder if you can stand to stay with this one person for the next 10-20 years of your life until you die.  I do not think you are the same person in your 20s/30s that you start to become in your 40s.  The average age of divorce in the US for men and women is in the 40s.  And now that I am in my 40s, I can understand the challenges.  Maybe the relationship has gotten boring, maybe you realize that the person you married literally is the worst choice for you, maybe you are just tired of the way things are, whatever it is, it is a stagnation point, and statistics would agree. 

So, I am blaming my lack of creativity/motivation literally on my 40s.  I believe the 40s are a transitional period no one really talks about.  We talk about kids turning teenager and hormones, sending your kid into the adult years, and how starting your career are all big life changes.  But the 40s really is the underrated tough time.  You are losing/changing friends, figuring out relationships, care taking elderly, understanding you are not old, but you are definitely not a spring chicken anymore, thinking about whether you should keep the career you have worked so hard to get after all these years, or just deep diving into your dreams as you enter the later years of your life.  Let me be very clear, I do not think 40 is old by any means.  I am having a baby in 3 months, I have so many things I know I can still do, I still have tons of great ideas, physically I am not 20 but I am very active and enjoying life, however I do think your transition and the way you think really starts to shift at this age.  As a woman you could even be in perimenopause which I won’t even touch on here because that is a completely different book, but really and truly the 40s are an underrated, undiscussed, period of change.  So, I am solely blaming my 40s on my lack of blogging. 

At 40, societal perception is that you should be wise, and maybe not blogging like a 20-year-old.  That you should not be putting out an unpolished product because you know better, you have years of learning under your belt.  But maybe, you should start to bring some of your youth back.  I am not saying, you need to bar dance all night nursing a 2-day hangover (unless you need to do that-have at it). However, you should be letting go of some of the caring about what society says you should do and be, letting go of some of that pressure to act the way you have now been groomed to be for a decade or so.  So, for today and hopefully going forward, I am going to drop some of those expectations, I am not going to overthink it, I am not going to proofread excessively this blog.  I am going to just start sending it.