May 31st, 2019

Learning Things in My Forties

Last year on my birthday I did my big advice post and I stand by every word of it. I did promise not to do another one for a long while, although in truth a lot of advice sneaks into my other posts here–sorry! So instead, here are some truths I have learned about my 40s, now that I’m in my second year of them (there’s a little advice in here–I just can’t help myself!):

1) My senses haven’t dulled–or at least, not all of them. My taste and touch senses are about as sharp as ever, and my already terrible vision is not noticeably worse. BUT my ability to hear and smell things have gone through the roof. So this is why old people don’t like rock and roll–it IS too loud. Everything is too loud. Noises that I think are also too loud that other people do not even acknowledge are noises at all include the internet router, pop bubbles bursting in a glass, the overuse of toilet paper by people in other stalls in public washrooms (I apologize for the image but omg–I know too much), and the twisting of a lid on a pen. Also many things are too strongly scented–almost anything that is artificially scented, actually. I can’t even walk down the cleaning products aisle at the grocery store anymore–Mark has to get the detergent. There’s a whole dollar store in Scarborough I won’t go into because they use some terrible air freshener in there. (I still like rock and roll, though.)

2) Things hurt more, but not enough for me to do anything about it. I have definitely reached the age of random aches and pains, but not the age of caring about them very much. Like, sometimes my knee or my stomach will hurt for a couple days, and I’ll wonder why, and then it’ll go away and I’ll be like–great–and not think about it anymore. It’s possible this would derail me more if my body had heretofore been in perfect working order, but since I’ve generally been used to having some sort of ailment, throwing in a few more inexplicable ones doesn’t bug me much. I can also still do what I want–run around, sit on the floor, take ballet classes–so my body is giving me what I want it to. There could definitely come a time when it doesn’t. I am watchful.

3) I no longer think people are that paying so much attention to me. Many years ago, my old friend John said, “Self-consciousness is still self-absorption.” At the time I boggled at how insightful that was, but it has taken me a long time to fully internalize it–I’m still not sure if I quite have, but I’m getting there. Certainly, if I wear weird shoes or make an odd face in a photo or fail to turn up at an event for someone I don’t really know, I no longer assume that everyone is criticizing me because that would imply everyone is thinking about me, and why would they do that? I’m just not that important. It has really been immensely freeing to realize that I am not at the centre of most people’s thoughts most of the time. However, I have learned the hard way that this is a lesson that everyone comes to in their own time–if a friend is fretting endlessly about what to wear to a party, “What makes you think everyone is going to be looking at you?” is not an immensely helpful thing to say.

4) Impostor syndrome remains, but its hold is weakening because I have precedent. To be honest, I still believe I’m going to fail at most things most of the time. It’s not a conscious thought, just a background burble of “You suck, every time you haven’t sucked was a fluke or a lie” that I don’t really think about. However, when I’m actually trying to consider/plan what i really can and cannot do, I drag those thoughts out into the light and examine them. I also hold them against years of so-called flukes–my nearly 20-year career in publishing, my three books, my lifetime of mainly walking down stairs without falling. And because this history is–at 41–so considerable, it starts to constitute something somewhat like proof. At the very least, I feel that if the catastrophic failure I fear comes to pass, it will be in the context all those other times I didn’t, or at least seemed not to, fail, and people will give me the benefit of a doubt. So I give myself the same benefit.

5) I am fairly worried about death now. Not so much my own, as I will not be here to have to cope with that–though I do consciously think to myself that I have to remain alive because other people would be devastated if I died. It’s not that I don’t want to be alive, it’s more when I’m jaywalking and see an Uber barreling towards me with the driver on their phone–my mind flashes to an image of dear people crying, and I realize I should have just walked to the light. I also think quite often of how sad I would be if people I loved died, which I didn’t do when I was younger and none of them ever had.

6) I am doing better about following the news, and thus much more upset about it. This sort of follows on from the previous entry and also attaches to the next–I am aware of both mortality and the next generation, and the idea of the young people I know now getting to have full lives and not having to spend most of them digging up from the f*ck ups of previous generations is paramount to me.

7) Young people are ever-more charming to me as I start to notice how they are different from me. I have spent my whole life feeling as though I am 16 years old, and I’ve only just started to notice that I’m not. Recently I mentioned to a colleague that I will often watch one (1) episode of a TV and then stop–even a show I like a lot–and that’s why it was taking me so long to watch a series he wanted to know my opinion of. He was so baffled by this tendency that I finally described it as a generational difference–he is a whole ‘nother cycle of the year of the horse, 12 years younger than me. I said I have a “90s attention span,” a holdover from broadcast television when there was only one episode available to watch. That’s a silly example, but they are starting to crop up–I am different from young people. I mean, I’ve known intellectually that I am for some time, but I’m starting to actually feel it.

8) I can own privilege better. There is LOTS of room for improvement on this, but it has stopped feeling excruciating to say that my success came from, yes, my own hard work and brilliance but ALSO from me being positioned by my privilege in a number of ways to have those things pay off when many equally hard-working and brilliant but less-advantageously positioned people didn’t see the same results. It is SO CHALLENGING to accept that I didn’t do everything on my own, because I did and do work hard, but that’s the thing–it’s not about undermining myself, it’s about building others up. What benefits have I been given as a white woman? As a cis-gendered heterosexual married woman? As a person who went to excellent schools? As a person with educated parents (huge, and often overlooked, my friends)? AND HOW CAN WE MAKE THOSE THINGS AVAILABLE IN A WAY THAT’S FAIRER THAN “SOME GET LUCKY”??

9) It’s my time to give. For so long I have thought of myself of both young and sort of incompetent–I’d be lucky if I got anything done at all, I would need tonnes of help to do things properly, the kindness and support of others would be the main thing that stood between me and catastrophe. And I don’t know if I was so wrong about any of that–I’ve been pretty incompetent, and whether that’s #4 talking or not, I’ve definitely received tonnes of really generous, really fun, really helpful help. Almost every time I didn’t know what to do, someone reached out to me with an idea or a clue. So. I’m 41 now, and competent or not, I’m definitely not young, and I’ve been trying a little bit for the past few years to pay forward all of the kindness I’ve received. I think I need to try harder and make contributing to the communities I care for a higher priority in my 41st year and onward, even though it still seems strange to me to be on the other side of things, even just by virtue of seniority. I’m still working out what that might look like for me. Stay tuned.