Are you Flunking Forty with me?

I’m not sure when it hit me – that I needed to define myself as flunking forty.  I mean, I have tons to be thankful for.  And, I think we have good reason to look around and realize there are really terrible things in the world and our backyards and people are really suffering, so it’s probably selfish and narcissistic to start a woe-is-me blog and podcast about not being super successful.  But I do feel like I grew up and went to school with a group of girls/women who genuinely thought – not were told – but believed we could do and achieve anything we wanted to and would, as a result, live some sort of Madison-Avenue-creative-team-conceived commercial-perfect life replete with cool appliances, trendy purses, active children, SUV’s, fit spouses, charity boards, financial advisors, and alumni-magazine worthy career titles.

Wrong.  So wrong.  Wrongity, wrong, wrong.

I’ve joked with friends something to this effect: “If you told me, back when I was 18 years old, that I would be living like this in my 40s?  I would have slapped you!”  Mind you, I’ve never slapped anyone, so I’m making a pretty bold statement. 

Where am I now?  Let’s just say… I called 1994 and want my salary back… I freak out when I think about paying for health insurance… my list of household repairs makes me wonder if it would be cheaper to build a new house… I don’t take medications I need because the deductible is too high.

I’m worrying about things now that were things I worried about as a twenty-something.  But not in that cute, “this is temporary on the way to adulthood” way… In a REAL, this is LIFE way.  Like, it could cause bigger problems in the future.

There are several things that have led me to this precarious place where I’m dangling in my mid-forties.  In many ways, it’s good and healthy to be doing new things and things that I like.  Chronic illness was one factor that led me to this place, and I have to face there are things I can and cannot do and one thing that is important is that I like what I do – I simply cannot endure the stress and misery I felt in my final years of teaching and expect to be healthy.  

But I’ve also looked around.  And I see my friends and my family and I see that somehow – none of us made the picture-perfect paradigm we had held up for ourselves.  If there were a rubric (sorry, teacher term) or a checklist or – I’ll bring it current – a Buzzfeed quiz, what would we score?  Imagine your 18-year-old perception of your 44-year-old self.  Now give yourself the quiz.

What’s your score?  I am definitely WAY BELOW 60% of what I would have expected myself to achieve.

Are you Flunking Forty?  Will you own it with me?  Can we take charge of the lives we HAVE and somehow say to our kids, don’t imagine yourself in some perfect world – look around – this is what real life looks like, and you’ll get yours and you’ll manage it just fine?

In my podcast and my blog I want to bring on guests to share stories of failures (and successes), thoughts on what motivates us and how our “failures” might have actually improved us, and how we don’t have to stop growing up just because no one can call us a kid anymore.

Will you listen to my podcast and read my blog?  I hope so!