Tag: aging

New Job

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

So I’ve started a new job. It’s at a manufacturing company about a 30 minute drive from where I live right now. I think that’s a pretty reasonable commuting distance. I’ve been there for about a week and a half so far. I’ve had two other different jobs in the past 9 months or so and they haven’t worked out for various reasons. This one seems like it could work. So allow me to be stupidly adult and modern for a moment and say “I think my work could work for me.” I’ve always subtly detested that phrase: “It (doesn’t) work(s) for you.” I don’t know why.

Many exciting things seem to be happening in my life at the moment: new job, making my car sportier and flashier via various modifications, taking a trip to the Southwestern United States with my dad in the next week or so but… I feel quite sad for some reason. Like a lot of the things I wanted when I was younger haven’t come to pass and like despite being marginally successful by some measures, I am woefully inadequate by others. It just seems like the harder I try the more things seem to go astray somehow. Gaging what is and is not acceptable action seems more difficult than ever for me.

Life is hard, it always has been, it always will be. But I always feel like there ought to be more tools at my disposal for turning life’s many difficulties to my advantage in one way or another. And, yes I admit, I always feel like things are just plain worse for me than for others. Experience and conventional wisdom tell me that that is simply not true, that everyone’s burden is unique, that it’s all relative and I occupy a certain space on the spectrum of things with some people having an easier time of it than me and others having a more difficult time than I am. But goddamnit, it just FEELS so true, the thought that life is just plain harder for me than anyone else.

I don’t know much about history, anyone’s or anything’s besides my own and I don’t pretend to. I think of myself a bit like Sherlock Holmes in that he once commented to Watson, after Watson told him that the Earth revolves around the sun and not the other way around (I think that was the factoid), that he found that piece of trivia moderately interesting but that he would now put all his energies into forgetting it completely and entirely. This flabbergasted Watson to say the least but Holmes explained that he had all the knowledge in his mind more or less neatly arranged and a factoid like the one he just heard would only serve to clutter things up and get in the way of other things he was more concerned with remembering. I have no real interest in history and I imagine that little pieces of historical fact would only serve to clutter up my mind and get in the way of other things I’d rather keep there.

What am I trying to say…. I don’t know. I’m 41 years old and I feel quite beaten down by life to tell you the truth. Like the harder I try to just go out there in the world and live, the more the universe tries to make things difficult for me. I wonder if I will ever look out upon the world from some as-yet-unknown vantage point surveying my surroundings and say to myself, “Life is good, I’m happy where I am, I’ve done things I’m proud of, and I am at peace with the way things are.” And mean it. I just don’t know.

I hope this job proves to be interesting, lucrative, and doable. Bye for now.

Life after 40

Posted on by xxjgputnamxx

When I was a kid, I never thought much about what my life would be like when I got older. I was just too busy being miserable, being happy, playing sports, doing schoolwork, crushing on this or that girl, jumping on the trampoline in our backyard beneath the old oak tree, mowing the lawn, playing tennis, getting my license, etc etc. I don’t know exactly what I did with my time when I was younger but I didn’t waste it worrying about the future, I’m pretty sure about that.

So what really happens after you turn 40 years old? Well, obviously anybody past the age of 40 knows the answer to that question but everybody’s different am I right? I guess what I mean by that is: life after 40 for you won’t be the same as life after 40 for me. Maybe that’s obvious too but I think it deserves to be pointed out.

In some ways, the media would have you believe that, for all intents and purposes, you’re pretty much dead after you turn 40. There are so few representations of anybody outside of their teens, 20’s, and 30’s in mainstream media. It’s almost like the whole world forgets you exist once you no longer fall into one of those age brackets. You’re dead exactly, just nobody really pays much attention to you anymore. Maybe they never did in the first place even when you were younger but it’s like passing 40, they’re less concerned with you than ever. Does this sound depressing? I don’t mean it to. I’m just trying to draw attention to the idea that, past a certain age, well, it’s kind of up to you to decide what’s true and what isn’t. And by that, I just mean, there are fewer signposts and role models and images telling you who you ought to be, what you ought to look like, how you ought to behave, so on and so forth. The makers of those things tend to focus on a younger crowd.

So… is that a good thing or a bad thing? Is it liberating? Confusing? Sad? Do you have to unlearn all the crap they crammed down your throat when you were younger about what’s important in life?

Many people say that as middle age wears on, happiness increases. At least, a great deal of research supports that assertion as far as I know. And I think it’s very much because the media doesn’t make such a fuss about people past 40.

I turned 40 a little over a year ago and I feel like I’m still waiting for that whole “happiness” thing to happen. Maybe I’m just being impatient and I need to give it another year or so.

There’s a quote from a movie called “Waking Life” (one of my absolute favorites) in which a character utters the cryptic soundbyte: “…the systematic questioning of the idea of happiness.” Basically, he’s talking about feeling disillusioned with the world and how he and his compatriots ought to slough off the ideas and ambitions foisted upon them by their elders in an effort to… i dunno, be more authentic. A defining characteristic of this character and the group he finds himself in, however, is his (their) age. They’re clearly headstrong, idealistic young men. Kinda doesn’t sound like something an older man might say but who knows? After losing a bunch of worldly things like a house, a job, a wife, maybe someone older might redefine (or at least try to) what happiness is all about.

I’ll certainly say the pace has slowed significantly. It’s not quite as go, go, go anymore. Maybe it will be again one day but right now, it’s definitely not like that. I often feel listless and unsure about the choices I’ve made that have led me to where I am now. Like, what would life be like if I had done X instead of Y? But it’s sort of pointless to think about those things. Wasted mental energy or something.

Anyway, I’ve got some things coming up this year I’m really looking forward to and it’s never over till it’s over as they say. Who knows what life as an old geezer has in store for me… 😉