53
That number sounds strange when you say it out loud. Not because I am scared of it, but because I genuinely never penciled myself in this far. If you knew me back when I was an out of control nut job with the emotional range of a chainsaw, you’d get why. I had no direction, no brakes, and no business being trusted with adult decisions. Then somewhere along the line, I got my act together. Not perfect. Just pointed in a direction that was not straight into a jail cell. I still don’t have any brakes.
Here is the birthday update on my 53rd trip around the sun.
I am still a jobless bum eating peanut butter out of the jar in a bathrobe, and I will tell you something that is going to offend the hustle crowd. It is kind of great. My photo albums have never been so organized. Mazie Mae is living her best life because I am always here and she has a strict snugs quota to enforce. I am not saying this is how I want to live forever, but I am also not pretending I hate it.
The job at another tire company. Yeah, that did not work out. And no, it was not because I cannot do the work. It was because the culture smelled like the kind of place where your phone becomes an ankle monitor. The expectation was availability all the time. Twenty four hours a day, seven days a week, and you are supposed to call it leadership. I call it a slow motion hostage situation. Hard pass.
Would I like an income stream again. Of course. But I am not so desperate that I will trade my life for a paycheck and panic attacks. It is a strange feeling being unemployed and still saying no to a job. I like it more than I expected.
There I was, in my brother’s garage, frustrated and stressing because I had just lost a six figure job, and I fired off a resume to a job I found in one of those moments. You know the moments. When you are pissed off and a little panicked, so you apply somewhere just to prove to yourself that you are not stuck. It is like tossing a message in a bottle, except the bottle is your ego and the ocean is the internet.
Within four hours, I had an interview set up. Forty eight hours later, I was in a second interview with the VP. Now I am waiting for what I hope is the call to come up to Bowling Green for an in person visit that turns into an offer for a Director of Operations position.
I am not telling you that to show off. Honestly, I am surprised it happened that fast too. Sometimes I underestimate my value, then imposter syndrome comes back like a debt collector with perfect timing. It is a wicked loop. But there is hope. And hope is not some motivational poster nonsense. Hope is the thing that keeps you from laying down in traffic. So yes. Fingers crossed.
After my last post, my brother reached out and suggested I come up to Michigan for a visit. Truth be told, it was my sister in law who told him of my peanut butter addiction and suggested he call me. Credit where credit is due. Either way, I took the invite and spent a week playing with trucks and timing chains, watching the Subpar Bowl with my son (miss you Dev), and enjoying a brief respite from days filled with Star Trek reruns and resume submissions.
The timing could not have been better because my mom decided this was also the perfect moment for a hospital visit. She is on the mend and home now, and if she is reading this, she better be following the doctor’s orders. I think am finally old enough that I think I can take her. It was a busy week, but I was grateful I was in the Mitten for it. Every time I visit, my people make it harder to leave. I will always miss the ability to just hang out with my brother and son whenever I want. But I cannot do that weather anymore. I have paid my dues to the winter gods.
Which brings me back to 53.
The aches and pains are real, y’all. Not dramatic, not tragic, just real. And when I look around at my friends and family, I see it in them too. That quiet grind of aging that nobody wants to admit out loud. I do not think it is a midlife crisis because it is neither midlife nor a crisis. It is more like a reckoning. Not with death, with time. Because the choices we make now are not the same as the choices we made at twenty five. Back then you can hit reset and pretend it never happened. Now the decisions have substance. They stick. They become the shape of the years ahead.
So I am going to do what I always do when things get heavy. I am going to boil it down into something I can carry with a bit of humor/truth mixed in. I call them Q’isms, because of course I do. Some are cliche. I do not care. Cliches become cliches because they are usually true and we just hate being reminded. I hope somewhere in them you find something that is helpful, or at least thought provoking.
- Life is too short to work where you are unhappy. Quit and move on. You will be ok.
- No matter how ugly your past is, do not wish it away. Everything that hurt you built you.
- Travel, anywhere, often, for no reason. Seriously.
- Seek discomfort daily. Comfort is a warm bed that turns into a grave if you never leave it.
- Screw social media. Call your friends. People do not need your likes, they need your voice.
- Use the three second rule for hard conversations. If you wait longer, you will talk yourself out of it.
- You will outgrow people. If they no longer add value to your life, cut them out. Its ok.
- You do not always have to be a bear, but when you do, be a raging Grizzly.
- It is just money. You will make more, and it won’t buy you a single minute of time.
- Give compliments away like you are paid to do it. If you can think it, say it. The world needs your kindness.
- Be a mentor whenever you can. What you know dies with you. Mentoring is immortality realized.
- We get one life. Eat the fucking cake.
Happy Valentine’s Day, my friends.
Worst birthdate ever
Q
Q is a meat Popsicle living in Nashville with hopes and dreams of running away to retire earlier than all his friends. Skilled in the witchcraft of not giving a damn about the Jones’ and filled with a did it or damn it mentality. His thoughts are his own, and he is no role model.
