This is Forty…One!
I don’t know where I thought I’d be at 41. Honestly, I can’t even remember ever seriously thinking about it. In all honesty, with each passing year, I feel like my memory becomes a little hazier, I recall less and less from yesteryear. Part of that is aging of course, and part of that revolves my desire for a MRI or CAT scan, whichever is more appropriate, to make sure all of the marbles are exactly where they should be.
And here I am. I’m not even sure if I honestly expected to make it to 41. I grew up on the southside of Chicago, The Wild 100’s. It’s not necessarily a place where you look 20 or 30 years into the pass. You see so many people who don’t make it to their 30’s..and it’s not all violence. Diabetes and high blood pressure take as many people from our lives where I come from as a bullet...actually, way more.
But I’ve made it this far. Some days I feel like a million bucks, some days I feel like I’m falling apart at the seams. However, I can’t imagine I’d have thought I would be here. Single. I know I figured by now I would have a family. A wife, kid or two…maybe even a house. Much like my fellow Gen Xers, I was sold, and bought, the baby boomers’ dreams, lock stock and barrel.
Yes, if you get good grades in school, and go to college, you can have the wife, two and a half kids, dog (golden retreiver) and a beautiful Chicago Bungalow home in Mount Greenwood. Little did I know then that Mount Greenwood doesn’t even like black people, let alone how that wasn’t necessarily the trajectory my life would take.
It came up in conversation the other day, that when you look at old shows like Married With Children for example…
Al Bundy works in a shoe store, and at no point does he seem exceptionally successful or making a lucrative paycheck, yet he has a home, 2 kids, a wife, a dog, and a car. Can you really sustain that life working at Payless? It seems almost laughable asking the question, right?
I don’t know where I thought I’d be professionally. Initially as a child, there was a year or two I wanted to be a firefighter. That passed relatively quickly to wanting to be a psychologist or therapist, not that I knew exactly what either job entailed, but I knew I enjoyed talking and helping people. Then, as I entered my teen years, I wanted to be a criminal profiler. I read every book by John Douglas I could get my hands on, and every book on serial killers as well. Remember the Time Magazine true crime book series? Read it…all of it.
Today, I work communications. Not sure how I got there. It’s a job I could do in my sleep, and I still have yet to know if that is a good thing or not.
You ever feel like you have a complete life, but it’s kind of like a puzzle where the pieces don’t quite fit together perfectly? Covid-19 and quarantine has definitely intensified the feelings of loneliness…but I can assure you that online dating is not hitting the right chords…so what’s the alternative?
But in the past year, I discovered something that makes me joyful…podcasting. It combines all of my strongest skills, as well as my greatest pleasures…we shall see where this ship takes me.
And here we are. I went to the Morton Arboretum tonight. It was a good time, I highly recommend it, and I warn you that the company makes you all the difference. Sitting in pleasant and beautiful company, singing Christmas tunes and chatting about everything, but really not chatting about anything, was exactly what my soul needed tonight. Let’s see what tomorrow brings.
What things are bringing you joy during these fall COVID days? Events? Places? People? Let me know down in the comments.
Photo Credit: Photo by Dorrell Tibbs on Unsplash
