You’ll Be The Same Age Either Way

Have you ever had thoughts like:

• “I don’t have time to experiment and figure out what I like.”
  

• “It’s too late.”
  

• “I’ll be old enough to retire by the time I figure it out.”

You are not alone. These are the most common “reasons” I hear for why people don't take the time to find work they love.

Unfortunately, they're also in my own armory of internal objections. My brain goes ‘shields up’ anytime I want to upset the status quo.

Recently, I sat down at my piano. We’ve had a rough relationship for as long as I can remember. Maybe like you, I took lessons as a child because I had to. It wasn’t to foster my natural curiosity or desire, but because people in my life wished they’d been given piano lessons. I hated the drudgery of my 30-minute-a-day prison. I couldn’t do anything fun until I had practiced, so I learned half-assed, in fits and starts, just good enough to get by (sort of).

I was told that I wasn’t disciplined. That, if I was a ‘real’ musician, I'd be more diligent. Looking back, I had the discipline. I’d sat down to see the gold Yamaha lettering each day for years. It’s just that I didn’t like it.

So after college, I quit playing. I didn’t think it was fun, it wasn’t fulfilling, and I wasn’t very good at it, so I stopped beating myself up. I decided I'd only play again if it sounded fun. That was 20 years ago. 

About 10 years ago, I had the opportunity to buy a beautiful old piano that had been in Talkeetna for ages, complete with the signature of every owner on the soundboard. I thought maybe I could mend our relationship and make it fun. But ownership didn't fix anything. It sat mostly silent for the next decade. I had it tuned, I dusted it, and played at it a few times a year, but mostly acted like it wasn’t living with me, taking up space in my small home. I don't really know why I didn’t sell it. Except that every time I thought about it my heart would break, like I was losing the last shreds of my old life.

Until a few weeks ago. 

One rainy Thursday night, I felt an urge to sit down and practice—actually practice. I was startled. This wasn’t my usual attempt at repairing our relationship where I'd slide onto the bench seat, play by ear a little, get swallowed up by the cruel voices that oozed out of the keys, and eventually shut the cover in despair.

This time was different.

First, I simply wanted to play; I wasn’t trying to fix anything. I went out and dug around in the loft of my shed for an easy Satie piece I loved, cleaned the grit off the keys, picked out four measures, set the metronome on the slowest setting and gently, kindly, playfully taught my brain the notes. (Kind and compassionate to my inner artist? Who is this person?!?). When I finished my practice session, I thought, “Hmm, it would be fun to be able to really play one day. I wonder if I could reteach myself how to play well and love it."

Not five seconds later, snipers shot a thousand poison arrows straight into my heart where I’m most vulnerable.

• “You’re too old! It takes 10 years to learn to play well!”
  

• “If you haven’t learned by now, you probably can’t.”
  

• “What will you do with it anyway?”
  

• “Why waste your energy?”
  

• “That’s a lot of time you should spend on things that actually benefit the world.”

The battle felt like it would go one forever, until the faint whisper of a Julia Cameron quote came to mind.

“I’ll be the same age I’d be if I don’t try.”  

It’s a mindset I’ve practiced for decades, because, even as a 20 year old, I was told I was too old to start new things. 

I turned toward the voices and said, “I'm 48 today. And in 10 years I'll be 58. What fun it would be to be able to play well in the last half of my life! What a great way to keep my mind fresh. What a healthy way to bring myself joy and solace. What a great gift to give myself when I’m 58.” 

Silence.

The voices dropped their gaze, shuffled around like a teenager caught in a lie with no viable out, and faded back into the night air. Ghosted in the best possible way. But I know their absence is temporary. My internal army of resistance is as strong and relentless as the White Walkers beyond the wall of Winterfell. But they also don't surprise me anymore. Over the years, I've prepared ready defenses for their sneaky “you're too old to even try” attacks. 

Maybe you face the same cruel, "it's too late for you" voices about your career. 

Finding work you love is not an overnight or easy process. It takes time and a practice of treating yourself kindly as you persist through your resistance, but it is possible. And it's true. Whether you start now, you start in five years, or you do nothing, time will tick by with the same detachment of my childhood metronome. Learning to quiet those critical or harsh voices and finding a way to do the work now, is an act of love and care for future you. 

I, for one, hope you cut your losses and make a decision to start figuring out what you love to do today, because you will be the same age whether you do or you don’t.

“But do you know how old I will be by the time I learn to really play the piano/act/paint/write a decent play?...  Yes[,] the same age you will be if you don’t.”~ Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way

It Will Drag You Under

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“Don’t blow it,” she says.

I am at a convention for CIOs. CIOs, or Chief Information Officers, are the tech executives who are blessed with the job of trying desperately to deliver Tiffany-level design with Starbucks ease for the 50%-off-the-sale price at Walmart.

It can be a pretty thankless job, so we get together to commiserate. We also go to try and remember the bigger picture.

It’s easy to lose yourself in the flood of complaints sent to a helpdesk, unrealistic expectations and downright lunacy you experience in technology. It can strand you in permanent firefighting purgatory if you aren't careful. As soon as you put out one fire, three more flare up.

It takes skill to not lose hope and go find a more rewarding job at the corner quickie-mart.

Anyway, Linda is one of my mentors. She is this classy, Australian lady who has mastered the balance of warm on the outside, tough as whalebone on the inside. I want to be like her so I take her advice seriously.

“You waste your time in the details because it is safe down there. You don’t have to look up and face anything. You don’t have to stretch yourself because you can hide behind the excuse of too much to do,” she said. “You’ll never do great things until you have the courage to delegate the details and commit to the bigger vision.”

Her voice sears like a laser through my gut and the world around me slows down.

“Don’t blow it," she says under her breath. "You have an opportunity. Go grab it.” And then she drifts off into more casual conversation.

She’s right. Painfully right.

It takes effort and focus for me not to get sucked under by the "Dianoga" of emails, daily reports, employee complaints and sheer tactical overload.

(Dianoga... remember that scene in Star Wars when they were in the trash compactor with the one-eyed thing trying to drag Luke under? That's a Dianoga. Blech.)

You’ve probably heard this quote from Stephen Covey, but it bears repeating:

“You have to decide what your highest priorities are and have the courage—pleasantly, smilingly, unapologetically, to say 'no' to other things. And the way you do that is by having a bigger 'yes' burning inside. The enemy of the 'best' is often the 'good.' "

It’s easy to get pulled in a thousand directions and not make progress toward anything.

What gets in your way of your larger vision?

What is your bigger “yes”?

Find a way to keep that “bigger yes” smack in front of you, pulling you toward it like a tractor beam in a bad sci-fi movie.

“You’ll never do great things until you have the courage to delegate the details and commit to the bigger vision.”

The more often you can home in on your goal, the more likely you are to make it happen.

Do one thing today that puts your goal front and center.

Set a reminder in your phone, put a note on your toothpaste or have your children make you recite it before they will give you coffee in the morning.

Any movement you make toward your goal, no matter how small, is a movement toward a career that will bring your success and will fill you up.

The Rebel Ribbon Maker

Miss Ethel. She’s gone now, but she left behind a story you need to hear.

Some knew her as Goose, but I knew her as Mamaw. Being the lone “Yankee-child” that I am in my very Southern family, I mispronounced Mamaw as “Mee-Maw” (grandma) when I was little and she never corrected it.

She was the youngest of eleven children born to sharecroppers. She married young and had children, all pretty typical for the times. But in many ways she was a silent revolutionary.

In the 1940s, she ended her marriage, in a decade where she needed permission from her banker, father, and pastor to do so.

Divorce was risky both financially and socially. She lived in a culture where divorce meant agreeing to public shaming, even at church.

One day she told me, in her slow, thick Southern drawl, about a lady in matching hat and gloves walking up to her and her friends at church one Sunday morning. The woman informed her that divorcees weren't welcome in the sanctuary and that she needed to leave.

Memaw said she looked the lady straight in the eyes and said, “ain’t no one goin’ to keep me from my god.” Then she marched down to the front pew, crossed her arms and sat there for everyone to see. That was just like her.

She also had a career as a ribbon maker in a culture where it’s wasn't totally acceptable for women to work. She never called it a career, but I will.

On one of my last trips to see her, I found her old wooden ribbon pulling tools in a drawer. She gave them to me and said she had kept them as a reminder of the freedom and legacy they allowed her.

Right before Memaw died, I opened an envelope from her. Now remember that she was a factory girl in a manufacturing mill. She earned pennies an hour in a sweltering warehouse in a rural South Alabama rail-town.

She didn’t come from money. She was a single parent for a good chunk of my mom’s life, and she only had a 3rd or 4th-grade education.

Inside the envelope was a check. I stood in the post office rereading the letter.

How the hell did a poor mill worker woman save enough money to gift anything at 92 years old?

She put a note in with my check that read, “I told you, nothing is impossible. Love, Memaw.”

You’ve probably never heard of her or of her ordinary/extraordinary life, and yet she made a huge impact on the world around her.

She set an example of standing up for yourself and doing things against all odds that is to me, legendary. But I bet if I could talk to her today, she would deny that she did anything but the dishes and the yard work. She just lived her life her way. She taught us this lesson through example.

Be who you really are.

The more honest and bold you can be about who you are and what you really want, even in your career, the bigger impact and more success you can have in your work and in your life.

Think back to who influenced you.

What was their truth?

What is yours?