Alright, here it is. This is the post I was hoping to avoid. I started this stupid blog a few months before I turned 40 in an attempt to… I don’t know… find meaning in crap and avoid a mid-life crisis and find some direction or level of success in early mid-life. I started this blog to avoid this post. Here I am, 10 years later, and the blog hasn’t helped one bit. I’m not quite 50 yet, but I know it’s going to suck. I turn 50 in a few days. I will officially be old.
I’m in a different job now than I was 10 years ago, but I’m making about the same money. It seems that my prime-income earning years are meant to be a slap in the face. Career-wise, I have accomplished nothing. I never was, nor will I ever be, upwardly-mobile. When I graduated high school, I thought that I would go to college, get a good job, get raises and promotions, and retire making a six-figure income. I’m not even close. And not only am I not even close, when you take into account inflation, I’m a horrible failure. $100,000 in 1988 money (the year I graduated from high school… and the money I thought I would be making) is about $217,536 in today’s money. In 1988 money, I’m making less than $23,000/year… with a bachelors degree and almost 30 years in the workforce. My first crappy-paying job out of college with Sherwin-Williams was salaried at $18,000 per year in 1992 money. In 1992 money, I’m making about $9,000 more per year than I did at that crappy-paying job. And what I’m making now is the most I will ever make. The average college graduate makes more money in his or her first year out of college than I am making after what feels like a lifetime of work.
I like my current job, or at least I like the people I work around, but there is not a single thing I can do in my current position to increase my wealth. There is no promotion waiting for the guy running the bookstore. The business of education is one of the few institutions in the US where more education is the only way to more money. And education is too expensive for me. And I can’t seem to win the Powerball. And my basement isn’t conducive to a meth lab… I don’t think… maybe I need to research that more…
People say you’re only as old as you feel. If that’s true, I’m screwed… but don’t worry, it’s not true. You can lie to yourself, but a lie is a lie and your aging body won’t listen to your lies.
There are those who say 50 isn’t old. These people are deluded… and usually over 50. Maybe 50 isn’t as old as the people who say 50 isn’t old, but it’s still old.
At 50, the vast majority of people are well over half-way through with their lives. If they are lucky (if you think of it as lucky), they have another 20 to 30 years to watch their health decline , their earning power disappear, their friends and family start to die off, and their bodies and minds wither away to the point of being unrecognizable. With a few exceptions, most people start to look old once they hit 50. I don’t want to look 50… but really, I’m already there, and it sucks. The dude who looks back at me from the mirror makes me want to remove all mirrors from my house in between bouts of crying hysterically. Being younger and unsightly is bad enough… add in looking old and you’ve got a look that would score screams in a horror movie.
My birthday falls around the festive family holiday of Thanksgiving. I’d really love to just spend the entire day in bed, but my wife won’t go for that. However, knowing how much I am dreading this day, my wife has scheduled a trip to Denver in lieu of the more traditional surrounded-by-family, stress-filled extravaganza that is typically the Thanksgiving weekend. When my house is filled with people, I get uber-stressed, and this year it would have been more than I could handle. My side of the family wanted us to visit Montana, and they would have promised not to do crap for my birthday, but they would have been lying. I spent my 40th birthday with my family and they had a cake and presents wrapped in black (hahaha, “over-the-hill”, that’s hilarious) even though they promised they wouldn’t. Fool me once, shame on you… So, just me and my wife and my sons will be spending a quality couple of days quietly enjoying a Thanksgiving from afar and me officially becoming old.
I’ve read different writings from different people who say that “mid-life” is a great transitional period. You come to the realization that all of those hopes and dreams you had in your youth aren’t going to happen and you become okay with that. It’s a great release of stress not having to worry about accomplishing anything anymore. I suppose there may be some truth in that. I’ve given up on a lot of stuff because I didn’t have the skills to accomplish it, and I can see how being okay with being a quitter would lead to less stress… I’m just not there yet. Maybe that’s what I have to look forward to in the years to come: coming to terms with and accepting my lack of accomplishment and menial lot in life and finding a way to be okay with it.. Sounds fun, right? OK, Boomer…