As I prepare to close out another decade of life, I can’t help but reflect on where I find myself at the doorstep of 40 versus the person I was, and the circumstances that surrounded me, in 2008 at the end of my twenties. I recall approaching 30 without a sense of trepidation or fear or, most importantly, regrets. All that I learned between 20 and 29 made me the person I was up to that point, and at that precise moment I was dealing not only with the implosion of my first “real” adult relationship but also chronic back problems, some strained family issues and figuring out the next step in my career.
At 39, I’m engaged to be married to the most amazing lady, my back issues crop up only from time to time, I’m on pretty stable footing with family...but yes, again I contemplate my career and where it is going.
However, in the past decade I’ve lived in six different states—and one District—in three different time zones. Since 2011 alone I’ve set foot in all 50 states—and one District—as well as nine foreign countries. I’ve interviewed well over a dozen Oscar winners, multiple Rock and Roll Hall of Famers, several sitting senators and governors as well as one future president. I’ve had a craft beer and/or micro spirit in every single state, hoisted a stein at Oktoberfest in Munich, downed many a hurricane at Mardi Gras, drank mint juleps backstage at the Kentucky Derby with sports and entertainment figures and sipped a Mai Tai on the beach in Hawaii shortly before donning a grass skirt and coconut shell bra to dance before an “appreciative” crowd.
I’ve been in the White House not less than four times and at the Academy Awards twice. Rush’s website once praised my review of their concert. A documentary film I produced won several Emmys.
I went down to the Crossroads and I’ve been standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona. I’ve tried to count how many holes it takes to fill the Albert Hall. I’ve toured music recording holy grounds like Abbey Road, Sun Records and Mussel Shoals, stood at Steve Bartman’s infamous seat at Wrigley, driven every mile of Interstate 5 between Mexico and Canada and made a cross-country road trip.
And before meeting my fiancée I dated more women than the teenage me would have ever dreamed possible or even likely. However, such successes have been tempered with extraordinarily painful failures and a rejection so agonizing I didn’t think I would ever recover. (Spoiler alert: I did.) My only other relationship partner in my thirties betrayed me so badly—and then tried to blame me for it—that I didn’t think I could ever trust another.
Dating is remarkably simple: Just be cool and don’t be a dick, which I figured out later. If you master that, you’re already 85 percent of the way there.
How was it that I was treated better, like a grownup, when I was 17 and working part-time at a restaurant than in my late-thirties going above and beyond day in and day out for three years?
Yet, in 19 months, I’ll be a married man.
I’ve lost and won, failed and succeeded, strived and come up short. Just last year I took a huge risk in my career and was willing to “give up the access” and all the perks in the name of saving both my sanity and spending more time with my beloved. The hit to my bank account becoming a freelance has not been insignificant, and many days I bemoan that I don’t get as much free swag or as many chats with famous people as I once did. All life is tradeoff, and you can’t have everything.
I’ve been lucky, true, and the experiences I’ve been able to enjoy have been outstanding. But I must bring up two salient points about my thirties: I’m just a guy who took advantage of every opportunity I could make and made new ones (you can do this too); and I can’t help but now feel a concomitant anxiety about how I’ll continue to top myself.
I was told constantly in my early thirties that I was still peaking; is this now, in fact, the “peak”? Is it all downhill from here? Are there no more mountains to climb?
I don’t know. But I’m sure as hell ready to find out. And I’ll continue to keep that youthful zest about me in the process.
5 Things I Learned in my 30s
One of the best things about getting older is learning to understand yourself better—and not apologizing for it.
A few years ago I stayed up rather late into the evening killing a bottle of Irish whiskey and having a smoke with a friend I’ve known since high school. This friend and I were both painfully awkward and shy kids who marched to the beat of our drums—while perhaps simultaneously laboring under a belief in being “the chosen,” if only the world would wake up to that fact. Talk of death and suicidal fantasies were frequent companions to our teenage conversations.
What came of this contemporary discussion was that both of us felt we truly “locked in” after 30, which was, not coincidentally, when all of the self-hatred began to fade away for the adolescent bullshit that it is—the drawing in of negative attention if no positive attention is available.
This dovetailed with a second premise that, with the hindsight of two decades, we were able to see with clarity.
“If I could go back in time,” my friend “Flynn” said, “I would tell 15-year-old me, ‘Jane Adams’ likes you.”
By the same measure, I wouldn’t mind shaking the shit out of that curly-haired anti-social freak I was back then and say, “You idiot! It’s right in front of you! You don’t even have to work for it!!!”
Of course, like myself, Flynn was an eldest child. None of my core group of high school guys had older brothers or even older-brother figures we could ask for advice—and most of our dads were basically useless when it came to such advice. No one was there to tell us to at least get some experience, take out a girl just because she’s female, not because you’re trying to fashion a “long-term” relationship right out of the gate. Learn what you like and what you don’t like; how to behave and how not to behave around the opposite sex.
Oh, and one thing else they never told us: Girls want sex too. Remember all those movies where the guys had to pretend to be something he’s not in order to get a date…and then invariably get found out in the process? Well, there’s actually a decent object lesson there about just being yourself.
And learning how to just say yes. If there’s anyone reading this—13, 14 years old, get your parent’s permission—learn to just say yes and ask out as many people as you can. Don’t treat each such interaction like it’s the end-all, be-all of your life.
We were so afraid, Flynn and I discussed. Of what, we’re still not quite sure. Rejection? Hell I’ve gotten three rejections on freelance articles just this past week, and probably will have two or three more by the time you read this. Sure, it stings but you move on. Wish I’d known that back then.
I also recall in 7th grade health class, Miss Dalrymple offered up the following anecdote:
“A guy and a girl go out on a date. He pressures her to have sex. She goes home to her father tapping his foot asking, ‘Where have you been?’ He goes home to his dad who says, ‘Hey, son, did you score?’”
That story scared me soooooo much that I was basically afraid to approach girls for most of my young life—scared of being wrong for wanting anything, so stay away altogether.
Again, if I’d had someone older to ask about such things, maybe my young life would have been different.
No matter, I’m here now and I chalk it all up to lessons learned along the way, whether the hard way or not.
And it brought me to my wife-to-be. All good.
2) A good job is its own reward.
I hate the corporate world for the capital reason that I was raised with a work ethic of going above and beyond, doing the job better than those around me, and this would lead to advancement and raises. For my teens and part of my early twenties, this actually proved somewhat true while working in the restaurant and entertainment industries. If you had a tough skin, dished it out as well as you could take it, did the job right and did it quickly, advancement in pay and position were de rigueur.
In the corporate world, at least in my experience, this doesn’t happen.
My first job out of college, I was kept on for two years as a temp, without a raise or benefits, despite the fact that I wrote a third of the company’s monthly magazine. My boss, apparently jealous of the friends I made in the office—no one talked to him at office events, and he would just sit in the corner alone—by the end was undermining me, which made me want to leave all the more, which made him undermine me ever more.
My last full-time job, at a Washington newspaper not named The Post, I was on the copy desk for 40 hours per week, on top of which I spent a good 20 to 60 hours extra per week, on my own time and on my dime, without making any extra money, attending events, interviewing celebrities, reading new books, chasing down travel stories, flying all over the country pursuing stories during my vacation time, finding and cultivating freelance writers and otherwise posting more and more stories to my employers’ website—which earned them more money with each successive click.
I saw none of that money.
Nor was I thanked. Ever. In fact, my boss once told me, “Stop working so hard.”
Sure, having that press credential opened tons of doors, and I walked through every one. Partly for me and my own experience and edification, sure, but it was basically a second full-time—unpaid—extra job. I got one token raise when I threatened to leave after being given a third person’s job.
But thanks? Never. Promotion? Nope.
It was a harsh lesson: Nobody gives a fuck. And by the way, everyone is replaceable. (Although I am sneerily happy to report that, as of this writing, my old newspaper job remains unfilled nearly a year after I left.)
My thinking had to shift: Do the extra stuff because you want to, and for the experiences and the bylines. Don’t do it for a “good job, kid.” Because you won’t get it.
Which leads me to…
3) There’s always another job.
I’ve been laid off seven times, including once during a hurricane (hand to God). I’ve also voluntarily left three full-time jobs without another one lined up. I’ve been flat broke more times than I care to recall, I’ve had my phone and cable turned off due to lapsed bills, bounced a check to a landlord, been turned down several times for health insurance pre-Obamacare, faced down letters from creditors, and I’ve even slept in my car (unrelated to fiscal situations, but it’s a fact).
But you know what, I’ve always found another way to feed myself. I’ve stuffed envelopes for eight hours at a stretch, took a busboy job even though I had a college degree and have done almost every temp job you can imagine. In the past year alone I’ve driven to the airport dozens of times to get people’s bags, driven all over D.C. delivering meals, and once upon a time I made ends meet by making midnight runs to convenience stores to pick up and deliver booze, condoms and feminine products.
While working as a courier, one Thanksgiving, a customer to whom I dropped off dinner tipped me in weed. Another customer the same year, a Secret Service agent, ordered enough meals for 10 people, and when I met him for the handoff, the dude was armed to the teeth with several weapons, a bulletproof vest, and cheerily told me he’d only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before, which he said “keeps me paranoid,” a useful skill in his line of work.
This year started off rough, but in addition to a lively freelance writing and editing life, I now work part-time at a newspaper again. If I’m not in the chips precisely, I’m happier in my economic uncertainty than I was a year ago working full-time for people I absolutely despised.
And when I once worked during the week for a pornographer, I would often rent out my vocal chords to churches on the weekend.
I sat by myself at lunch nearly every day in 6th grade, reading books and Batman comics because I was “that guy” people loved to make fun of, so you’re never going to scare me with ostracism.
I’ve been in the workforce long enough to realize that I’m an extreme outlier. Most people either stays at a job until they get a better offer, or they simply never leave where they are—either because they can’t or they won’t. The latter situation breeds fear, career stagnation and a perverse codependency with their employer. They’ll take a bullet for the company if only to prove their loyalty. It’s a weird tribalism I cannot comprehend, and I’ve been on the losing end of this proposition when supposed friends at former jobs suddenly stopped talking to me when I elected to leave.
This concept is entirely foreign to me. No job, no company, no boss is worth selling your soul for. But people sometimes just get stuck and stop growing. This happens in the professional realm as well as in everyday life. We all have that friend who is basically the same person they were in high school, and I guarantee you all know at least five people who are still doing the same job they did a decade ago, probably for the same pay and with the exact same title.
I see this fear magnified in the greater Washington area, where I live. Politicians are too often loathe to take a stand because, well, they’re essentially constantly in a state of job performance review. If they don’t do what enough of what their constituents want or expect, then in two, four or six years, they’re out on their ass again—and that six-figure paycheck goes bye-bye. I’ve met many politicians and, by and large, they tend to be decent folks, but again, I can’t respect a fear of doing the right thing or speaking up for the sole reason that it might cost you that seat.
Be damned for what you believe rather than shut the fuck up and prove yourself to be feckless.
Yes, the world is a scary place. Bills don’t pay themselves and the uncertainty of the future is scary. But it’s also exciting. And there’s always another way to make money.
I’m living proof.
4) Friendships change.
I freely admit this is one I’ve probably had the roughest time with. If it were up to me, the guys would all come over on Friday night once a month, we’d down a keg of beer and whiskey and watch awesome movies until dawn—and then do it again.
That’s basically what I did every weekend when I was a teen minus the alcohol. I ran with a group of guys and really no girls until late in my teens. We only went to each other’s houses every weekend for sleepovers, played Nintendo, made our own sketches on video camera and went to the movies. None of us had girlfriends.
Now almost all of us are married and/or have kids. We all live in different states. Getting the band back together is nigh on impossible. Even if you get, say, three of the gang to agree to meet on X date in Y Zip code, inevitably the other two won’t be available. In all likelihood, the old gang has fractured into microcultures of the old bigger groups.
The next time conceivably my childhood friends and/or my college buddies will all be together again will be my wedding—and even then, probably not.
I’ve found Washington to be a very difficult place to make friends. People are almost all in their own worlds and careers to the exclusion of all else. I’ve attended events and tried to turn clients and colleagues into friends without success. Some do get beyond that professional level for a little while but almost invariable drop off.
Though I often travel to see friends in other places, my fiancée and I get few out-of-town visitors. I’ve reached the point where I’ve all but stopped asking people if they might like to visit.
I don’t precisely like it, but that’s life. Entropy gnaws at every group or former situation like Pac-Man, devouring everything in its path until it sometimes seems like “the good old days” never were, because the time since then comes to be three, four or even five times as lengthy as the golden age ever was.
My fiancée is more or less my social life now. We have our D.C. friends and our friends in various other parts on both sides of the Atlantic. I do my best to keep up with everyone on social media and also make a concerted effort to meet up in person during my travels.
I enjoy going out, but I also enjoy TV alone well into the small hours, my books and magazines and putting together new videos. I miss having lots of friends around to share late-night flicks with, but it’s largely beyond my control. I’m becoming less social simply because life changes and the circumstances of everyone around me is likewise shifting day by day.
I have to accept that my wedding day will almost certainly be the last time I ever see some people.
My door is open to any who wishes to visit, but I’m now always surprised when anyone actually takes me up on it.
Again, I don’t like it, but it’s what is. As I age further, it will only get worse. Reunions are never really comfortable because the old pieces no longer look like the picture on the puzzle box anymore.
It’s best just to enjoy whatever company you have when you have it, keep the invitations open and do your best to make the effort. But if no one else does, then don’t bother. (NOTE: This will expanded upon further in a subsequent post.)
5) I’ve learned from my mistakes, but I still make new ones.
Recently a supervisor at one of my jobs had to take me aside for a chat regarding errors that were 100 percent my fault and no one else’s. Even though I’d addressed them and apologized and vowed to avoid them subsequently, he was completely justified in his concern. There were things I could definitely stand to improve on, he said, but this coaching was also leavened with praise for the good work I had done.
His advice was to do something I had actually heard several times throughout my career, and a bromide which—clearly—bears keeping under consideration: Slow down.
Speed isn’t nearly as important as accuracy—even or especially in a deadline-driven profession like mine. Ask questions if you need to, consult the style guide more often, see what others on my team, who have been with the firm for far longer, do and learn from them. Rather than make an unneeded—and, as it turned out, incorrect—call to my own judgment, elevate the issue and/or seek clarification. This will both make everyone’s jobs easier as well as avoid a bit of wrath from temperamental writers (of which, I’ve heard, there at not less than five in the world).
I absolutely hate not being great at my job! Despite my rather carefree personality, my professional reputation is something I take very, very, very seriously. There’s always room to improve, and we all were taught about that tortoise, slow as he was, beating the frantic hare to the finish line.
Yep, those nursery school lessons still have merit in adulthood.
I’m a perfectionist and I hate not getting over the finish line all of the time, so this kind of thing truly hurts, and there was absolutely no way to frame the incidents in question as anything but my own fault. It was also a learning moment: Everyone errs, but recognizing failing patterns and doing something to address them, rather than sulking about it (something I struggle with on occasion) will ultimately lead to improvement.
I’ve made tons of mistakes in my life and have tried my best to glean something from each of them in the belief that no experience wherein something was learned is wasted. And even after this most recent episode at the job, when I felt a bit crappy (and, it must be said, after my future wife sat me down for a coaching session), I was reminded of my late karate sensei, who wasn’t about perfection but that you continued to try.
“The day you stop making mistakes is the day you don’t belong here anymore,” he loved to say.
And my college choir director, Ethan Sperry, who was fond of saying, “Don’t make that same mistake again. Make a different one.”
For my forties, as much as I’ve learned from the old mistakes, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of new ones. As well as important lessons to take away from each and every one.
I’ll be sure and let you know.
And before meeting my fiancée I dated more women than the teenage me would have ever dreamed possible or even likely. However, such successes have been tempered with extraordinarily painful failures and a rejection so agonizing I didn’t think I would ever recover. (Spoiler alert: I did.) My only other relationship partner in my thirties betrayed me so badly—and then tried to blame me for it—that I didn’t think I could ever trust another.
Dating is remarkably simple: Just be cool and don’t be a dick, which I figured out later. If you master that, you’re already 85 percent of the way there.
How was it that I was treated better, like a grownup, when I was 17 and working part-time at a restaurant than in my late-thirties going above and beyond day in and day out for three years?
Yet, in 19 months, I’ll be a married man.
I’ve lost and won, failed and succeeded, strived and come up short. Just last year I took a huge risk in my career and was willing to “give up the access” and all the perks in the name of saving both my sanity and spending more time with my beloved. The hit to my bank account becoming a freelance has not been insignificant, and many days I bemoan that I don’t get as much free swag or as many chats with famous people as I once did. All life is tradeoff, and you can’t have everything.
I’ve been lucky, true, and the experiences I’ve been able to enjoy have been outstanding. But I must bring up two salient points about my thirties: I’m just a guy who took advantage of every opportunity I could make and made new ones (you can do this too); and I can’t help but now feel a concomitant anxiety about how I’ll continue to top myself.
I was told constantly in my early thirties that I was still peaking; is this now, in fact, the “peak”? Is it all downhill from here? Are there no more mountains to climb?
I don’t know. But I’m sure as hell ready to find out. And I’ll continue to keep that youthful zest about me in the process.
5 Things I Learned in my 30s
1) I didn’t feel truly “like myself” until the age of 30.
One of the best things about getting older is learning to understand yourself better—and not apologizing for it.
A few years ago I stayed up rather late into the evening killing a bottle of Irish whiskey and having a smoke with a friend I’ve known since high school. This friend and I were both painfully awkward and shy kids who marched to the beat of our drums—while perhaps simultaneously laboring under a belief in being “the chosen,” if only the world would wake up to that fact. Talk of death and suicidal fantasies were frequent companions to our teenage conversations.
What came of this contemporary discussion was that both of us felt we truly “locked in” after 30, which was, not coincidentally, when all of the self-hatred began to fade away for the adolescent bullshit that it is—the drawing in of negative attention if no positive attention is available.
This dovetailed with a second premise that, with the hindsight of two decades, we were able to see with clarity.
“If I could go back in time,” my friend “Flynn” said, “I would tell 15-year-old me, ‘Jane Adams’ likes you.”
By the same measure, I wouldn’t mind shaking the shit out of that curly-haired anti-social freak I was back then and say, “You idiot! It’s right in front of you! You don’t even have to work for it!!!”
Of course, like myself, Flynn was an eldest child. None of my core group of high school guys had older brothers or even older-brother figures we could ask for advice—and most of our dads were basically useless when it came to such advice. No one was there to tell us to at least get some experience, take out a girl just because she’s female, not because you’re trying to fashion a “long-term” relationship right out of the gate. Learn what you like and what you don’t like; how to behave and how not to behave around the opposite sex.
Oh, and one thing else they never told us: Girls want sex too. Remember all those movies where the guys had to pretend to be something he’s not in order to get a date…and then invariably get found out in the process? Well, there’s actually a decent object lesson there about just being yourself.
And learning how to just say yes. If there’s anyone reading this—13, 14 years old, get your parent’s permission—learn to just say yes and ask out as many people as you can. Don’t treat each such interaction like it’s the end-all, be-all of your life.
We were so afraid, Flynn and I discussed. Of what, we’re still not quite sure. Rejection? Hell I’ve gotten three rejections on freelance articles just this past week, and probably will have two or three more by the time you read this. Sure, it stings but you move on. Wish I’d known that back then.
I also recall in 7th grade health class, Miss Dalrymple offered up the following anecdote:
“A guy and a girl go out on a date. He pressures her to have sex. She goes home to her father tapping his foot asking, ‘Where have you been?’ He goes home to his dad who says, ‘Hey, son, did you score?’”
That story scared me soooooo much that I was basically afraid to approach girls for most of my young life—scared of being wrong for wanting anything, so stay away altogether.
Again, if I’d had someone older to ask about such things, maybe my young life would have been different.
No matter, I’m here now and I chalk it all up to lessons learned along the way, whether the hard way or not.
And it brought me to my wife-to-be. All good.
2) A good job is its own reward.
I hate the corporate world for the capital reason that I was raised with a work ethic of going above and beyond, doing the job better than those around me, and this would lead to advancement and raises. For my teens and part of my early twenties, this actually proved somewhat true while working in the restaurant and entertainment industries. If you had a tough skin, dished it out as well as you could take it, did the job right and did it quickly, advancement in pay and position were de rigueur.
In the corporate world, at least in my experience, this doesn’t happen.
My first job out of college, I was kept on for two years as a temp, without a raise or benefits, despite the fact that I wrote a third of the company’s monthly magazine. My boss, apparently jealous of the friends I made in the office—no one talked to him at office events, and he would just sit in the corner alone—by the end was undermining me, which made me want to leave all the more, which made him undermine me ever more.
My last full-time job, at a Washington newspaper not named The Post, I was on the copy desk for 40 hours per week, on top of which I spent a good 20 to 60 hours extra per week, on my own time and on my dime, without making any extra money, attending events, interviewing celebrities, reading new books, chasing down travel stories, flying all over the country pursuing stories during my vacation time, finding and cultivating freelance writers and otherwise posting more and more stories to my employers’ website—which earned them more money with each successive click.
I saw none of that money.
Nor was I thanked. Ever. In fact, my boss once told me, “Stop working so hard.”
Sure, having that press credential opened tons of doors, and I walked through every one. Partly for me and my own experience and edification, sure, but it was basically a second full-time—unpaid—extra job. I got one token raise when I threatened to leave after being given a third person’s job.
But thanks? Never. Promotion? Nope.
It was a harsh lesson: Nobody gives a fuck. And by the way, everyone is replaceable. (Although I am sneerily happy to report that, as of this writing, my old newspaper job remains unfilled nearly a year after I left.)
My thinking had to shift: Do the extra stuff because you want to, and for the experiences and the bylines. Don’t do it for a “good job, kid.” Because you won’t get it.
Which leads me to…
3) There’s always another job.
I’ve been laid off seven times, including once during a hurricane (hand to God). I’ve also voluntarily left three full-time jobs without another one lined up. I’ve been flat broke more times than I care to recall, I’ve had my phone and cable turned off due to lapsed bills, bounced a check to a landlord, been turned down several times for health insurance pre-Obamacare, faced down letters from creditors, and I’ve even slept in my car (unrelated to fiscal situations, but it’s a fact).
But you know what, I’ve always found another way to feed myself. I’ve stuffed envelopes for eight hours at a stretch, took a busboy job even though I had a college degree and have done almost every temp job you can imagine. In the past year alone I’ve driven to the airport dozens of times to get people’s bags, driven all over D.C. delivering meals, and once upon a time I made ends meet by making midnight runs to convenience stores to pick up and deliver booze, condoms and feminine products.
While working as a courier, one Thanksgiving, a customer to whom I dropped off dinner tipped me in weed. Another customer the same year, a Secret Service agent, ordered enough meals for 10 people, and when I met him for the handoff, the dude was armed to the teeth with several weapons, a bulletproof vest, and cheerily told me he’d only gotten 2 hours of sleep the night before, which he said “keeps me paranoid,” a useful skill in his line of work.
This year started off rough, but in addition to a lively freelance writing and editing life, I now work part-time at a newspaper again. If I’m not in the chips precisely, I’m happier in my economic uncertainty than I was a year ago working full-time for people I absolutely despised.
And when I once worked during the week for a pornographer, I would often rent out my vocal chords to churches on the weekend.
I sat by myself at lunch nearly every day in 6th grade, reading books and Batman comics because I was “that guy” people loved to make fun of, so you’re never going to scare me with ostracism.
I’ve been in the workforce long enough to realize that I’m an extreme outlier. Most people either stays at a job until they get a better offer, or they simply never leave where they are—either because they can’t or they won’t. The latter situation breeds fear, career stagnation and a perverse codependency with their employer. They’ll take a bullet for the company if only to prove their loyalty. It’s a weird tribalism I cannot comprehend, and I’ve been on the losing end of this proposition when supposed friends at former jobs suddenly stopped talking to me when I elected to leave.
This concept is entirely foreign to me. No job, no company, no boss is worth selling your soul for. But people sometimes just get stuck and stop growing. This happens in the professional realm as well as in everyday life. We all have that friend who is basically the same person they were in high school, and I guarantee you all know at least five people who are still doing the same job they did a decade ago, probably for the same pay and with the exact same title.
I see this fear magnified in the greater Washington area, where I live. Politicians are too often loathe to take a stand because, well, they’re essentially constantly in a state of job performance review. If they don’t do what enough of what their constituents want or expect, then in two, four or six years, they’re out on their ass again—and that six-figure paycheck goes bye-bye. I’ve met many politicians and, by and large, they tend to be decent folks, but again, I can’t respect a fear of doing the right thing or speaking up for the sole reason that it might cost you that seat.
Be damned for what you believe rather than shut the fuck up and prove yourself to be feckless.
Yes, the world is a scary place. Bills don’t pay themselves and the uncertainty of the future is scary. But it’s also exciting. And there’s always another way to make money.
I’m living proof.
4) Friendships change.
I freely admit this is one I’ve probably had the roughest time with. If it were up to me, the guys would all come over on Friday night once a month, we’d down a keg of beer and whiskey and watch awesome movies until dawn—and then do it again.
That’s basically what I did every weekend when I was a teen minus the alcohol. I ran with a group of guys and really no girls until late in my teens. We only went to each other’s houses every weekend for sleepovers, played Nintendo, made our own sketches on video camera and went to the movies. None of us had girlfriends.
Now almost all of us are married and/or have kids. We all live in different states. Getting the band back together is nigh on impossible. Even if you get, say, three of the gang to agree to meet on X date in Y Zip code, inevitably the other two won’t be available. In all likelihood, the old gang has fractured into microcultures of the old bigger groups.
The next time conceivably my childhood friends and/or my college buddies will all be together again will be my wedding—and even then, probably not.
I’ve found Washington to be a very difficult place to make friends. People are almost all in their own worlds and careers to the exclusion of all else. I’ve attended events and tried to turn clients and colleagues into friends without success. Some do get beyond that professional level for a little while but almost invariable drop off.
Though I often travel to see friends in other places, my fiancée and I get few out-of-town visitors. I’ve reached the point where I’ve all but stopped asking people if they might like to visit.
I don’t precisely like it, but that’s life. Entropy gnaws at every group or former situation like Pac-Man, devouring everything in its path until it sometimes seems like “the good old days” never were, because the time since then comes to be three, four or even five times as lengthy as the golden age ever was.
My fiancée is more or less my social life now. We have our D.C. friends and our friends in various other parts on both sides of the Atlantic. I do my best to keep up with everyone on social media and also make a concerted effort to meet up in person during my travels.
I enjoy going out, but I also enjoy TV alone well into the small hours, my books and magazines and putting together new videos. I miss having lots of friends around to share late-night flicks with, but it’s largely beyond my control. I’m becoming less social simply because life changes and the circumstances of everyone around me is likewise shifting day by day.
I have to accept that my wedding day will almost certainly be the last time I ever see some people.
My door is open to any who wishes to visit, but I’m now always surprised when anyone actually takes me up on it.
Again, I don’t like it, but it’s what is. As I age further, it will only get worse. Reunions are never really comfortable because the old pieces no longer look like the picture on the puzzle box anymore.
It’s best just to enjoy whatever company you have when you have it, keep the invitations open and do your best to make the effort. But if no one else does, then don’t bother. (NOTE: This will expanded upon further in a subsequent post.)
5) I’ve learned from my mistakes, but I still make new ones.
Recently a supervisor at one of my jobs had to take me aside for a chat regarding errors that were 100 percent my fault and no one else’s. Even though I’d addressed them and apologized and vowed to avoid them subsequently, he was completely justified in his concern. There were things I could definitely stand to improve on, he said, but this coaching was also leavened with praise for the good work I had done.
His advice was to do something I had actually heard several times throughout my career, and a bromide which—clearly—bears keeping under consideration: Slow down.
Speed isn’t nearly as important as accuracy—even or especially in a deadline-driven profession like mine. Ask questions if you need to, consult the style guide more often, see what others on my team, who have been with the firm for far longer, do and learn from them. Rather than make an unneeded—and, as it turned out, incorrect—call to my own judgment, elevate the issue and/or seek clarification. This will both make everyone’s jobs easier as well as avoid a bit of wrath from temperamental writers (of which, I’ve heard, there at not less than five in the world).
I absolutely hate not being great at my job! Despite my rather carefree personality, my professional reputation is something I take very, very, very seriously. There’s always room to improve, and we all were taught about that tortoise, slow as he was, beating the frantic hare to the finish line.
Yep, those nursery school lessons still have merit in adulthood.
I’m a perfectionist and I hate not getting over the finish line all of the time, so this kind of thing truly hurts, and there was absolutely no way to frame the incidents in question as anything but my own fault. It was also a learning moment: Everyone errs, but recognizing failing patterns and doing something to address them, rather than sulking about it (something I struggle with on occasion) will ultimately lead to improvement.
I’ve made tons of mistakes in my life and have tried my best to glean something from each of them in the belief that no experience wherein something was learned is wasted. And even after this most recent episode at the job, when I felt a bit crappy (and, it must be said, after my future wife sat me down for a coaching session), I was reminded of my late karate sensei, who wasn’t about perfection but that you continued to try.
“The day you stop making mistakes is the day you don’t belong here anymore,” he loved to say.
And my college choir director, Ethan Sperry, who was fond of saying, “Don’t make that same mistake again. Make a different one.”
For my forties, as much as I’ve learned from the old mistakes, I’m sure there’ll be plenty of new ones. As well as important lessons to take away from each and every one.
I’ll be sure and let you know.
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| My 30th birthday party, Sept. 27, 2008, in Silver Lake, Los Angeles, California. |
