Relaunching Me

“Are you afraid to feel your age?”

“Because I’m a little scared.

We’re only getting older and I feel so ill prepared.”

Circle Song by kaydeegee Circle Song (included with permission)

Those lyrics come from “Circle Song” written and independently produced by my incredibly talented 22-year-old child. When they asked, “Are you afraid to feel your age?” I found myself asking a different question: What does age actually feel like? What does any age feel like? Who decides how we should feel at 22 or 56? Is that feeling fear or is it excitement for what comes next? 

A 2013 study by Alison Wood Brooks of Harvard Business School, later published in 2014 in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, found that people who consciously reframe anxiety as excitement often perform better than those who try to calm themselves down.  Instead of resisting the nervous feelings and fear, we can relabel them and reinterpret them as feelings of excitement. 

Maybe that’s what I have been doing all along without realizing it. Sometimes I face the fear and just do it anyway. It is not danger we are about to face but opportunity. This whole year has been filled with moments of those ambiguous feelings that I wanted to call fear but ignored and chose to feel excited for a first day of work, a first day of school, and even a first day of golf.

“We’re only getting older and I feel so ill prepared.”

It is okay to feel “ill prepared”, because the world is changing so fast it is hard to ever be fully prepared. When I think about the technological changes since I entered the workforce in the mid 1980s at McDonald’s, and later at Bell Canada from 1990 to 2001 I’m reminded just how adaptable we need to be. I handwrote university essays before typing them on an electric typewriter. By the time I completed my MBA course I was saving papers to floppy disks.  It is astonishing how far we have come. Now we complain about how slow our five-year-old laptops are and replace perfectly good phones simply because there’s a newer model.   

What I’ve Learned

So  what is the most important thing I’ve learned over 56 years? To be adaptable. To welcome change even if I’m “ill prepared.” And not fear it. 

So here’s how I used that to get where I am today. I am adapting to and embracing change.  I am confident that all the learning I have done in my former careers and even adopting new technology in other areas of my life means I have the skills to adopt whatever new technology comes my way.  

So a quick assessment of myself at 56 left me wondering what other skills I might need as I relaunch a career or fill my free time now that I am closer to having an empty nest.

I am learning new hobbies, ones that hopefully I can share with my partner when he finally retires.

I started golf lessons! 

I golfed a bit 30 years ago. I even own clubs. My golf instructor looked at them with genuine curiosity and announced he had never seen some of the clubs before. He tried a few swings himself, then went and grabbed a rental set for me.

I enrolled in a course at the University of Toronto School of Continuing Education. I am taking Foundations of Digital Communications Strategy and Social Media in the Age of AI with Alison Garwood-Jones.

Those two new additions to my schedule, plus the addition of evening work events, have turned life a bit upside down.

Groceries—Instacart? Cooking? Laundry?

If only I could find someone to do those things! Of course, I can pay for those services… those are all the things I used to do to support my family.

My Turn

Now I’m learning that supporting my family also means making room to support myself.

It’s funny when it looks the same, but everything has changed

Guess what… it’s ok that everything has changed.  I am not afraid for what comes next.  I haven’t figured things out yet, I am still learning, from colleagues, from friends, school and my kids!

What comes next? I don’t actually know?  But maybe feeling unprepared isn’t a sign we’re falling behind. This blog began as an assignment.  Juggling school and family and work hasn’t been easy but I have loved it.  It has increased and renewed my confidence. It has awakened my interest in learning new things.  It has reduced my doom scrolling.

My child is right, we are getting older, everything really has changed. But maybe feeling unprepared isn’t a sign we’re falling behind, maybe it is a sign that we are still growing.

At 56 I’m finally learning that excitement and fear often feel exactly the same. The difference is deciding which one you’re going to believe. Kaydeegee’s song says “It’s funny when it looks the same, but everything has changed.” I guess for them at 22 home is still the same. But now I have changed. I look a little bit different, I think a little differently. My life has expanded in ways I never expected. The house is the same but I am not. And maybe that is exactly how it is supposed to be. As long as we are a willing to be adaptable those changes are not scary, they are welcome.

For now, I am putting my new skills to use at the gallery, continuing to learn, and saying yes to new opportunites. I am excited for whatever comes next!