Approaching the Sixth Decade

by Don Hall

Today I have lived on this planet for fifty-nine years. In ways, it's daunting to look in the mirror and see the signs of that age. My brain feels like I'm still in my early twenties and my sense of humor has been stuck in my adolescence like bark on a tree. Most of the men in my family lineage were either dead by this birthday or damn close to shuffling off so I suppose it is an achievement although not one I can claim much responsibility.

This exercise, one I've been working on every year since I was thirteen, spending time on my birthday to reflect upon the lessons learned in the previous year, has its frustrations inherent. The fact that I seem to learn a life lesson only to repeat the opposite and have to relearn the fucking thing over and over again makes me wonder if we, as human beings, have the capacity to break free of our patterns once set and do better or are just stuck in an endless loop of repeat offenses. It also begs the question, why strive for it if better is only accompanied by decay and loss? Is the goal to refine the instrument just in time to croak? A perfect diamond that upon completion turns to dust?

On the other hand, this consistent act of self reflection has been invaluable as I sometimes dance, sometimes trudge along, the strange road of my life. Perhaps I'm not nearly as smart as I'd like to think I am, given I continue to find myself in relationship cul-de-sacs and behaviors I know are self destructive but at least I'm always trying and maybe that's the lesson in and of itself. If you see something, do something, right?

So, to the point: what did I learn in my 59th year of life on this Rock in Space?

For a large section of my fifty-eighth year, I wondered if the brutal infidelity and divorce endured had indelibly damaged my ability to feel optimism about my future. This was no small thing. Without waxing on the events of a few years ago, it is not an exaggeration to say it was the worst pain I've ever endured and, while, not the kind of trauma associated with being an eighteen year old fighting a war or a guy waking up with his legs amputated, it was a lot for me. Could I come back from it? Would I? What choice do I have? In terms of optimism, for the first time, I'm finding that it is still there but balanced with a deep sense of pragmatism.

A month after my last natal celebration, I packed up what belongings I had in a box truck with my mom and sister and headed back to Chicago. Why Chicago? It was my home for thirty years. A sense of who I was before. Less a reinvention and more a reclamation of the person I was prior to losing my self respect in relationships that had reduced me to a simp, inviting a near non-stop chipping away at my edges and sense of independence and badassery. Sure, I recognize that the arrogance of my Chicago self was annoying but it was better to blindly believe in myself to the detriment of the reality than be crushed by crippling self doubt.

It turned out that Chicago, for the most part, had moved on from my departure. I wasn't going to reclaim shit but I could start (mostly) fresh, carving out a different existence than I had before and finding a different sort of optimism. The groups of people I had worked with had moved on and many of those whom I had a history of creating things together were no longer interested in my contribution. There was a strange but predictable feeling from some that it was a great thing I came back buttressed by a sense from others that I should've stayed away. I had split for Nevada without much ceremony so coming back wasn't received with much generosity. People had simply placed me in the category of that guy who I used to know. On the other hand, I found myself working with a few folks I had before and went about reinventing my work life and trajectory in ways that made sense but I couldn't see coming in years past.

LESSON: Look before you leap but leap even if you can't see the bottom. Always leap. Life without leaping isn't living.

LESSON: A rut isn't always apparent. Stand back some to see a bigger picture if you can't see your way out of the self created labyrinth.

LESSON: Avoid the expectation that your personal shit is on anyone else’s mind. People do not think about you as much as you think.

LESSON: Our capacity for hope is limited only by our choice to foster it.

Turns out that year 59 revealed a method of making money that incorporated a host of skills I had garnered over the decades but hadn't become apparent to me in the search for sustainability. The year before I moved to Vegas, I spent my final (at the time) summer in Chicago working as the Front of House Manager for Millennium Park. It was fun as hell, I was really good at it, and while I wasn't creating the spectacle onstage, I was still a part of that scene. It should've occurred to me earlier as I was the House Manager for the NPR comedy quiz show for ten years to great success but it hadn't.

The job kept me active which is increasingly important for a man my age as well as an opportunity to use my teaching background to train the Gen Z cohort looking for that low hanging first work experience.

Having had the experience in the same massive place with many of the same people, I knew I wanted to make some sweeping changes in the methods of the front of house staff. Like Miley Cyrus, I tend to come in like a wrecking ball but these sorts of big moves require a more strategic approach. More scalpel rather than sledgehammer. I came up with a mantra to keep perspective and it carried over to become a specific approach to my sixth decade upcoming: how do you eat a 72 ounce steak? One bite at a time. Get some long view of the way you see and break it up into little bites and chew your way through.

Not everyone was on board with my changes in both procedures or philosophy but both became developed in practice. I hit the ground running, pushing through changes and add-ons. I assumed authority even when it was given conditionally. Some who were either alienated by my personality and approach or by the very notion of change and they split after complaining to the powers that could either neuter or fire me. Neither happened and I recognized something I always kind of knew but hadn't verbalized before: if I weren't very good at the work I do, I would be damn near unemployable.

One thing I noticed about the place was that were a lot of little things neglected because the big ticket items took priority. The cause of the neglect was perfection. Rather than fix things for the better, the hold out for perfect stopped all forward momentum. Trust me—a band-aid solution is better than no solution at all. Better to cover up the wound than let it bleed, amiright?

LESSON: Eat the 72 ounce steak one bite at a time.

LESSON: Perfection should never get in the way of better.

LESSON: There are chapters in life when sustainability trumps imagination and simply finding a solid way to pay the bills is the achievement du jour.

LESSON: Being part of a team of professionals can be way more fun than being in charge of one.

The eleven months in Chicago this year has been about survival—getting the job that pays enough to live semi-comfortably with enough freedom to take trips home every couple of months, carving out my Fortress of Solitude, creating routines—and toe-dipping into the person I was before I tossed it all away to marry a woman who was wholly transactional in practice. I went onstage a few times (including bringing back the BUGHOUSE! show) and concluded that my interest in being seen is less satisfying or even very interesting than it was before.

I discovered I am less driven to be a big deal and more focused on doing my own solo things. I still love doing the two podcasts I've been co-hosting and editing for years now due almost entirely on my great affection for my two co-hosts. I write a lot but haven’t published any book-length things which will change in the coming year. I spend time re-exploring Chicago and I find that going to museums or seeing bands or going to movies alone is incredibly good for me.

The trend in society lately is called "Third Acts" given that people are living longer than ever before and adults hitting their sixties are reinventing their lives to start over. I believe, unless lightning strikes and I fall into another partnership, my third act is solo and blissfully so. I'm not the type to retire. I like being out there and doing things. At this point, though, it better be fun. Not a hedonistic pursuit (been there, done that) but approaching my time with curiosity and a sense of calm.

LESSON: If it ain't fun on some level, don't do it.

LESSON: You can’t go back to who you were but you can go back to where you belong.

Before I left Wichita a co-worker from the radio stations, as I was wrapping things up to move, took me to lunch.

"I just finished your book. Wow." she said.

"Which one?" I asked. It could go either way from the year—the casino book or the prostitute book.

"Your divorce."

"Ah! Yeah. It was, as the Narrator intones at the end of Fight Club, a very interesting time in my life."

"Have you considered that your relationship to her was sort of classic codependency?"

I had not. I tend to avoid the language of therapy-speak. I looked it up later. She was goddamned close.

I did seek her approval and most of my self worth revolved around her opinion of me.
I intentionally avoided conflict with her.
I frequently did things that I hated to make her happy (or at least not moody).

The big one was that I idealized her, put her firmly on a pedestal, and refused to see her behavior as anything but quirky and original rather than what it was in truth—sociopathic and wholly self interested.

Interesting to know there is an accurate label to the behavior and having at least a list of sorts to compare new relationships to could be useful.

Later in this year, after I had all but given up on any hope that I could ever feel anything but apathy toward a member of the opposite sex, I was introduced to someone. I told myself to avoid my familiar patterns but failed to go deep enough. I found myself accepting behaviors I would've scoffed at if it was a friend experiencing them. I intentionally avoided saying what I thought about her mish-mashed spirituality, her delusional reframing of fucking around for the sake of it, all to circumnavigate conflict and keep her interested. My mood was completely contingent upon her attention towards me.

Just like with my third ex-wife but in a span of three weeks. Just like my new list of red flags.

I caught it in time. I recognized the feeling of being emasculated and made to feel diminished. She had skirted around a simple fact that she lied about—she was not divorced but still married. She was intent on her choice to collect as many partners as was physically possible and thought it was something ethereal about her rather than the obvious: she was a striking woman willing to fuck anyone. So I cut it off.

Having been burnt so badly, so scorched earth malignantly that I wondered if I'd ever crawl back out of the rubble, I could clearly see the signs of codependency that had begun to develop with a relationship prior to the third ex-wife and come to full force with that marriage. Today, on my 59th birthday, I live by myself and have decided that I prefer this to living with someone else. Rather than consigned to being solo, I have made a choice to keep my own space and thrive within.

LESSON: It's good to recognize your relationship patterns. It's better to recognize them and stop repeating them.

LESSON: Living life alone is far better than living it with the wrong person in the wrong relationship. I've been doing that for far too many years of my life and I'm just over it.

LESSON: A relationship, any relationship, is a separate entity from the people in it. There's you, there's me, and then there's us. The us has to be nurtured by both partners or it dies.

LESSON: When a “Bull Durham” romantic hooks up with a “Fifty Shades of Gray” romantic, the union will disintegrate. Flowers and ball gags rarely mix well.

LESSON: When you’re younger love is self serving. It’s about receiving love. As you get older, it’s important to focus on the love you give regardless of what you receive. Less transactional, more selfless.

If anything, this year was the glacial creep of getting past all that shit. It’s time to put it away and see the whole affair as a cautionary tale rather than a bleeding wound that simply won’t scab over. It has slowly become a punchline and that, my friends, is how you handle a traumatic experience. Sure, it was all incredibly painful and damaging but scars exist to prove we survived the hurt. Scars are a badge of survival, an indelible mark that declares to the mouth breathing masses that this guy is still standing, still fucking, still moving and shaking albeit a bit more slowly and with a tad more caution. It also signals that, at a rapidly increasing birthday count, I have lost and will lose again but why operate from a place of fear of inescapable loss? Loss is the truth of human existence like a Bell curve that starts with acquisition of things, people, and experience only to peak and then travel down to the end when we have nothing but the last breath and final thoughts and oblivion.

I know (not just surmise but know) that I will lose members of my family to time. Instead of wailing about the unskippable, better to spend the time embracing them, letting them know daily how important they are to me, traveling back to Kansas more often than twice a year.

I know (not just guess but know) that all the stuff I have surrounding me in my tiny studio apartment will one day be tossed in the trash, the detritus of someone dead and gone, left for some hapless soul to scrounge through and decide if any of it has any value to anyone else.

Knowing evaporates concern over legacy or lasting contribution. Knowing releases me from worry. It's gonna happen whether I like it or not so I might as well go out with a bang. Suck deep the marrow of the life in front of me and make a minuscule difference in those around me. Have some freaking fun, laugh louder than I should, dance when the mood strikes, and Carpe that friggin' Diem, baby.

Leap into gratitude and wallow in the largesse of life. Love hard and as frequently as a battle-torn and scarred up human can. It’s a reckless, defiant kind of love—for the chaos, for the struggle, for the absurd beauty of it all. Embrace it. Revel in it. And for God’s sake, don’t let it turn you soft.

Life doesn’t owe you a damn thing, but sometimes it throws you a bone. Take it. Appreciate it. And then charge forward like a lunatic into the chaos, grateful for every wild, messy second.

LESSON: It's all loss from here on out so enjoy it while it lasts (which ain't long).

LESSON: Be fucking grateful for every breath, every problem, every opportunity.

LESSON: When you're going to lose everything and everyone anyway, what's stopping you from reveling in the chaos and joy of living?

And that's the real takeaway from Year 59. Traumatic things happen to all of us. Trauma is a whole different thing. Allowing the shitty things that happen on the road to prevent the feet from moving, to freeze us in place to wallow in the unfairness of it all, is a waste of the waning days we have left. And we don't have a foggy fucking clue how many of those days we have.

The shoes you just bought might be the last shoes you ever buy so get some use of them while you can. Take some chances. Risk failure. Move the needle a little bit every day.

Mom once told me my fifties would be my best decade. She was wrong because my fifties were a shitshow. I'm Gen X which means my trajectory is retarded by circumstance and cultural zeitgeist. My fifties are her forties so I'll raise a highball glass of rye to the upcoming sixth decade. I have a good feeling about my chances.