If you’ve picked this up from my “About me” page, then you can click on the title of the next post (below this post) in order to read these in the order that I wrote them. You can also use the “widget” area on the left for various different options for jumping around.
Now, here is the next thought…
I am about to enter the next age, both literally (soon it will be my birthday) and in the sense that it has been only a few weeks since my divorce was finally final. Being single, having the kids live with me, and what that means professionally, personally, and spiritually have all been “things that were going to happen.” Now it is happening; it is my reality. It is a big change, and I want to be sure to rise to the occasion with dignity and maturity.
Therefore, I think this is an appropriate time to declare that I am having a mid-life crisis. I can barely hold it together.
People tell me that I am too young to feel middle-aged. Sadly, they are wrong. If my parents are any guide, then the halftime buzzer went off about a year ago. And I’ve not exactly been a health nut, either.
In a broader context, the notion that I am entering into the “middle period of my life” isn’t based on numbers, nor does the statement arise from some sort of quasi-cosmic rationale. There is a very jargony basis for my self-assessment: gestalt phenomenology. Mercifully, I have nothing to say about gestalt phenomenology, not now, anyhow. What I am really trying to say is: I feel like a middle-aged man.
On the other hand, one might say that I have felt like a middle-aged man since that magical day in 4th grade when I discovered that I aspired to be like Alex P. Keaton (O Tina Yothers, ‘ere I saw post-punk depression!).
You know how some people are said to “have an old soul”?
Rhetorical questions are funny. So is using the second person in prose. Honestly, I hadn’t heard the expression “old soul” until it was used as a compliment to the character “Pacey” on the TV show “Dawson’s Creek.” The context of the compliment was, “Even though you are a high school sophomore, Pacey, it is okay to boink your hot teacher because you have an old soul. That and sex is good for ratings.”
Anyway… You know how some people are said to “have an old soul”? And you know how some old people are called “young at heart,” and somehow that is supposed to be taken as a compliment? I don’t think it’s really a compliment. It’s more like painting a big sign on your chest that says, “I am too young to realize that old people know how to tell a dirty joke.”
Where I’m going with this? You know how some people are said to “have an old soul”? And you know how some old people are called “young at heart?” Yeah, well… neither of those pithy phrases ever apply to me.
I feel like a middle-aged man. Maybe it is because I’ve got a middle-aged soul. But, if my middle-aged soul has made me feel like a middle-aged man, then shouldn’t I be a man in full? Why should I be having a mid-life crisis? This is the time when my body and soul are aligned. All hail the convergence!
No. I don’t feel invigorated by my situation. I feel uncomfortable, maybe not exactly with who I am, but more with how I am.
“How” as in a “mode of being.” Again, I must l resist the diabolical urge to segue into Wundt, Heidegger, gestalt phenomenology, psychology, or anything else so tedious. Instead, I would like for you to picture a spy movie: A secret agent car turns into a submarine, then the vehicle turns into a jet. Modes of being are like that.
This is how I see my own modes of being:
Dad mode: I feel uncomfortable in all situations where I am not in Dad mode. So let’s start with “Dad mode.” (Aka the bright side)
In Dad mode, I feel happy to be in my own skin. I feel right. It is a blessing that my kids live with me. I have many worries on their behalf, including worries about how I can continue to be a great Dad to my children, but I am good at addressing those worries. I am good at making life better for my kids.
However, when I am not in Dad mode, I’m either in “work mode,” or for 36 hours every two weeks, I am on my own. I don’t have a clever name for this last mode, but I sense it is important. It is important enough to write about in this blog, anyhow.
Work mode: This one should be familiar to most people and is somewhat self-explanatory.
I am working hard;
all the time. Even when not,
I am still working.
(This Zen Kohan was brought to you by the contemporary state of professional work. And by the way, it was also a haiku. Take that!) My perception is that my professional peers also work very hard and are fully subscribed to this mindset.
I am an in-house attorney for an important company that does great things. I recognize that my work situation looks pretty enviable. The view from the outside is that when one is well educated and well-positioned to do so: one just shoots on up the ladder, holding a series of “cushy” office jobs, with lots of back-slapping, cigar-chomping, and laughs. This is not true.
There is a lot of work to do, and it is stressful. The higher one rises, the more it becomes necessary to rely upon people with less experience and less riding on success or failure. In fact, the situation may be such that the leader is the only person with a clear vision of what is supposed to be achieved. Consequently, there are limits to what help can be expected from individual contributors. Still, everyone thinks they could do a better job than their boss, and the most ambitious lie in wait for the chance to usurp their superior in service of advancing their own career. If you are professionally successful, the Sword of Damocles is forever over your head, and also… you are that treacherous sword.
For me, and my peers, that sort of “work mode” pressure is supposed to feel worthwhile. I guess that is what keeps the machine chugging along.
I have come to realize that what I like least about work mode is the pressure to mix business with pleasure. More accurately, the pressure to hang out exclusively with my professional peers. I don’t mean “team building” exercises like an afternoon at Habitat for Humanity or a retreat in a conference room where a group of hippies gets us to do trust falls and build a tower out of tape and straws. Rather, I mean that professional life sometimes feels like a social caste. Professionals are only supposed to date and be friends with like-minded professionals at a similar point in their careers. I’m not sure how this happened, nor can I point to any specific example of how that pressure is felt, but I feel it. I feel it, and I also feel that I have somehow failed to embrace the idea.
Call it an artifact of my mother’s deviant socialist idealogy, or call it a failure to launch into true middle-management middle-agedness, or to coin a ludicrous jargon phrase; call it Non-socialized disincentivizedismitis. Anyhow there are consequences to not doing what you are supposed to do.
Here’s a story:
I was trying to email flirt with a girl, well… not a girl so much as an attractive MBA student who I met on match.com. Things seemed to be going okay. She seemed intelligent and funny. She seemed intrigued by my life situation, so I asked her if she wanted to go out on the next weekend when I was free. She coyly said that it depends on what a single dad like me actually did on his own when he was free. The obvious answer is, “Go out for sushi with friends and talk about NPR,” or some partially true pablum like that. The wrong answer? The whole truth. My email said:
When I am “on my own,” I find that the course of events includes:
- Two nights of karaoke, in a surprisingly bad part of town, amongst a crowd of twenty-somethings with whom I have nothing in common.
- One bad date, featuring at least three deal-killers on each side, politely being ignored but not leading to a second date.
- Some really unhealthy food.
- Lots of thinking about Calvinist theology.
Suffice it to say, that was the last I heard from an attractive MBA girl. This brings me to the “other mode” that I can’t yet slap a pithy label onto. So let me instead talk about what it is like:
Other mode that I can’t yet slap a pithy label onto: Maybe it is just escapism, but there are some nights where it all goes so well at the Karaoke place that I really feel refreshed and rejuvenated, way better (and less expensive) than a “getaway.” The rowdy twenty-something, pierced, tattooed, struggling, confused, and underemployed local kids are just fun to hang out with. There is an element of spectacle to this scene. Now, after a few weekends, I no longer feel like a tourist.
And/or/but, fueled by Bull Blasters and Miller High Life, it is sometimes possible to forget myself. While I am not a tourist, I get the nagging suspicion that trying to make a connection with someone born after 1980 is a form of second adolescence that makes me look sad and ridiculous. This grim reality of how wildly inappropriate it is for me to hang out with this young crowd is forever lurking beneath the flashing lights, smoke machines, and video monitors.
At the Karaoke place, there is a Songstress Princess. I expressly go to the bar to hear her sing. She’s witty and cute. I can talk to her without feeling like a loser. She’s flirty with me, but she puts up a wall. The wall is itself an easily identifiable set of affectations that seem like prudent defense mechanisms for an attractive and spunky 20-something who is struggling in life. Her wall doesn’t do a good job of hiding the insecurities, both emotional and financial, that make her vulnerable. But when she sings on stage, she’s something else entirely. She’s an invincible superstar, white-hot. Last night, I had a dream about her.
Bow chicka wow-wow?
No, it wasn’t that kind of dream. Or rather, it should have been that kind of dream, but even my imagination conspires against me with repressive censorship. There were no wish-fulfillment visions of a first kiss. Instead, the dream picks up at the end of the story, at some point after we’ve been together for a while. Whatever I did that was sweet and charming to break down her wall (if I had to guess, I’d probably won her heart with kindness, which can be the cruelest kind of relationship cruelty, but that’s just how I roll) had already happened; long ago. The dream picks up with an unflinching look at the net effect. And the net effect is bad. I’ve alienated her from her friends and from what makes her cool and full of vitality. And everything I say gets misconstrued … just like the first time we met.
Have you been following this part of my riff? That’s right… in my dreams, the girl of my dreams and I are breaking up.
But that’s okay. It is only a dream. I think that in real life, Songstress Princess is in no danger from my nearly non-existent level of sweetness and charm. At my best, I still pull off politely witty, but that’s a fair distance away from actual sweetness or charm. More often, I am just an oaf; a loutish oaf who sings sad songs because he once felt really sad, but now that he got over it, the act is just obnoxious kitsch.
Poor old Johnnie Ray
sounded sad upon the radio
broke a million hearts in mono.
Our mothers cried
and sang along; who’d blame them?
Like I told you: I have a middle-aged soul.
So, why not just stay in Dad mode? Dad mode works for me. How about focusing on Dad mode?
To some extent, that is what I am doing, part by choice, part out of necessity.
As good as my kids are, and as much as I love them, and as “amicable” as things are with my gay ex-wife, being a single parent is hard work in a world fraught with complication and danger, including the danger of not allowing them to experience the fraughtness. My kids need me to focus on Dad mode, and probably it’s a good thing for me to do.
But “Dad mode” and “work mode” only define me for 12.5 days each fortnight. And the world that I live in has a fortnight in each fortnight. (I like the word fortnight. It’s strong, like a fort. It’s also kind of dark, like Batman, or, um… night). I need to figure out these interstitial episodes in order to hold together my whole life. Otherwise, I may become the “Harrison Ford in Mosquito Coast” crazy Dad.
So I’ll blog some more about all this, or maybe I won’t.
Maybe this blog will unearth fears about all the things I suck at.
Maybe I will forget to express my thoughts or feelings about the one thing I seem to be good at: loving my kids.
Maybe I will forget to blog and stretches of years will go by.
Perhaps I will hide inside myself. I do that, although I can’t hide from myself… nor from the things that I suck at.
If I am to do right by my kids, then I somehow need to make it all work.
How am I going to make it all work? I don’t know yet. I’ll just make it all up as I go along.
...All my darkest hours talking like this... 