Signs of Getting Older

I’ve always considered and advertised myself as an old soul. Someone who believes in personal connection, sitting around a fire, talking non-stop on road trips, and being practical in the moment. It’s definitely hard to define an old soul, just like it’s hard to define a soul, so if you think that’s a poor definition, I won’t fight you on it.

And being an old soul or not doesn’t impact the process of aging. Overall, I think it’s important you welcome the process of aging. I believe in the ‘au naturale’ expression, because our bodies and minds develop at a pace they decide - you do need to ensure your mind develops alongside your body and you can appreciate and understand the subtle changes that are taking place.

The ironic piece about this post is the main thought that prompted it wasn’t about my constant physical ailments (because those have been happening since I was 15), or how young the college baseball players look on TV (did I look like that once? So young? But yet impactful and thinking you are royalty?), or how a 22 year-old on the subway just looks twenty years younger than a 33 year old. It wasn’t any of the tell-tale (never understood this idiom) signs of aging.

It was something entirely different. I like reading the Wall Street Journal. There are a mix of good, well-written stories, and low-key the most educational pieces are the 5-8 minute videos. The A-Hed is some sort of an editorial piece, Jason Gay is just lights out, and those are alongside other notable segments that I couldn’t name off the top of my head.

The other day, in the digital paper, I perused a piece on Backroads leaders, something that I am personally invested in, due to my love for those vacations. You’re lucky enough to go on one; I’ve been lucky enough to go on three. The guides are the loveliest people on the planet. They welcome you with smiles and three languages; they bike 20 miles and act as if they just swam a lap in the kiddy pool; they coordinate with all staff at hotels and locales at roadside fruit stands.

The article was about the challenges of the two-week boot camp as part of the onboarding process to become a leader. It had a few case studies and some specific anecdotes. But overall, and if I’m being honest, it just wasn’t written that well. It didn’t engage the reader. It didn’t have lines that prompted you to daydream and put an image in your head. It was dull and topical – like the boring part of a 4 hour drive on a 2 lane highway.

And I had a self-centered, Carole King you’re so vain thought after reading it. ‘Hold on – I feel like I could write a better piece than that.’ Because you have to be invested in something to go the extra mile. You can feel it as a writer. And they can feel it as a reader. It felt like this author (who I’m sure is fabulous) was told by her boss on a Tuesday morning: “Jane – we need a piece on Backroads trip leaders. It’s a target for our readership base and the Company should be put on the map in our Journal. Please learn what you can about the onboarding program for leaders and have it published in next week’s edition.”

The fact that I love writing is a sign of maturity, not of aging. I write this in my personal journal every other night, but it’s a ‘safe space’ for me. My fingers feel at home on these keys. At peace. And I wish I could just go and go and write 300 pages about some cohesive story that would sing. But here’s the thing. I would have to be invested in every word on every page for it to be a Billboard hit. And I saw what happened in two pages if an author isn’t invested in a story about Backroads.

I still have a lot of questions about aging. Specifically about how to time the professional pendulum of success (however you qualify or quantify it). It’s not easy.

But I do know that I am aging. I see it in so many different arenas of my life. Good, bad, indifferent. But if I can write a better post about Backroads trip leaders than something that got published in the Wall Street Journal, then you know what – I must be getting older.