This month I'm turning 55. Fifty-five! Fun fact about getting older … you don't really notice it. Not yet, anyway. I always thought I'd feel different, somehow, but seem to be the same person as before. Just with a few more strands of silver in my hair. The upcoming birthday has prompted me to reflect on what I know and when I knew it. Not so much what I would have done differently (what's the point of regrets?) but wisdom that took a while to crystallise.
Exercise. It's good for you and FUN. My family was inert. No one voluntarily exercised, no one participated in any sport, and being a pudgy, four-eyed, pigeon-toed little critter, I embraced the inertia. Why move when you could curl up with a good mystery novel? I was academically able but wildly out of touch with mainstream New Zealand, which (in the 1970s and '80s, at least) revered sportspeople and reviled education. My first tentative experiences with exercise, apart from the hideous PE classes at school, were as a teenager when I did a little competitive cycling (using a borrowed bike) and jogging. Forty years later, exercise is one of my great joys in life. It's good for the body, it's good for the mind, and it's also a handy way of getting from A to B and back again.
Asking for help. I've had some fabulous, if accidental, mentors over my life. In 1980 a teacher at my high school taught me the flute, free of charge, for a year when my parents were unwilling and unable to pay for lessons. In 1983 my high school psychology teacher helped me through a rough year. In 1993 a university academic hired me as a temporary research assistant then offered to supervise my master's degree research. In 2007, my boss asked me to edit his writing, leading to a whole new career path. I'm grateful to all these people (and have told them so). I wish, though, that I'd known earlier in life that it's okay to ask for help. I didn't ask for help when a gang of older girls tormented me in the school grounds. I didn't ask for help when a kid on the school bus assaulted me. I didn't ask for help as I assumed I'd be blamed or punished rather than helped. Even now, I'm pretty uncomfortable asking for any kind of assistance, but I'm working on it.
The world of work. When I was thrust into my first full-time office job, at the wildly immature age of 16, I'd never set foot in an office before. Nor had anyone else in my very working-class household. So I was ignorant of office etiquette and business communication and made all sorts of errors. Less than three years later I was promoted to my first supervisory role and, having barely mastered office etiquette as an underling, made all sorts of new bloopers! These days I'm addicted to Alison Green's wonderful blog, Ask a Manager, but back then there was no internet and no one to ask for advice on how to behave, whether as a worker or a boss. It doesn't matter anymore as I'm happily self-employed and rarely face office etiquette issues (yaaaay) but I still cringe when I recall those early stumbles.
Job satisfaction. When I was young I had no idea that work could be enjoyable or satisfying. My parents appeared to hate their jobs, seeing them simply as a source of much-needed income rather than having potential for pleasure. I, too, assumed that I'd spend forty years doing work I detested. It wasn't till I was about 27 that I first had a job I enjoyed, and I fell into my dream job at 40 (and haven't looked back). Work is awesome. It's been a joy to finally find an occupation that's so much fun.
Gender. Gender was an absolute binary when I grew up … or so it seemed. The female gender (to which I was instantly assigned at birth) was clearly inferior in the society I grew up in, i.e. 1960s, '70s, '80s New Zealand. It's hard to disentangle how much of that feeling came from the wider culture and how much came from my family but, either way, my entire life has been affected by the label. The toys I played with, the clothes I was allowed to wear, the subjects I studied, the housework tasks I was trained to do, the career ambitions that were automatically ruled out. All for the misfortune of being labelled female. It's only been in the past five years or so that I've become aware of the non-binary gender option and I'm sure I would have readily embraced that, had it been available fifty years ago. No idea how my life might have panned out, in such a parallel universe, but I do wonder …
Little things that make a big difference. If you wash delicates and favourite clothes in wash bags they'll last much longer. A well-stocked freezer is handy for busy times and unexpected pandemics. How to cut an onion (weirdly, I first saw this method in the French movie Délicieux. It was a revelation!) Use an electric toothbrush and floss regularly. Be polite and respectful. Refuse, reduce, repair, repurpose, reuse, recycle. Don't accumulate clutter. Try not to overeat. Educate yourself. Gardening soothes the soul.
That's it. Wisdom that's taken a long time to distil!
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