A mid-career professional. A parent. Wife, friend, sister, daughter. Gen-X’er. Small business owner, consultant, contractor. Learning professional, trainer, instructional designer, e-learning developer and project manager. Networker extraordinaire. I-phone using, LinkedIn promoting, tweeting, latte-drinking, dog-walking, traveling when I can find the time, book-devouring, politics-discussing, homework-helping, volunteer-loving, playing with my kids, desperately overscheduled “but it’s all good stuff”…person.
And now I’m 40. What does it mean to be a 40-year old small business owner, mid-career professional juggling the demands of being supermom (as I define it) while having time to be a great friend, lover, and partner to my husband…while running my own small business? Does it magically become clearer with the new ‘40’ label? “Sure”, she says, while guzzling down 8 more ounces of her doctor-recommended 64 ounces of water per day.
As a teenager, I remember seeing pictures of my own mother in her 30s and 40s and thinking, “she looks younger in her 40s than in her 30s.” My mother came up behind me and said, “That’s because in my 40s you girls were older and I had a bit more time to re-focus on myself and my own career.” All righty then.
What is a career, exactly, in an age where it’s a downsize, right size, virtual, flex-time, technology-enabled answer all the time environment?
My answer? I’m a designer. I design ways to enable people to learn skills they need for their current and/or future jobs…or how to look for a new job when theirs is no longer open to them. As I design learning experiences for my bread and butter, I choose to think of turning 40 as a learning experience to design into my own life. What I know about 40 in my world is that I’m reflecting on these questions:
1.You Want Mustard on that Sandwich?
(Bread): Kids are growing up fast and they’re only young once. You laugh, you cry, you worry, and you cheer, endlessly, for them.
(Bread): Parents are getting older, health issues are occurring, and they are not local to where we live.
Question: How can I make the most of our time together?
(Cheese/Meat): You! Marriage, parenting, and careers take passion, time, and energy.
Question: How can I be present and in the moment in each of these huge components of life?
Sometimes the pressures of all of these items can make one feel like a sandwich that’s been sitting at the bottom of the laptop bag too long…but it’s still delicious and life-affirming for those who hunger for the sustenance from those whom we love.
2.Who Am I Again?
* Is my life going the way I want it to?
* Am I leaving the world and people around me in a better place than when I arrived?
* What am I forgetting to nurture, encourage, and grow?
* What am I putting off doing until “someday?”
* What doesn’t matter anymore?
* What DOES matter?
3.How Do I Know?
No roadmap for parenting. How do you forgive the crap we all survived as children and let your child live his/her own life, and make his/her own discoveries in and about the world?
Marriage. It’s been awhile now. How do we be sure to keep our own relationship as a couple when there’s always late-night-early-morning work calls, team practices, college scouting, children’s milestones, parents expectations of you…and remember that we CHOSE each other? Turn the phone off, hold hands no matter who’s there, have each other’s back without holding each other back, and get away from the NOISE once in awhile.
Career. Yeah. Onsite, offsite, global, national, titles without pay, pay with more responsibility, travel is awesome except when you miss your spouse, children, dogs. Technology-changing, always reaching, industries closing, more work, less staff. The question is, where are you getting what you need to manage your energy, emotions, and sanity at an acceptable level? Are you working to live, or living to work?
What’s next? Who knows? Flexibility, challenge, ownership of my career is important. Raising community-aware humans is paramount. Making time to spend with people I love is increasingly more important. Not putting up with bullshit ranks up there, too. I am a designer of learning; learning to me equals options.
What’s next is that I know there will always be options – that is the design framework for my life. At 40, I can say that with more certainty than before – and that’s a good thing. For me.
Yep, I’m a designer, and no matter how many labels I may have, I will design them into my life in a way that lets me be myself, and be with those who matter, to make the most of my passion and energy for life’s options.
Happy (Belated) Birthday to me.
Yellow Giraffe Talent Solutions 