Tag: 40

goals, maturity, men, money, my life

Getting it Together

20140625-142704-52024098.jpgBeing an adult is hard. I’m thinking about this as someone types the exact same thing to me. It’s a general feeling that I’ve had for the past week. This probably has everything to do with the fact that I am now 40. I have all these preconceived notions of what 40 should be and I can say for sure that I am not there.

I have been evaluating my life to figure out exactly where I am. As a person who has lied to himself on several occasions during my 30’s, self evaluation has become critical to my ever growing development as a person and as a man. It’s not easy to really admit one’s faults but I’ve come to realize that is a young person’s game. At my current age I should have my shit together and its sad to say that I don’t.

I guess you can say that I’ve been “Faking the Funk” when it come to certain portions of my life. I think life can be divided into sections like work, love, family, and financial (to name a few). For the most part, the majority of my life is good and I can’t complain about much. I’m so fortunate to have people that care about me. I’m grateful for my friends, family, and a wonderful job. Yet the financial part of my life is in shambles.

This has nothing to do with whether or not I get paid enough. This has everything to do with a problem I have of ignoring my issues. I can’t even explain why I do it. I will only guess that there is a fear of numbers. I feel like I owe money to the world and it can be a little intimidating. Which is why, at 40, I’m starting to feel that I need to get my shit together. I need to stop pretending that these bills will magically go away because they wont. In short, I need to start acting like a grown up.

blogMaybe I had a little bit of Peter Pan syndrome where I would just fly around shit and just enjoy the things I wanted to do while ignoring the fact that the real world exists. I cannot do that anymore and for many men, that is the crux of the problem. We ignore shit thinking that perhaps things will go away. For many guys, it’s a doctor they avoid and for me it’s my finances (dentists are a close second…smh – don’t worry I have an appointment tomorrow). But, I realize I cannot do this anymore. Forty year olds are supposed to have all this figured out right?

Even if they don’t, I need to get my shit together. I sat down last week in a panic mode trying to figure out how to improve this part of my life because I know I can get out of this mess I created for myself. In order to do this, I need to improve all aspects of my life as well. I created some reminders that go off everyday on my phone such as, creating and checking my daily to-do lists, create an additional budget plan for debt management, going to bed early, and being on time. These are just small things that will lead to larger goal management since, clearly, what I was doing before was not working so I have to try new things. It is very easy for me to NOT do something and it gets easier to be complacent as I get older. So it is all about being intentional to do things outside of my comfort zone.

The sad part about this is that I know that I’m not the easiest person to deal with. I can be defensive and dismissive when people who care try to tell me about my bullshit, but in the end they are absolutely correct. I do need to get my shit together and it has to happen now. I have to start thinking about life as an older man and that requires the type of planning I wasn’t willing to do when I was in my thirties.

birthday, my life

40

Screen shot 2014-06-12 at 8.52.01 AMI don’t feel 40. I woke this morning the same as always. There is no noticeable difference. Of course when I look in the mirror I see gray hairs on my chin. Sure, I started to grow those things about five years ago but they are sprouting up at an accelerated rare. Once I shave those bad boys off, 40 is something I don’t even closely resemble.

40 just means surviving 4 decades as I enter my 5th. It means another era where I get to define, or perhaps redefine what I am. I remember thinking as a kid about what it would feel like to even be this age. What would I be like? What would I have accomplished? Now I look at my life and see that I have so much left to do.

It almost feels like a fresh start. Being young and twenty was nice but being young also means being really stupid. There is this aura that being that young meant I knew everything which really means I knew nothing. Being thirty now seems like I was trying so hard to be this productive adult I wanted to be when I was twenty. Yet all the good times and bad times have shaped me to what I am right now.

I can already tell that that I have a sense of wisdom that comes from being 40 and not in the Shaolin Master kind of way. I find it useful that I can draw from life experience when it comes to making a decision. Having a hunch about something when you’re younger is not the same when you have experience. I’m grateful for having being able to learn and grow from my mistakes.

I wont think about any of the negative things that come with being 40 (like prostate exams) I would rather focus on future prospects like 5k runs and book signings. I anticipate this decade being bigger and better as strive for personal greatness. I still have so much to prove to myself. I still have so many goals to set and achieve.