Forty is My New Twenty

Forty is my new twenty. This is not a cliché. Okay… well it quite literally is, but I guess cliches can be true. In the past year, my first in my forties, I’ve moved and made my own amazing little home, corner of the world, or how I affectionally refer to it, my spinster space. I faced, for the very first time in my life, telling a medical professional that my anxiety that I’ve spent my whole life justifying was, in fact, not normal. Not okay. And I needed help. And in turn… I got help. For the first time in my life, I feel normal, or what I thought normal would feel like. My mind is not in a constant state of running through all the possible contingencies plans I need to make for all the things that could go wrong. Even making plans for all the things that have gone wrong in the past. Though you could argue it’s a little late now… but hey!! You never know! They could happen again!! I am no longer living in the fog of the past or the quicksand of the future. I can breathe, and just live. It’s a type of carefreeness that I don’t even think the child version of me ever had. And to top that all off… I went back to school. Did I mention that? Probably not. I haven’t kept it a secret, I just don’t talk about it. I’ve brought it up to those in my little circle or those who just got me in a sharing mood and there was a mentor or two who got the news. That’s about it. Since it’s really not a secret it has made it’s way through the grapevine just a bit. I worried that if I failed at this, I’d want to go by the less people that know the better rule. But it’s gone well and even if I do fail at least I tried. So, there you have it. I’ve gone back to school to get my second B.S. degree, this time in Accounting, at Metro State.

All this is to say I feel more twenty now then I ever did twenty years ago… when I actually was twenty. It’s still strange to be forty and saying things like “I need to go study” or “do homework”. Mostly though it’s just fun. I like school and I feel like at this age I’m uniquely equipped for it in a way very different than the first time around. A lot of experience under my belt probably doesn’t hurt either. Going to school in your twenties for a career that you at best have just brushed up against in some shitty high school job or at worst haven’t experienced at all is a crapshoot. Your brain isn’t even fully developed until well after the graduation of most traditional aged students for crying out loud. Personal investment is so different now. When I was going to college at the “traditional” age and found out a co-worker of mine was studying for an accounting degree, I was baffled. First of all, math!? Ick! Second of all, how BORING!!! "Geesh, what a weird choice", I thought. I often find myself screaming in my head at twenty-something me, thinking somehow it can time travel.  “It’s not a weird choice!!! That split second thought you had that went “well, maybe…” you should have held on to that!! Don’t listen to yourself. You’ve only been potty trained for 18 years…. Do you know how small of an amount of time that actually is!!!! And you’re going to make a life altering decision on a career based on what your think would be… cool?! God you’re stupid. Flip that hot pink Motorola Razor phone shut and get a clue”

Alas my time travel screams have gone unheard by twenty something me. Probably drowned out by my singing along to Kelly Clarkson’s Since You’ve Been Gone at the top of lungs. What can ya do? What I can say is that whatever choices I’ve made in my life have gotten me here. The good the bad and the ugly. And I like it here. It’s my new twenty… and the only one that matters. Now, if you'll excuse me... I have homework ;)