#KickAssBy50

Photo by David Talley on Unsplash

Back in July 2017, Melanie and I took our boys to Seattle.  They had never been there, and one of Melanie’s brothers had moved to the area several years earlier when he took a job with Microsoft.  We stayed with his family in the quaint and pleasant suburb of Duvall.  It was a really great experience.  Something about the Pacific Northwest speaks to my soul.  I fell in love with it within minutes—literally—of exiting SeaTac airport on my first visit back in 1992.  As soon as I felt the crisp Washington air and beheld the gray skies and abundance of lush green trees, I was absolutely smitten.  Fortunately, I’ve been able to visit this particular corner of the world many times now.  Melanie and I even honeymooned in Seattle and British Columbia.  Without exaggeration, I often feel “homesick” for the place.  Of the very few items on my bucket list, living in the Pacific Northwest may just be at the top.

If you’re like me, being on vacation—especially somewhere that you really love—naturally leads to an examination of your life.  Freed from the burdens of everyday life—from the day-to-day responsibilities, obligations, and “have to’s”—you have an opportunity to connect with your true self, to take inventory of your hopes, dreams, and ambitions, and to reassess your life trajectory.  I have always found myself in a rather self-reflective state when visiting the PNW.  It has always left me inspired.  Of course, the weeds of normal life grow at an alarmingly fast rate; they often choke one’s motivation within a day or two of returning home.  But thanks to a little catchphrase, my 2017 visit to Seattle has stuck with me a little better than most.

“Kick ass by 50.”  That’s my goal.  And it’s a holistic goal.  By the time I am 50 years old, I want to be living the best life I’ve ever lived.  It’s not just about me as a person.  Yes, I hope to be in very good physical health, even if that is necessarily followed by an asterisk that notes “some restrictions apply.”  Yes, I hope to have made tremendous advancements as a musician.  Yes, I hope to have read a lot of great books and to have seen a lot of amazing movies.  But it goes beyond that.  I want to kick ass at 50, but I also want my life to kick ass when I’m 50.  Do you see the difference?  To the maximum degree possible, I want every moment of my waking hours to feel like a manifestation of me.  This means I need to be in a career that feels like me.  It’s not enough to have a secure job that sufficiently pays the bills.  This means the way I spend my free time needs to feel like an investment in and/or an expression of the me that I like the most.  At the risk of sounding like a whiny, entitled, self-absorbed teenager—although I’m probably ripe for the type of midlife crisis that would lend to such attitudes—I want my home, my clothes, my car, and everything else to feel like a manifestation of me.

Let me be clear.  I’m not talking about being a selfish prick.  I’m not talking about being immature or irresponsible.  I’m not talking about being a self-centered asshole who doesn’t care how my actions impact the people and the world around me.  If you know me, you know those sorts of attitudes don’t describe me at all.  (Well, mostly.)  What I’m talking about is something that I believe any rational and reasonably intelligent person would agree with and endorse, and something that we probably all seek.  I even believe there is a moral obligation to pursue the type of life I mean.  (More on that in a future post.)  I have felt all too cognizant of the fact that life is fleeting.  Because of that, I can get pretty depressed when I realize just how rarely I see the me that I absolutely love and adore.  Yes, there is a me that I think is pretty darn awesome.  And unique.  And I believe everyone has that inside them.  Which is what makes it so incredibly tragic if those beautiful, unique, wonderful individuals are mostly kept in a box and rarely see the light of day.  No offense to anyone who believes in reincarnation, but none of us is coming around again.  This is it.  If the best you—by which I mean the real you—gets to come out and play only once in a blue moon—that is, if the one person whose life you’ve been most intimately entrusted with—yourself—only gets to make an occasional guest appearance in this world … well, that’s just a tragedy beyond anything else I can possibly imagine.

I consider myself fortunate that my life has been moving steadily in the “kick ass” direction since moving back to Utah in 2014.  There’s still plenty of work to do, which is probably why I chose “kick ass by 50” rather than “kick ass by 45” or what would’ve been the extremely ambitious goal of “kick ass by 39.”  I’m now 40, a little bit more kick ass than I was at 39 but nowhere near the kick ass I’ll be at 50.  That said, I hope to make great kick ass strides every year between now and then.  I really believe I will, and that’s rather exciting.  Oh, and lest there be any confusion, I don’t plan to retire from kick-assery at 50.  I’ll keep going with it.  Perhaps I’ll set a new goal at that time.  Bad ass motherfucker by 80 or some such.  We’ll see.