An Aha Moment That Changed My Thinking

Last week I had something of an aha moment and I mentioned it on X/Twitter and said that there might be a Voicenote. So here is that Voicenote. Now, if you're listening to this and you're a guy, you might think this doesn't apply to you, but it applies to everybody. It's just my experience as a woman is possibly a little bit different. But there's an author, and I'm not sure how you pronounce his name, Amor Towles, and he was probably one of the first people that I heard talk about now or never. And it was describing the kind of mindset that I was experiencing, especially last year. It was reaching a certain point in your life and realizing that all these things that you've wanted to do, you'd really better get on with them because if you didn't, just because of getting older and aging and having a finite length of time left to live, there might not be another chance. So it was what I started calling the now or never philosophy, and he references it.

And Jamie Lee Curtis, I watched her in a video and she was talking about the same kind of, what would you call it, a nudge, an urgency, how when she reached 60, this whole new way of living kind of came about and she made all these films and produced them and did other projects and said she was living her best life. And Amor Towles said the same thing. And it wasn't something that I was conscious of. You know, I mean, I kind of don't really do birthdays. I've got one coming up in a couple of days and I just tend to ignore them. And especially when it was something like what people class as a big birthday, when I turned 60, I just, well, nobody knew I was 60. So Chris and I just went out for afternoon tea and that was me done and I was happy with that.

But alongside this, and it wasn't just because of the birthday, it was some sort of biological process that was going on. There was some form of alchemy taking place and you could feel this transformation and this separation from what had gone before and how you wanted to live. So once I got this in my head and I was thinking, right, you know, there's all these projects I want to do. I need to get on with them. I need to push forward with them and I need to do all the stuff that I love doing, like the lambing. And now we've got 12 calves and I'm looking after them and helping feed them, the hens and the small holding, growing stuff, spending time going to check on the sheep in the field and all the stuff that I absolutely love to do. I just wanted to do more of those and really shape my life so that it looked like the life that I wanted to live.

And this is all the preamble really to say that once I'd realized this kind of mindset and this whole now or never philosophy, I thought I'd cracked it and I thought, well, OK, I've gone through menopause and I've ticked that box and I've come out the other side. And now this is what a lot of people call the Third Act. And there's still all these things that I want to do. I'm quite excited about the possibilities and just moving forward in a different way. But since last year, towards the end of last year, I finished a project and I suppose I've found myself floundering. I've been busy, I've done lots of things, I've been writing and doing all the farm stuff but in many ways I was treading water and I kind of just found myself wondering what do I do next where do I go from here what is it that I'm meant to be doing I still need to earn some money how do I do that and I sort of I'd find myself thinking well I've moved on from one thing and I'm in another phase now but I never thought that I was actually in the in between phase.

And this is ironic because one of the projects that I've been working on for a while and it's sort of an ebb and flow thing I write a bit and then hit a wall and then live a bit more get some more insights it's called the Essence Map and it talks about endings and how they're pivotal moments for a new beginning but in between that is the Void and I just hadn't thought that I was still in that place. Anyway, I read this article on Substack the other day and I think the guy was called Andy Johns and he was talking about careers and leaving a career behind and going off and doing something radically different or even for people who have worked and then retired how the first mountain is the career then there's the second mountain which is where you're heading but you're not entirely sure how to get there yet or even what's on that mountain what it looks like and then there's the valley in between which is the void.

And he talks about the void as well and he was explaining about you know you can't just jump from one thing to another and it takes time and there's healing that needs to go on you've got to kind of let the path appear and sometimes you don't know what the path is it's a really good article and I'll link to it at the bottom so that you can have a look at it but it just blew my mind and I think sometimes you need somebody else to kind of say this is where you're at obviously he doesn't know me but he was saying this is actually where you're at it's not where you think you're at and just knowing that it kind of took a massive load off because I've been carrying this thing around thinking what am I doing I'm not earning any money and I'm not entirely sure what I'm doing next I've got all these things I want to do but they're all a bit of a mishmash and just no clarity and also not really making any headway.

So just reading this piece just made me go whoa that is just brilliant and I've stopped worrying about all the things that were really on my mind and have been on my mind for months and just started thinking well I need to just let go just allow things to happen and this second mountain will eventually appear I'll know what it's about and I'll have created a path because of walking the path. So yeah, it's I can't tell you what a difference it made just to have that recognition I suppose of where I'm actually at and I suppose you think there's something wrong either with you or your situation and actually it's just part of the process which I know because you know this is what I've been writing about for 15-20 years but I couldn't see where I was at.

And I'm sure most of you listening to this probably nowhere near 60 and I had absolutely no idea what would happen at this point. You know, a lot of people of my Mum and Dad's generation kind of talked about reaching 60 and I think you could probably get your pension at 60 back in the day and they finished work and I don't really know what they did but a lot of people just kind of had very quiet lives. And there's a female writer who talks about being a rebel after retirement and she said that when she was starting to nurse I think she's a bit older than me, so probably in the 1970s I think she said, maybe late 1970s. They considered people over 60 to be geriatric and a lot of people went and lived in care homes and residential care homes, which to me at this point in my life is quite incredible.

So yeah, this is what I'm thinking about right now, being in this valley and where I go next and what that might look like and quite frankly who knows at this stage. So I thought I would share that with you. Thanks for listening. Bye for now.

Andy Johns Article: https://cluesdotlife.substack.com/p/what-happens-when-you-leave-your