Living My Best 20s in My 50s After Divorce: How’s it Going So Far?
Checking in To Assess Whether This Concept is Helping Me Adult to My Highest Standards…
It’s been 6 weeks since I started living my life out of order and making it a goal to start doing all the things I should have done in my 20s. I took a week off for spring break and had a great time with my daughter, gazing dreamily at scenes like this:
While staring at sunsets and sunrises, I contemplated whether this life out of order concept is having positive effects on my life beyond providing a topic to write about. In reality, I’m not just dealing with post-divorce life, but also midlife and soon-to-be-empty-nest life. Would I recommend this approach to others facing the same crossroads?
Bottom line up front: after implementing this framework, I find I have many days that are richly filled with creativity, purpose, and friendship — it’s almost an abundance of good things. Of course, many of those good things (especially the support from friends) may have happened anyway once I let people know about the end of my marriage. But it seems like this approach of giving myself this stated goal of “do the things you should have done back then” has helped me cultivate growth in several categories.
CREATIVITY
The built-in writing content has been incredibly helpful. I always felt like a good writer with not much to write about. That was probably an artificial block I was creating, or perhaps just mental laziness on my part. But this blog has provided the subject matter and content outline, and then I get out my butterfly net and collect the words from the cosmos and pin them into the right place on the page.
Some blogging how-tos say you need to post every day — I didn’t feel like I could create enough quality content to do that. I settled on a goal of 3 posts a week, and that is challenging but (so far) doable. Creating three posts a week that I’m proud of is still a high bar, and it gives me a concrete goal to work on each week so that I do the main thing necessary to be a writer: spend time writing.
I’ve also been working on the mandolin consistently! This is the first time in my life I’ve paid for my own music lessons. It’s interesting how frequently I work the practicing (even just 10–15 minutes) into my schedule because I actually want to. That seems different from the music lessons of my youth where I had to drag myself over to the piano or show up unprepared for a lesson hoping my brilliance would hide my lack of work (spoiler alert: it didn’t).
Perhaps not unrelatedly, I’ve also pulled out my guitar again, and will be singing three songs in a songwriter round in Nashville in the coming weeks. No idea if that’s a result of this blog, but it seems like opening the door on creativity might make the whole room a little brighter and let you pull out old hobbies, dust them off, and enjoy them in the new light.
I could keep serially trying new things — drumming, roller skating, ballroom dance, cooking classes, etc. — but I want to dive a little more deeply instead of diving everywhere. So, I’m prioritizing what I want, what works for my schedule, and what doesn’t take me away from my daughter too much.
SOCIAL LIFE
If left to my own inclinations, I could be the kind of person who would happily kick around my house and read, cook, sit with my dog, read some more, binge a good TV show, and be fine. Day in and day out. I’d wear a soft pair of leggings with a soft oversized t-shirt, and a soft oversized flannel and that would be it. Schedule: done. Wardrobe: done.
(FYI, I do not look that cute in my grunge flannel PJ’s…)
The goal of living my best 20s in my 50s has forced me to change that pattern. From hanging with girlfriends, to dating, to going on a date alone, to taking belly-dancing classes, to going to mandolin lessons — all of those activities require me to get out of the house (and get dressed in actual clothes). Those are good developments when you’re struggling with mid-life, post-divorce, emptying-nest stuff.
I know the act of being vulnerable in these posts has also strengthened ties with dear friends. They know I know they know about stuff (I know they know I know, you know??), so we can speak freely and on a real level. Esther Perel tells us, “The quality of your life ultimately depends on the quality of your relationships.” At a fundamental level, then, the cultivation of closer relationships on its very own is a win-win-win and would be enough for me to give this project two thumbs up. The blog has no doubt played some part in all of this by beginning deep conversations here on the screen that I then continue in my real life.
LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE
Having exciting events on the horizon to look forward to may be one of the secrets of a happy life, and creating my best 20s has definitely involved me making fun plans for the future.
I’m excited to go to Nashville in a week or so, I’m super-excited to go to my first Jazz Fest in New Orleans in May, and I’m beyond excited to be headed on a solo trip to Italy in June. My plans sort of go off a cliff at that point, because I can’t see beyond Italy. But soon enough, this goal of doing fun things will have me saying yes to the universe beyond Italy.
Speaking of Italy, I’m also working on learning a little conversational Italian! I haven’t tried learning a new language since 10th grade French class.
Overall, this blog has worked sort of like scaffolding around an old fixer upper.
It’s allowed me to reach places I might not have, let me do a little work on the place, scrape off some bad stuff, bring a few contractor friends up to look around a bit and share ideas, start working on new finishes and colors, and dreaming about the improvements to come. Thanks for reading along the way.
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