54. Thoughts?
I originally had the bright idea to write down 54 thoughts about turning 54 on Saturday, September 13. After reflection, I realized that I’d truly be plumbing low depths if I were to aim for 54 thoughts, as some of the lower entries would be in the “I love lamp” category. I’ll still keep a list of thoughts, but I doubt I’ll reach the number in the title.
For a few years, I believed that I felt and looked younger than my actual age. The last year disproved my theory, as two big events had me question my self-perception: my new job, and my mother’s death.
I am one week away from achieving 18 months at my new job, and I have no regrets for leaving my old one. That being said, my new job has been a challenge for me, as I’m now the struggling rookie trying to make sense of an aptly-named healthcare software that’s truly epic. There’s a lot to learn, and I’m still not sure where the boundaries lie or if there are boundaries.
My team works from home, with office gatherings that happen every quarter or so. There are times I miss an office atmosphere, but I don’t believe that I would be learning more about Epic if I were in the office. The style of learning Epic isn’t exactly hands-on, but rather "try and fail, try and succeed, try and muddle through the results."
If I have a worry, it’s that the method of learning may be deemed insufficient by my higher-ups. So far, that’s not the case.
As for my mother’s death, it’s obviously made me reflect upon my own time being alive. I was fortunate that there weren’t many legal or financial concerns surrounding her death, but that’s not due to her being well-off. My mother’s financial conditions were rapidly becoming just as dire as her health, and I believe they worked hand-in-hand together. She was caught in a spiral that was largely due to decisions she made many years prior, back when she was capable of scraping by and spinning many plates in the air. Everything worked until it didn’t, and when one plate crashed down, it eventually led to all of them collapsing.
There will always be a part of me that wonders if my mother chose to end her life, either by aggressive neglect or aggressive action. Given how rapidly her life collapsed in the last three months, I could see the plausibility of that action. I know I won't ever get a satisfying answer to my question, so I’ll just have to live with this unsettling thought.
I still have a draft of a Mother’s Day post that isn’t finished. The goal was to post my thoughts about my first Mother’s Day without my biological mother, but I never made it past the halfway point. Maybe I’ll finish it in time for the first anniversary of her passing. Its title, “She wasn’t a good mother, but she really loved you,” is a conundrum I’ll carry with me for the remainder of my own life.
The health and financial problems my mother had has provided me with some inspiration, though not in emulation. My goals are to avoid the problems she encountered, so her inspiration is more of the “don’t follow my example” type. I am working on decreasing my credit card debt so that payments aren’t crippling, and I’m making sure that I have sufficient money saved away for retirement. As for my health, I have made efforts to become less sedentary at this WFH job, and to also be equally more active with my doctors about any health concerns.
Some health issues are unavoidable. My mother had a severe case of arthritis that eventually ate away at her hip joints. She was able to replace one hip joint, but deferred on her other one. This decision was the turning point in her life, unfortunately, as the deferment led to many other health problems, which led to insufficient treatments and decreased mobility, which led to issues at her part-time job and so on. I may not be able to avoid arthritis as a whole, but I don’t want to end up like her, hence my increase in physical activity.
Some finance issues are also unavoidable. Later on this year, after the first anniversary of her passing, I’ll finally look into interring her ashes with her mother. The cost of internment and tombstone replacement won’t be cheap, but it will be done, hopefully by spring 2026.
The job change and the death of a parent have combined to make me feel less young than I thought I was. When you put these two events together with a significant weight loss, they’ve all combined to make me look and feel my age. Is this a good thing? Perhaps. Maybe it’s time to shake up my self-perception and embrace the fact that I look like someone in their early-mid 50s as opposed to pretending I was in my mid-40s.
My weight loss has taken off inches from my stomach and rear end, as well as the “puffiness” in my face. I don’t have wrinkles—I still have zit breakouts, which I thought would have ended by now!—but the laugh lines are much more prominent than when I weighed 30-35 pounds more. I needed to lose the weight as part of a fatty liver disease treatment, so no regrets with the weight loss or the medication I used for it. Along with this physical loss of weight is the mental loss of your self-image: in other words, a form of body dysmorphia. How I see myself is now catching up with how others see me post-weight loss.
If I plan to update my self-perception, I should also reflect on how this change will affect how I interact with the world. One of the benefits of being in your 40s and 50s is having a lived experience, not a theoretical or vicarious one. Part of the lived experience is knowing what suits you now, based on what you’ve gone through beforehand, then deciding what works for you and what can be set aside.
A fair amount of my time after the birthday will be spent on weeding out what doesn’t work for me, and lately, what hasn’t worked for me is a lot of the internet. My job change and my mother’s death were the two biggest events in my life last year, but this year it's been watching the internet fall apart in real time. Or, maybe to phrase it better, watching the promise of the internet curdle into something more sinister. Yes, this curdling has happened for some time, but 2025 is when the speed of the sourness ramped up noticeably.
I have made some changes to the time and locations I spend online, but I have to make this an ongoing project. I don’t think it’s just about substituting X for Y and hoping for magic (aka switching from Twitter to Bluesky), but maybe changing alphabets entirely. A better use for my energy and attention, in other words.
Getting into film photography, which has somewhat reawakened my use of the Sony “big-boy” camera, is a good start. Using this blog is also constructive for me, as my own words will hang around to keep me in line. Decreasing the “constant now” in my life is also worthwhile, as it is often just noise and not signal.
Another aspect of my mother’s life I wish to avoid, which also impacts what I wrote above, was her isolation. Her TV, her phone, and her cats were constant companions; meanwhile, some of her friendships and family relationships wavered in strength. She was able to live on her own terms by herself since the early-mid 1980s, and there’s a lot to admire in that. Once she retired from her job, my mother became bored and stagnant, both of which contributed heavily to her mental decline. Living by herself slowly became a millstone that weighed her down. Again, it was all working out until it didn’t.
The temptation for me is to use the internet to avoid isolation. A lot can be said that’s positive about online relationships, but that’s not a full substitute for seeing people, spending time with them engaged in various activities, or even just enjoying each other’s company. Touching grass is a real thing, but touching grass with others is the better goal.
When I went through my mother’s belongings after her death, I found a couple interesting books on her shelf. She had signed up to be a local weather spotter in her county, but I don’t know how far she went into this program. There were some weather-watching books and ham radio books which were collecting dust, so I’m not sure if she bought these in a mania or if they were part of a larger, unrealized plan.
If I am to touch grass with others, I should be realistic about how this will happen. There’s no fault in having a sudden inspiration, but how can I carry that out in a way that will satisfy me and not lead to disappointment? It’s a big question to ask, but staying within reasonable expectations should still allow me to learn and grow with others.
I hope that I can use all of these listed items to set myself up for a good 54th year. Both good and bad circumstances can be part of my inspiration to update myself and how I move about my world. A more mature outlook on my life should be part of my celebration on Saturday and for the days beyond. To quote from a Tom Petty live album, “This is an adult situation and I’m gonna handle this like an adult,” and if this means I’m finally seeing myself as an adult at 54, better now than never.