40-something

One of the most memorable conversations I ever had with my Dad was when I was about 20 and had a summer job as an office temp in an insurance company. Dad and I were out shopping one day and stopped at a McDonald's in Englewood, over by Cinderella City which is probably where we had been shopping, for some afternoon french fries.

I was complaining about my boring job and the boring full-timers there and burst out (with the typical sensitivity I displayed as a youth), "How could anyone possibly spend 20 years working in a cubicle like that!" And then, "Oh. You actually did, didn't you." And then, "So, how did you do it?"

He said that when you first start at a company as a young man, you think the sky's the limit, and you think you'll be Vice President one day. And you go along in your career but then you hit 40, and you stop getting promotions and you see other people getting promoted instead, and you realize this is pretty much it. And then, he said, "Either you decide to leave it all and move to Tahiti, like Gaugin did," or you decide, like he did, that you like having a house, and a family, and you don't want to leave. And you fill in your life with other things.

I have probably written this story down in a blog before. But right now my thoughts about it are different. Because right now I'm 45, and I haven't hit a glass ceiling, my career has been moving forward in leaps every few years (with a brief time out for post-retrenchment sabbatical and MBA school and protracted unemployment and relationship disaster, but still), mainly because I've been jumping companies into better positions, but there's still quite a ways up I could go, I think.

This week at work we had a big party, one of those forced-fun celebrations where they spend a great deal on very professional decorations and a big cake and party favors, and it's all speeches from senior management and no one really wants to be there but it's not so bad, and in fact those occasions can be useful for communicating a company's culture and galvanizing people into a team. Anyway, there were speeches by the North American President, and the North American Sector President, and the North American Group President. And none of them seem like old men to me. I'm 45 and very senior people sometimes retire at 55, because they can.

So, it's right that I should be moving up into those ranks. I certainly have the experience and expertise and temperament (except for my tendency to engage in snipey gossip in office corridors - but then, you have to seem to be one of the workers in order to gain their trust and extract any helpful information, so I can somewhat rationalize - but I'm still going to try to cut down on it). But maybe I don't have all that much time to reach my whole potential. Am I supposed to accomplish everything in my career in 10 short years? I feel like 30 more is not enough. I feel like I'm on the brink of something, and I'm excited about learning and developing and influencing the organization and moving things forward to excellence. Maybe that's just a factor of my industry, and the fact that it's all new and changing all the time and full of promise and potential, and youth-oriented. So, actually, how lucky am I that I get to work in this field and be excited by new emerging things all the time, and not be in an industry where I would have achieved everything and already burned out.

On the flip side, I heard a news story on the radio while driving home about a sitting US Senator who is 90, and is only just giving up chairmanship of some important committee or other, but he's still an active member of the Senate. So, who says I have to stop at 55? Who says I have to stop contributing, soon. I do have another 30 years! 75 is the new 40!