The Second Half: A Reckoning

The number 45 is:

Half way to ninety. Cannot be divided in two. Comprised of two hyphenated F-words.

Not very sexy.

At this age, the typical adult needs a reading glasses magnification of 1.75. Common mild skin issues include: brittle nails, Poikiloderma (aka “redneck”), and seborrhoeic keratoses (once known as “senile warts”). Foot pain is common, especially for those with flat feet. Pain may fall into one or more of the following categories: bunions, hallux rigidus, hammer toe, plantar fasciitis, or arthritis.

Some celebrities turning 45 this year include:

Owen Wilson, Marc Anthony, Jorja Fox, Shaggy, Christy Turlington, Rachael Ray, Parker Posey, Aaron Eckhart, Bobby Brown, Molly Ringwald, Patricia Arquette, Lucy Liu, Will Smith, Marilyn Manson, Céline Dion, Ashley Judd, Daniel Craig, Gillian Anderson, Hugh Jackman

A reckoning, by dictionary definition, is “the act or process of performing mathematical operations to find a value.” Another symptom of midlife is the need to perform a personal reckoning, a kind of data collection of the soul. An accounting. In the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessed with this. I’ve got tablets filled with numbers and equations. I don’t even like numbers, yet suddenly this seems important. I walk the dog and wonder, how many miles have I walked this dog? My former dog? Dogs in general, mine or other people’s? How far would I be if I placed all those miles one after the other? Across the state? The country?

I knew this was coming. I read about it in my late thirties, when I thought I was having a mid-life crisis. Now I see that “crisis” is  a very subjective word. For me, it depends on the day,  sometimes, even the hour. Four p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon is generally a crisis for me. S’got nothing to do with age.

Another lens through which I’ve been studying my numbers is that of talent. As an idea, talent is related to time, as in: the more talent you have, the less time it takes to succeed.

I’ve recently read both Mindset, by Carol Dweck, and Malcolm Gladwell’s Outliers, and both deal with the idea of innate talent, the “natural” or prodigious. I’ve become very skeptical of this idea. As a culture, we love prodigy stories. People who were “born” to do something feel like a triumph of nature. Yet more and more, natural skill feels like a fantasy to me, like hoping for a shortcut to mastering what we want to be good at.  It’s far more realistic to study the inequity of opportunity. Opportunity has a lot to do with mastering what we want to be good at. In fact, studying my own numbers, awestruck and humbled, I’m ready to say opportunity + persistence = mastery. No magic to it.

Here are my numbers. I will introduce them with this:

The number of hours in one year is 8,736~The number of hours a person with a standard, 40-hour-week job works in one year, with two weeks vacation, is 2,000~Gladwell’s Outliers posits the number of hours required to master a skill at 10,000~For more on this, see this 1993 study “The Role of Deliberate Practice in the Acquisition of Expert Performance” here: http://projects.ict.usc.edu/itw/gel/EricssonDeliberatePracticePR93.pdf

Number of times I’ve been to Town and Country grocery store in the past ten years:  520

1/wk @52 wks/yr x 10=

Number of hours I’ve spent next to a soccer field since 2008:    240

4 months/year= 16 weeks/ yr @ x 2 practices/games per week@1.5 hours each=3 hours per week x 16= 48 hours per year x 5=

Hours spent viewing kids’ musical concerts/performances since 2006:   19.5

2 kids @ 1.5 hours/yr since age 3 = 12 hours+7.5 hours=

Hours spent preparing food in the past 11 years:    2,192

lunch=10 minutes per day, 5 days week= 50 minutes per week@52 weeks per year= 2600 minutes/ 60= 43.3 hours per year x 11 years= 476.6 hours

dinner = 30 minutes/day @ 6 days a week=180 minutes/60= 3 hours/wk (seems low) @52 wks/yr=156 hours year X 11 years= 1,716 hours: 1,716 +476=

Miles logged walking to school:    712

after we moved: .125 x 2/day= .25 x 5 days a week = 1.25 miles per week x 38 weeks of school=47.5 miles/school year x 3 years  =   142 miles since 3rd grade

before we moved: .5 miles X 2/day = 1 mile/day = 5 miles per week X 38 weeks = 190/yr x 3yrs = 570 miles K-3rd grade. 570+142 =

Number of hours spent reading: 4,212

since graduating high school= 27 yrs @ 3 hrs/wk

Number of hours spent writing:   19,860

pre-1994: 1,300

college years (journal & stories) 1987-91 @ 5 hrs/wk X 26 wks/yr=520

post college (stories) 1991-94 @10 hrs/wk X 26 wks/yr=780

1994-96 (got “serious” after Dad died; began first novel): 1,600

20 hrs/wk X 40 wks/yr= 800 hours per year

1996-1998 grad school (MA with creative concentration; used first novel for thesis): 2,400

30 hrs/wk X 40 wks year= 1200 hours per year

1998-2003  (finished  first novel; signed with agent; rejected by editors): 5,625

25 hrs/wk X 45 wks/yr=1,125 hours per year

2003-2008 raising infants (abandoned first novel; wrote poems and, finally, new fiction): 3,375

15 hrs/wk X 45 wks/yr= 675 hrs hours per year

2008-2012 (began book #2; finished; signed with new agent; rejected by 18 editors): 3,760

20hrs/wk X 47 wks/yr=940 hours per year

2012-present  grad school for MFA (began novel #3): 1,800

25hrs/wk X 48 wks=1200 hours per year

I’ve spent hours calculating and typing this up, yet only now do I see that my personal reckoning can’t be that interesting to anyone but me. It is, after all, a personal reckoning.

But that last one: 19, 860? Can that be right?

Perhaps what matters more is what one does with this sort of data. This is the part of the definition where I’m supposed to find a “value” after all the calculating. Certainly, and I swear, I don’t mean for these calculations to be an artful form of bitching. I don’t think those 520 visits to the grocery store are meaningless, exactly. But it is rather astounding that one can spend so many hours doing the same thing with nothing to show for it. There is a certain senselessness to some of these activities, including those I didn’t bother to calculate. Especially those I didn’t bother to calculate. For instance, how much time I’ve spent in the past ten years with my voice raised. Or, in the clutches of a hovering, nameless anxiety, a demonic familiar requiring me to know what everyone in the house is doing and how healthy it is, which means, what kind of future impact will it will have on everyone’s self-esteem. Talk about wasted time.

Wasted time is the undercover subject of this post, just as it is the undercover question of any personal reckoning. Makes sense, particularly at midlife. Simply put: the personal reckoning is a way to determine how you want to spend your remaining time. The hours are numbered in a much different way in the second half of life. First half: hours are endless. Second half: they run out. Hours spent preparing meals. Hours spent watching kids’ performances. Trips to grocery store. They will run out.

And finally, talent. Oh, talent. Well, why would I believe in talent? I’ve spent 19, 860 hours writing and what do I have to show for it? I’d need a dozen books or articles, a major prize, several grants, job offers, or…. what, exactly, to prove that I haven’t wasted my time?

Surely you can see that this wasted time business is the wrong paradigm, wrong lens, wrong car in which to ride. Have I or haven’t I wasted my time is the wrong question to ask. If the value of one’s life is an equation involving accomplishment and/or wasted time, that would mean that it comes from the outside of the self, and really external judgment has never been the car in which I want to ride. It’s tough. Our culture is very attached to this idea of accomplishment. Take the Olympics. Surely those athletes are a testament to how much practice is required to gain mastery. Eight to ten hours a day, every day for a decade, sometimes more. And if they don’t win a medal, they are going to conclude, my god, I’ve wasted my time?

Certainly people at home in their cozy living rooms half a world away are going to think that. The commentators use words like “heartbreaking.” And this is precisely why the Olympics, and athletic feats of greatness, have never made much sense to me. You’re going to assess the value of your life, your personal reckoning, on how you perform on a single day, one ski run or one ten minute segment in the arena—one single moment in space and time?

The car in which I want to ride places the value of a life on something inside.  Mastery as opposed to accomplishment. Hours spent earn you the right to feel fluent. Authority can be gained, maybe even wisdom. The right question may very well be this:

How many hours does it take you to feel like you really, truly, finally, at last, know what you’re doing?