It’s fall here in the northern hemisphere. Feels like the fall of my life, too. Somehow midlife feels both like slowing down and also starting new things. I haven’t been in school for years now but fall still feels like back to school.
Yesterday I just missed the subway on my way to a 5 pm appointment in the city. The display sign above ground indicated that the train was coming in 0 minutes, and the next one was coming in 9 minutes, which would have gotten me to my appointment at 5:04 pm (assuming everything else went smoothly, which at rush hour in New York is a 50/50 assumption).
In the spring or summer of my life, I would have
- sprinted down the stairs to try and make the one that may or may not have actually been there
- possibly tripped and fell
- probably missed the train anyway
- tried an equally drastic alternative like furiously Citi biking to another stop with blind optimism that I could still make it on time, and then either
- (a) make it on time sweaty and frazzled, or
- (b) be late and feel guilty and frazzled.
I’m aiming for a frazzle-free lifestyle these days, so when I saw that 9 minute delay, I just shrugged and walked to the next closest stop to my destination on the subway line (which was about 5 minutes away). On my way I called the office and told them I’d be about 10 minutes late (Google Maps had me coming in 4 minutes late, and I added some safety padding since it was rush hour) and apologized. I made it to the next station, waited on the platform for 3 minutes, got on the train, dissociated for the 20 minute ride, got to my stop right at 5 pm, then leisurely walked the 4 minutes to my appointment to get there at 5:04 pm — which would have been 4 minutes late from my original appointment time, but given the newly set expectation of 5:10 pm, I was 6 minutes “early.”
In my early adult life, my days used to be filled to the brim with stuff. I would work a full (~10 hr) day, 5 days a week, and my evenings and weekends were also stuffed with dinner plans and coffee catchups and various ticketed and unticketed events for various things around the city, or otherwise just being OUT. There were periods of weeks where I’d only be at my apartment to crash, before going back OUT. it wasn’t uncommon for me to have multiple plans at multiple locations per day (example for a Saturday: coffee with a friend in Brooklyn, brunch in the city with another friend that would turn into wandering, random drinks, dinner reservation, going “out” out to whatever party was happening that night).
I probably had a few more years of that left in me when the pandemic hit and became the forcing function for me and also the whole world to pause. These days, it’s rare for me to have more than one social event planned on a weekend.
There was a lot of movement and nervous energy (and many moments running to catch the subway) in those days, and it was often fun. But movement isn’t progress, in terms of thinking about where I wanted and needed to be in my life. Many of those people that I casually spent time with and had fun with have left the city or I have otherwise lost touch with them. That’s okay, I think that is normal in midlife. Maybe everyone else is slowing down too.
Maybe I’m not slowing down, but just readjusting to the speed at which I’m meant to be moving. Maybe being more intentional is what feels like slowing down. Especially being as intentional about what NOT to do than what to do… I feel like I can let more things just – pass by, without trying to grab them, or even look at them. I wouldn’t say I’m less curious about the world, but more that I direct my curiosity at a different scope of things.
I enjoy food and restaurants but my capacity to dog down large amounts of food has drastically decreased in my 40s, although sadly my brain has not yet caught up, so sometimes I still order or prepare the same amount of food I could have eagerly consumed in one sitting even a few years ago and then I wonder why my brain wrote a check my stomach couldn’t cash 😔. I also have way less interest and enthusiasm for trying the latest popular restaurant with lines out the door or hard-to-get reservations. I feel like I’ve been bamboozled too many times and there is a certain Instagrammification of dining out that has created a vicious cycle of consumers posting food pics to social media and restaurants tailoring the presentation of their cuisine to look good in those pics and everyone in the game is subject to the Hawthorne effect.
It’s been interesting to reflect on this lately, and the more I consider it, the more I notice manifestations of it in my life, and the more I pay attention to how I feel (usually pretty good), which helps reinforce and give permission to the slowing-down. I don’t mean to suggest that I am in some kind of peaceful zen state all (or even most) of the time; I do live in a physical environment that is generally loud and fast and a virtual world that overflows with distraction and, quite frankly, shiny junk, but I can at least try to control my own thoughts and behaviors. Sometimes when riding the subway I will challenge myself to not look at any screens or something trying to sell me something. I have not yet been successful (mostly because subway cars these days are lined with screens trying to sell me something), but I’ve noticed that it seems like more of my fellow riders are reading analog books and magazines lately, so maybe they’re also trying to slow down a little in the middle of the chaos.