When Are You Too Old To ReInvent Yourself?

When you no longer have a pulse?

I’m an equal opportunity reader. I knew jack shit about bitcoin when I joined Medium. I’d heard the term, but it made my teeth ache to think about learning what it meant.

Coding? Wasn’t that something the Brits did to defeat the Nazis in WW2?

Come to me with a piece on French cooking or a book list, and I was all in, but startups? Give me a freaking break. I couldn’t get a job at Apple when they were preaching to the silver-haired crowd. And that was before I had my knee surgery. When I could still walk without a cane.

Learning about life from the categories.

These days? I’ve been digging deep into the Medium categories, and I’m up on FinTech, neuroscience, and blockchain. Just quiz me on the day I read the articles because, well, I am 80 and my short term memory and all. Still, I get a buzz from learning new things.

One of my fave genres these days is the personal essay. I’m moved by the stories about people who’ve hit bottom and then reached deep inside and pulled themselves up and reinvented themselves. They’ve overcome huge obstacles to start new businesses, find love when they believed they were unloveable, whipped themselves into shape to win a 10k when they’d been a couch potato all their lives.

So I’m thinking, what about me? I still have a pulse. Sure, all these newly-minted success stories are millennials, gen-xers, and boomers (memo to self: look up Pre-WW2er and see if it’s a thing). So it’s easy to read between the lines that I’m over the hill, reinvention-wise.

But why not me? I have many flaws I’d still like to erase from my personality. There are still mountains I’d like to climb, metaphorically speaking (it’s the cane thing).

Do I have to throw in my hat and say I’m done and dusted just because I’ve reached the 8th level?

I’ve looked around, and I can’t find the manual. Or, the permission slip that says I need special dispensation to create some new goals for myself even though I may not enjoy them into the 22nd century. What about my quality of life right now?

What about my quality of life right now?

I’m getting a little tired of reading all these how-to articles that make big bucks for the writers telling us how to kill it on Medium. How to make a living from our earnings. How to get 100,000 followers and become an influencer.

Sometimes, I read an article by a 21-year-old who just got her first bonus telling us the secret to life. While I cheer for her, I really do. I want to sit her on my lap and say, honey. Let me tell you what you don’t know.

The big thing she doesn’t know is that at 80-years-old, you’re still learning and dreaming.

A 25-year-old client of mine asked me how I was doing, business-wise. I told him I was very busy, what with writing and editing and planning my next novel. He said maybe at 80-years-old I should think about chucking it in.

We’re friends, and he was suggesting that I work too hard at this late stage of my life. My reply? At 80, there’s nothing I shouldn’t do.

So here I am at 80 and change, killing it on Medium beyond my wildest dreams. What I mean by that is I had no expectations when I started, then huge expectations after reading about Shannon and Shaunta, then I came down to earth and had very modest expectations.

This month, three months ahead of schedule, I’ll reach the goal I set to determine if Medium is worth my tie . Next month, I could tank, but today I feel like I’ve made a very modest success on Medium. Me, a little old lady who writes consistently but not about topics that get the big reads. So, yeah, the turtle and the hare. Me being the little old lady hare.

But then I read this morning an article about how you can really hit it big on Medium. Make big bucks, get thousands and thousands of followers. Become a name.

Usually, I think those people are writing for a much younger audience. People starting their writing careers. People with decades ahead of them to carve out their own niche in the writing cosmos.

Then I stopped myself. That’s what I do when I read a sex article about how to have bigger and better orgasms or why polyamory might be your thing.

I assume those authors don’t have me in mind. Can you imagine a bunch of 80-somethings taking out their hearing-aids and kicking their walkers to the corner to find the bed and grope each other in daylight? They couldn’t do it at night; they’d be asleep before the last one made it under the covers.

But if a bunch of us were willing, why not?

There’s an example of raging ageism if there ever was one, me thinking sex articles or success articles or any article isn’t for someone my age.

The more I think about reinventing myself as a successful entrepreneur, starting that YouTube channel for a writing course I’ve dreamed of, developing a cadre of salivating followers hungry for my every word on why you should never split an infinitive, and setting up a successful Patreon account with more levels than my age to give advice on living sets my old soul on fire.

Time to practice what I preach. I’m going to reinvent myself as a raging success. And I’m talking about $u$$e$$. First thing I’m going to invent is a device to slap me upside the head every time I think I’m too old to climb a new mountain. Except, of course, if it’s a literal mountain. I’m old, but I’m not stupid.

https://readmedium.com/3-tips-from-an-editor-to-help-your-curation-chances-6c025d2f17bf