On getting older, and why write at all?

This summer I'll turn 48 years old.

For a long time I've enjoyed the process of getting older.
Loved getting to 18.
Loved getting to 30.
Even 40 felt like a great milestone.

But approaching 50... feels different.
There is no getting away form the fact that barring some medical breakthroughs I'm in the 2nd half of my life. On the back 9 to use a golfing analogy.

I remember leaving university and setting a goal for my self to have my life 'sorted' by age 30!

By sorted, I meant that everything felt more solid. I had financial security, a steady relationship, a home, a community and a set of beliefs or convictions about the world that were my foundation.

It's easy now, to look back at that version of myself and see the idealism and ego very much at play.

2020 and the onset of the pandemic was a break point for me.
Up until that point for almost 2 decades I had poured myself into my businesses, and (with any remaining energy) done what I could to help with raising 3 kids. I'd also been firmly rooted in a local church community.

But the move to working from home created a pause. A kind of tear in the fabric of the reality that I'd been living in. Not just physically, but socially and spiritually too.

So this brings me back to the question of why write?

There are two primary convictions that I hold strongly to as I think about the 2nd half of life.

One is that gathering with others, especially longer gatherings over the course of a few days - if the space is held well - has the power to change lives.

The other is that reading is the portal to deeper understanding, and a wormhole into someone else's life and worldview and can be a gateway to knowledge and insight that would take years to achieve otherwise.

So by that token, writing needs to take place. It’s a way to share, to connect and to pass on.

Writing (or creating anything) is also something that is typically met with serious resistance.
Authentic writing from the heart is hard.
It's like cold water swimming -the voice in your head that is wired for safety screams at you to go the other way. In writing terms that’s to delete the post -either that it's not any good, or maybe too exposing.

But I've come to believe that beyond the head noise, writing is a gateway to ordering your thinking. It’s also a discipline.
And like any discipline as you put in the reps, it gets easier, or you become better. You think about writing more, you look back and you understand what you didn’t know and what you‘ve learned.

So that's why I'm choosing to write.
It's selfish in a way.

But hopefully useful for some people along the way.

ps Huge thanks to Olly for creating the Pagecord platform, and providing the encouragement to write too. ✊