I turn 35 on Wednesday. Wendy invited a couple of people to go bowling with us this weekend (life is easier when I get Mark to plan my birthday parties) and I got an odd card from the National Bank of Canada with who I hold my mortgage with. I am assuming that after the bad press that they have been getting over being a bank, a high priced consultant rejected ideas to make them more customer friendly and instead suggested birthday cards to customers who always make their mortgage payments on time.
I never had much anticipation of turning 30 and turning 40 is the new 30 which means I am only 27 and I think 50 is the new 40 so I don’t know how I will feel in fifteen years when I turn, ummm 50/40 but for right now it hit me that life is more or less half way over. I don’t know if this is normal but I have been reflecting on life and how happy I am with it.
A friend of mine who has a wife and kids told me that he wouldn’t do it over again. I am sure his kids and his wife enjoyed hearing that. I was thinking the other day that if I was going to have a mid life crisis, this may be a good time to have one but then I realized the new shirt I bought looked like something that Morty Seinfeld would wear and I wonder if I have missed my chance on a mid-life crisis.
Outside of some health things that cause me a little bit of stress and a bit of depression that comes with my personality and the job I have, I think I am pretty happy with the life I had. If I had to do it over again, I still think that I should have joined the Canadian Navy after high school for a tour but then I realized that I would never have met Wendy. I would have loved to have missed the opportunity be a diabetic as well. So while I will suggest a tour in the Navy to Mark and Oliver, I won’t be devastated if they don’t take me up on the offer.
For right now I am pretty happy with where we are right now. We aren’t on the path to becoming wealthy but I do think I am making a difference in the world. Every Sunday while watching NASCAR I think of a career change and after watching Mark Martin restart his career with Hendrick Motorsports, I think that could be me. Then after watching him quit after 25 laps, I realized that like a lot of old guys, he probably forgot to put oil in his engine and maybe I am too old to make a leap into professional sports. Despite me hiring top notch agents selling Detroit Red Wings’ GM Ken Holland the idea that a large (okay a little fat) and angry looking goalie would be better than what Chris Osgood is giving him this year, they haven’t called me back.
So while my options of a professional sports career appear limited to curling (really how hard can it be to win the Tankard?) and darts (my lack of a drinking problem hinders my marketability to sponsors), I have spent some lately wonder what the second half of my life looks like.
- I am slowly pursuing my ordination again with the Free Methodist Church. In case the scenario that James Howard Kunstler paints in World Made By Hand comes to fruition, I plan to start my own cult.
- When I moved to Saskatoon in 1984, I vowed to move back to Calgary as soon as I was old enough to move back. Well here I am 24 years later and Saskatoon is home. I want to spend more time investing in the city, especially city core of the city I call home. I am not thinking of elected office but I plan to spend a lot more time giving back to the community in my next phase of life. Being involved in a couple of NGOs (although in Saskatchewan we like to call them CBOs) reminds me how much work is needed to make a city prosper and flourish.
- I have spent a lot of time looking at going back and doing a post-graduate degree. I have been considering something like a degree in spiritual direction but also I want to study urban planning and sociology which I think is another part of the equation in helping those trapped in poverty. They may only connect together in my own mind. I have looked at a lot of seminaries and all I have to say is the cost of seminary is obscene. I know there is an economy of scale but when I look at a degree or classes at the University of Saskatchewan (which would help my job prospects) and a seminary degree (which won’t help my job prospects), it is really hard to justify the money that a M.A. in Theological Studies would cost me when it is several times more expensive then the U of S.
- I am pretty happy where I am at work. I have a balance of still being able to do some front line stuff and at the same time I can do some big picture projects. Both of those mean a lot to me. While I can’t blog about them yet, I have several exciting projects on the go right now. Work has been good to me and I hope I can give back in the same way. The other thing of note is that Wendy is helping out three days a week in another department at the Centre and is the host of the drop in centre and has been much liked by the residents and people in the community.
Of course that doesn’t mean that the next 35 years will be anything like the first 35. I couldn’t have imagined taking a job as a night janitor at a homeless shelter and if I had, I wouldn’t have thought it would lead to anything. I didn’t imagine marrying someone as wonderful as Wendy, I was sure I was never going to have two dogs in the house and even a couple of years ago we never thought we would have a second child. So in other words with a track record of predicting the future, the second half of life will probably be as random as the first.
Jordon,
Saskatoon will benefit from your investment.
Early Happy Birthday, friend.
Todd
Well, Happy Birthday. If you have almost made it halfway, I am going to make to with in ten years of your goal on Saturday.
I think, like you that there are a lot of things that I would be glad to do over again the same way. My marriage has been one of the best things in my life, I’ve gotten to do things that contributed to the good of the world, my kids are great in their own ways.
If I could change things, I’d go back to when everything didn’t ache so much after exercise! To when my heart didn’t do its silly little pitter patter dance like it seems to do some mornings.
And I might have gotten a seminary degree at a much younger age. But then I could not likely have afforded it either – either in time or money. Maybe seminary will become one of those retirement destinations for oldies like me. Maybe we should just send younger people with what we spend on ourselves. Maybe both.
Happy Birthday! Life deals us interesting cards, it looks likeyou picked a nice place to settle. “Welterweight” cities offer lots of opportunities, while still being a manageable scale. You’ve got a university, or two, which leads to more choices.
I’m really disappointed by this part of your post: “A friend of mine who has a wife and kids told me that he wouldn’t do it over again. I am sure his kids and his wife enjoyed hearing that.”
So when your friend admitted this to you, did he think you’d blog it for strangers to see? Or did you just mention it to show everyone how you have never experienced such racking doubts about choices in your life?
Personally, I think it’s okay to face these kinds of doubts head-on, and yeah — even say them out loud (hopefully to people who won’t exploit them publicly). I think anyone who has been in a serious relationship for any extended period of time has had these flashes of doubt. Now, whether or not you choose to acknowledge them, and then hopefully move past them — or just squash them with an overconfident blindness — that’s another issue.
I was just struck by how you could take such an honest admission from a friend of yours, and then juxtapose that with a Morty Seinfeld wardrobe reference in the same paragraph.
So I’m not interested in following this blog or reading Twitter updates anymore, if this is the kind of positioning you’re going to take in your posts.
I was taken back by the statement as well… but more so that it’d been said by the guy in the first place.
I’m surprised, Becky, at your sweeping dismissal of what Jordon may say in the future based on one thing that it seems you, if not misread, then at least didn’t have any background info about on which to form conclusions. Context is everything.
Sorry, it just seemed a bit harsh and reactive… and also out of character.
Becky,
I think you may be reading more into the comment than what was intended.
First of all the person who made these comments has told many other people that he had them. He is very unhappily married and is an unhappy father and doesn’t care if the world knows about it. He knows that I disagree with him and that it bothers me when he says it. Not only does he know that I disagree with him but he even asked me when I was going to post it. So when I was drafting this post up last week, he saw an excerpt well ahead of time.
As for my own doubts. I thought long and hard before proposing and marrying Wendy. We dated for a number of years and had a long engagement. I understood the consequences of what I was going to do and I worked through the baggage that I carried into it. Same thing with fatherhood. We spent a couple of years thinking of marriage before Mark came into our lives and then there were some miscarriages before Ollie was born. Do I have doubts about those choices? No, I really don’t. There are consequences to choices and all choices have a cost but I don’t have any doubts those that I talked about.
I analyze and adapt how I interact within those relationships all of the time. Parenting calls for a balance between compassion, flexibility, and boundaries. I have changed how I am as a husband as well depending on what Wendy needs from me. At the same time I don’t have any doubts on my decision to enter into those relationships with them. In fact I am more sure of those decisions on a daily basis.
Sorry if you find that so offensive.
Jordan, like you I have heard friends say, “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t” and I have always wondered if they realized the full impact of what they were saying. Like you I was a little put off when I hear that comment and I think that instead of expressing a deeper doubt, it is actually a reflection on how they see women and their kids (as possessions and replaceable).
Becky, it may have been just me but I don’t think that Jordan was prescribing a viewpoint, only sharing his own experiences with Wendy and the boys.
I’m with Chris. Jordon is really good at keeping things confidential, when they need to be.
I think back to the 70′s and early 80′s when permissive parenting was the norm. I heard thousands of people say “If I had to do it all over again, I wouldn’t” – both in and out of church circles. Part of the impetus towards creating the original “Focus on the Family – Dare to Discipline” videotapes was that sentiment.
But, I think, if Jordon had to do it over again, he’d be a Raider fan, and he’d name his dogs Madden (the large dog that barks a lot and drives a bus) and Davis (the colorblind one, who moves to LA in the middle of the night).
Mike O,
According to local lore, Jordon became a Bronco fan while watching the Raiders beat them on Monday night. If the Broncos had somehow won that game, Jordon could have become a L.A. Raider fan.
The idea of an overweight dog driving around in a bus appeals to me. That could be the name of our next dog
Becky you really read into what Jordon was trying to say about his own experiences.
[...] turns 35 today. He managed to offend one friend with this post but I think it does sum up where he is these days in a light heated [...]
Happy Birthday, by the way… I’d planned to at least call, but then had to go into work on my day off for a few hours.
See ya this weekend, I hope.