Where in the world is Garry

I don’t normally sign up to milestone birthdays. My 18th, 21st and 30th birthdays were marked by no more significant change than the passing of another year. And so it was for my 40th – or so I thought. But now, 10 months into my 41st year, I think my 40th has had some profound affect.

Panic.

Bear with me while I attempt to corral my thoughts into some kind of succinct prose.

I suppose, as wild as this may seem, I feel as if someone has just snapped their fingers and I find myself coming to, not quite knowing where I am or how I really got here. And did I mention the fact I’m 40?

Shopping Carts

What am I talking about?

Predominantly I suppose the fact that I’m not married with kids but there’s more to it than that. Other things. Things that I thought might happen along the way which haven’t. Silly things really. For example; I can’t surf. I’m 40 and I can’t surf. I don’t remember ever having had a burning desire to surf but it occurred to me that it might be something I’d like to do. The key is, if it hasn’t happened yet (by accident), then it’s not going to happen unless I do something about it. Unfortunately, being single IS something I’ve felt passionately about in the past and wasted more time, energy and angst over than I would care to mention. I’ve taken classes; acting classes, yoga classes, photography classes, for goodness sake, I’ve even tried tap dancing class!!! (And no, I don’t have a huge collection of show tunes).

Car Park - Interior

Another way of looking at this is I’ve come out of the starting blocks of life like an Olympic sprinter; head down and arms pumping. Nothing in sight but the finish line. But now I’ve started to slow, whether it’s for the first corner or the finish is yet to be seen but one thing is certain and that is I’ve started to slow. Life has started to slow; my life has started to slow, I’ve started to slow. I’m looking up. I’m taking stock of my surroundings (the snapping of fingers again), how did I get here and where’s my surf board?

I suppose it should be no surprise that turning 40 should give pause for reflection. After all, I’ve never in my life had so much life upon which to reflect. It’s simple arithmetic isn’t it? But why 40? 40’s not so special and the more I think about it the more I’m inclined to concur with my original position that these hallmark birthdays mean nothing. This is all just coincidence. But coincident to what?

Pink rose

Well, coincident to a huge shift in my personal circumstances when I willingly committed social suicide and abandoned my old life for a new less cluttered mode of living in the north of England, hundreds of miles from anyone I know and at a time in life when, in the spirit of things slowing down, my raciest weekend past time is a bottle of cider at my local Indian whilst waiting for my take out order. In fact, the diametrically opposite symmetry of these two modes of living (San Francisco versus Leyland), is so perfect it’s beautiful in some kind of eastern aesthetic way. Now my weekdays are something to relish and look forward to whereas the weekends, well, by the time Sunday rolls around, I’m waiting by the door with my bags packed ready to rekindle my social life back at work in Belfast.

What’s troublesome to me is that with all this extra time on my hands I find myself spending more time looking back than I do looking forward. The days of an infinite future appear to be over and I just cannot seem to picture how the next 10 years can even come close to eclipsing the last decade. Those fingers again; suddenly everything has gone quiet, the maelstrom which was my thirties has just died away and there’s an eerie quiet pervading life. Where am I, how did I get her and where's my surf board?!?

Frostscape

So what else have I unwittingly expected to happen by now?

Where’s my glamorous life style? I suppose if I am brutally honest I always fancied I’d be one of those people who have important meetings during the day; in a coffee shop; in a thriving and vital metropolis. Not Starbucks and not loud ‘listen to my impressive life’ meetings. No. Quietly subdued meetings somewhere local, unique, grass-rooted. Then spend a few hours back at the ’studio’ pouring over something creative surrounded by people who have just skate boarded out of a Pepsi (not Coke) commercial. That’s it! We’re in a loft space; exposed red brick work, large iron beams, funky espresso machine and light, lots of light. Natural light from large multi paned windows, huge walls of light. Not fluorescent light. And no cubes. Oh, and we all walk or cycle to work. Now and then I might even get my picture in the paper or be asked to speak at dinner. Almost everyday would be different – no more sitting at the same desk, day in, day out. But that didn’t happen. Who’s living that life?

“And I’d like to be rich. You know, someone important, like an actor.”

Cypher, The Matrix, 1999

Car Park - exterior

Some would say “Now come on Garry, quit your whining”. And they would be right. I’m lucky. There are an awful lot of people worse off blah, blah, blah, etc, etc; And it’s true and I’d be the first to admit it. What I’m talking about is this feeling that this isn’t my life. It doesn’t quite fit. It’s not what I ordered. That if I'm not careful the next 10 years will slip, like sand, between my fingers. But whose fault is that?

Well, mine. Obviously.

Again, if I’m honest my accidental life was not quite an accident. I think I always said to myself it would 'make do' until the wife and kids appeared on the scene but they never did and so with my shelf life running out fast perhaps it is time to order up the life I want? I’ve plagiarised from Eddie Izzard before in these pages and specifically his phrase, “etch-a-sketch reset on life”, and I have in many ways shaken things up. But even with those changes I still find myself (and the self I’ve found is rather ironically lost), wondering what to do next.

Preston Bus Station

Finding my soul mate was something I had complete faith would happen of its own accord. I was a hopeless romantic and put some kind of pop song faith in the fact, not the possibility, that if I did everything TV told me to then ‘it’ would magically fall into place. But eventually I learnt that in the world of heartache, not trying at all was preferable to trying too hard when the net result was the same. And this new mode of operation worked for me for quite a few years; a welcome release from constantly berating myself about the people I didn’t talk to. Unfortunately now I think I may have taken this laissez-faire attitude a bit too far. Giving up may not have been the right way to go and something which I thought might get easier is now, with my questionable sell by date, virtually unassailable to me. Let me just make one thing clear in all these ruminations about still being single. I’m not saying that I’ve suddenly realised I want a family, what I’m saying is it feels like I’ve blinked and missed the opportunity. Those snapping of the fingers again. So for the time being at least I must focus on the life which is within my control;

Grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change;
the courage to change the things I can;
and the wisdom to know the difference.

Serenity Prayer – Reinhold Niebuhr

Stair well

If this is the material life I’ve produced thus far with no map, what life is there to be had with goals? Well that of course remains to be seen and given my personal circumstances I have a unique opportunity and huge palette of freedom within which to work. (No wife and kids to worry about – ha ha). I have to start making choices and start taking chances before the sand in the hour glass runs out.

So is that what really happened? My 41st year just happened to coincide with a lull in the storm. A time when the highlight of my weekend is watching the UK equivalent of American Idol or watching the latest release on DVD. It’s my weekends then that have given me so much time to reflect. There’s a calmness that wasn’t there before as if I’m practicing some kind of Life yoga. So perhaps it isn’t all down hill from here, no huge red ‘Reduced to Clear’ sticker in my future. Perhaps this is (to use my storm analogy again), just the eye. My past life howling away behind me and my new and improved life gathering momentum up ahead. That's something I can get excited about, that this lull in my life isn't a general trend, it's an anomaly and more importantly an anomaly I can address. So, batten down the hatches; here come my roaring forties.

This might sound to you like a tale full of woe but it isn’t. It comes from a happy place. It took years of fighting, kicking at the sheets of a life I thought I didn't want before I finally realised that if I stop kicking; stop resisting; then things are so much easier. Acceptance is a powerful tool and although sometimes I resist, most of the time I seem to move easily within this life; my life.