Last night (the 23rd), I spent some time pondering what I was going to do for my 40th birthday. Yes, the big "four-oh" is upon me and I have to admit that I am surprised that it's weighing on me at all. Today I'm sore from the 90 minutes I spent sprinting around a football (soccer) field yesterday--not something all 39-year-olds are doing (as my wife likes to point out every time I get injured). On the other hand, at work today, I’m one of the oldest people there--in fact I am one of maybe 2 or 3 people with kids over the age of 10.
But perhaps the people I surround myself with every day explain more about my surprise than my kicking a ball around a field does. When I look around our office (and the marketing/agency world), there aren't a lot of 40-year-olds. For one thing, there's not a lot of room at the top. And for another, the young and enthusiastic may be better able to put up with the ten tons of crap that is agency life. But I choose to be in this kind of environment because, in my mind, I am still the same person I was when I was turning 30. I choose to put myself in an environment where to succeed you need the qualities of a youthful mind: optimism, curiosity, willingness to try (and fail).
At work, the stuff we do is innately tied with these qualities. The challenge is how to keep it in the rest of your life as your life changes (any parent will tell you being curious and experimenting are not words synonymous with young children). So today I’ve decided to use 40 as my excuse. My excuse to learn how to surf (not up here in San Francisco–being 40 is also an excuse to wuss out from the cold). My excuse to hit up some good festivals. My excuse to not have any more excuses.
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About the author: Mark Lewis (@marklewis_sf) enjoys multiple identities: British, American, Belgian, strategist, parent, partner, Liverpool FC fan. He is unsure which one wrote this entry.
