Patrick Jay Sullivan's Blog

I don’t know when it happened but one day I was looking in the mirror and was stunned to see gray hair and wrinkles looking back. The fact is, at that moment, I saw a middle age man looking back at me. When I was in my 30’s I had a renaissance. I moved to Minneapolis after getting a good job there and I started to really live life. I didn’t have much money but I really worked at having fun and making good friends and doing a great job on my career. In other words, I made the most out of what I had and I was happy. It was awesome. I was still young and good looking and I knew it. Somehow looking in the mirror many years later on that day of epiphany, I knew it was gone. I had hit middle age. It took several years to come to grips with it. I no longer had the same relationships at work that I had before. I was “old” and “out of it.” I also realized that supervisors were starting to see me as an older employee. Not all of that is positive either. But the thing that slowly came to the surface is that as I age I am expected to fit into a certain mold. Part of that mold is that I am no longer considered sexy nor am I considered to be up to date as far as my thinking goes. I am supposed to go into a more conservative and asexual state and eventually be a geezer with the plaid pants half way to my pits. No thank you. One thing that watching the Golden Girls taught me is that when a person gets to middle age and beyond, it is up to him or her to decide what life will be like. True, I cannot change other people’s perceptions but I can refuse to accept what society or others expect me to be or to do.
I think that people who are middle age are still vital and intelligent. I think they have a lot to offer on both personal and professional levels. I don’t know yet if there are other areas where this transition comes up problematic, but I know that it does on those two levels. I hope that the best of life is yet to come. I hope that I can make the most of what I have now and be happy on purpose.