Ready or Not, 40 is Here!

Well, the day has finally come and gone and I can no longer say that I am “almost” 40. I am that guy now. It has really been a glass half full vs glass half empty past week for me. I don’t physically feel any different today than I did a week ago but I definitely feel different than I did 5 years ago and will likely 5 years from now. But the reality is sinking in that I will never be able to say I am in my 30’s again. I was only a little bummed when I couldn’t say I was in my 20’s anymore because I was excited about being in the 30’s. This one hasn’t quite been the same feeling. I’m trying to remain positive, don’t worry, but it’s not the same. This isn’t a “woe is me” post and I don’t think that life is almost over but there has been some distinct soul searching and mind sorting in my quiet time the last few days.The girls were all in the bed last night by 9 and I retreated to the kitchen table to start sorting 1991 Topps Baseball cards as part of the massive undertaking I have assumed in putting the master set together. You know, the one I wrote about here. Any who, I started up Starset on the Bob Marley speaker I got Alicia for Christmas and I blocked out everything that had gone on previously in the day. I put away the stress from work. I stopped obsessing over money. No more “what’s for supper” or constant why’s from the kids. NO distractions. It was just me, Dustin Bates and Bo Jackson hanging out in the kitchen together, reminiscing about old times.Going back through that 26 year old box of baseball cards has brought back a lot of memories. I remember the age from 14-17 when I would sit on my bed and go through each card in the Beckett magazine to see if I had any big money cards. I’d compare with Josh and Shook or with Corey and Jared to see who got the better haul. Once I got done sorting the cards, I’d pop on Super Tecmo Bowl and knock out a few season matchups. If the weather was nice, I’d check with Brewer to see if we could get a pickup game going in basketball, baseball or football. If it was already dark, I’d turn to my horror movie collection and watch one of the Night of the Living Dead flicks or Silver Bullet. I have long been a horror movie buff even though they scared me to death when I was young. I still remember watching “Lost Boys” at Josh’s house when I wasn’t really supposed to. And if we weren’t already grounded, maybe I could get Coop to come over and try to beat Contra again. Yes, I remember the code to get 30 lives!Then at 17, I matured a little (very little) and started focusing more on female companionship. That’s when I was working at the ole Video Superstore and doing a lot of girl watching. The card collection and the video games tapered off a bit but they never really left completely. I also liked girls before 17 but that wasn’t really my focus then either. So the roles sort of reversed around this time. During this stretch, I started talking to my future bride and soulmate, Alicia. We spent quite a lot of time together playing tennis, watching movies and riding 4-wheelers. And when I wasn’t with her, I spent my time with Munt, Rusty and Jim hanging out at the Parramore Pavilion. We made a lot of awesome memories too and we can still laugh today at some of the shenanigans. As a matter of fact, when Jim wished my Happy Birthday Monday on Facebook, the comments spiraled into old one-liners and we had a good laugh. From 17-20, that was pretty much my life!You won’t believe me when I say this but I did not drink alcohol before I was 21. But you can believe me when I say that I did after 21. By that time, I had started working at the job I am still at today and had a little change in my pocket. Munt was over at Valdosta State then so I would leave my job at 4:15 in Albany and haul over to VSU to spend the evening over there hanging out and chasing more chicks. Alicia and I went on a bit of a break from when I was 20-23. And this wasn’t like a Ross and Rachel break, this was real. Even though I initiated it, I was the first one that wanted to rekindle it a few years later. We still look back and consider it a good thing for our overall relationship to spend some time apart and do our own thing for a while but there were some tough times then. So Munt, Russ, basketball, the Collins Sandbar and Fort Gaines kept me busy. There were other girls then too but they weren’t Alicia.

I can honestly say that one of those “life moments” happened during that time period. Like I said, I had started my job but at that point, that’s all it was. I worked 8-4, got my paycheck and went about my business. I wasn’t thinking it would turn into a career yet because I had tried my hand at several trades but none of them could ever match the excitement that I missed from the video store. I hadn’t found my “Clerks” job yet. But I was doing pretty well at the job I started in 1998 and I slowly started to think that it might be something I could stick with. I was still going over and partying in Valdosta though and focusing on fun! I remember showing up to work a few times and not really being wide eyed and ready for the day. One morning, the big boss called me in her office to talk. She told me that I had a lot of potential and the she had been impressed with what I had done so far. But she then told me that I would never make it at the rate I was going. I couldn’t have a full time job and party my life away at the same time. It just wasn’t possible.

That’s when I had my moment. I went home that day wondering if this was it for me, and if so, I had to pull myself together. Or, I could quit the job, find something that could just help me pay the bills and keep up the raging lifestyle I had created. I chose to pull myself together and try to make this a career. I have her to thank for that moment and much of my career to this day. Of course, I have my parents to thank for most everything I have but this lady will always hold a special place in my heart because she walked me through the early stages of what has turned into a pretty respectable career. Almost 19 years later, I have been promoted through many areas of the company, was chosen as the Employee of the Year in 2005 and was selected as a member of the Top 40 Under 40 in the Southwest Region of Georgia. Well, I guess I’m not technically a member of that club anymore. I wonder if they do a Top 50 Under 50?!?Alicia and I got married in 2001 and I started a new journey with her. We got our own place to live and we both had our own jobs so we could try to pay our own bills. We started out just like the newlywed clichés. We rented a duplex, ate hamburger helper and waited on bonus’ or tax returns to splurge. We spent 6 years together with just us and our animals. The more established we got in our careers, the more we liked to travel and spend time doing the things we loved. We went to the mountains, the beach, nascar races, Georgia games, you name it, and we could just do it at a moments notice. When work was done, we did not have a set schedule and it was fun! I remember getting home from work one Friday and Alicia had our bags packed and said, “We’re going on a trip.” I just got in the car and we started driving. That was our first trip to Helen as a couple. We bought a house a couple years after moving into the duplex and became proud homeowners. That’s when we started thinking about the next step in our lives.In 2007, that next step happened. On April 11, Bailey was born and the world changed once again for me. I think every time I got comfortable with life, something changed and brought a new challenge. Having our first child was definitely a challenge. I went from worrying about just me and Alicia to having to worry about someone that couldn’t even take care of herself. I still remember that first night we came home from the hospital. The couple of nights we spent in the hospital were fine because nurses were right outside the door. But when we got home that first night, it all hit me that it was just us. No nurses or doctors at our disposal to help when I got to panicked or paranoid. The first few nights were sleepless but not because of her getting up off and on. That definitely happened but I didn’t sleep mostly because I was a nervous wreck. She’s 9 now and I still walk in her room at 2:30 am to listen to her breathe and make sure she is ok. I don’t know that I’ve slept a full night since April 11, 2011.My life was changed forever when Bailey was born and she will always be “Daddy’s Girl”. There are days when we want to slam doors in each others face and go to our corners but they are outweighed by the good time. Sometimes I just have to stop and appreciate the bond that we have. We spent 7 years in our house as a family of 3. We doted on Bailey, let her get away with too much and bought her everything she wanted. We took her to Georgia games and made sure she always knew how much we loved her. I am thankful for that one on one time I had with her. But all of that would change yet again in 2014.This change happened in January of that year when Alicia surprised us with her announcement of being pregnant again. Although this one didn’t go as smooth, as previously discussed here, the end result was another beautiful girl, Georgia. Georgia has so far been nothing like Bailey was growing up. Bailey was a handful when we went to eat in public or when she didn’t get her way in a store. She still can be. Not that Georgia is totally devoid of those issues, but we have just recently started to have signs of that problem. Now, she’s 2 and thinks she can do everything on her own and wants to be independent. She’s just as headstrong as Bailey but up until now, she hasn’t been as vocal about it. And while she started out as mommy’s baby, she has taken a turn to daddy’s girl status too. She wants me to do things for her all the time and I definitely see her and Bailey competing for my time on occasion. And then, I find myself competing for Alicia’s time so I guess it’s just part of negotiating family life.So once again, I had gotten pretty used to life the way it was going and then I had to go and turn 40. Now it has me pondering life and where I’m at and how I got here. I’ve taken a wild and twisted journey to be where I sit today. It’s been filled with ups and downs and in between’ s. It makes me wonder if the next 40 (if I’m lucky) will be as eventful and bring as much change or if I’m sort of settling into the rut that is middle aged life. There won’t be any additional kids, at least there shouldn’t be. There better not be! But there may be another house in the future. There will be school for the kids, college, marriage and then maybe grandkids for me. My job hasn’t changed in 18 years so hopefully that can continue to go as planned for another 18. So while some things will remain the same, there are some eventual changes that life is going to provide that I am going to have to be ready for. I don’t yet know what they are, I can just hope and pray that they are good changes and that I can always handle them.

In my teens, I was a pretty good kid but was as unfocused and ill-defined as a person could be. I had no direction and wasn’t really looking for it. Then, in my 20’s, I found some of that direction but still lived an indistinct existence. The 30’s started with the abrupt life change of starting a family with kids but I think I found myself and my voice in my late 30’s. A lot of things I think about from the earlier days make so much more sense to me now. Then some of them make me realize how dumb I was too. Most importantly, I am now able to look back on certain moments in my life and realize what they may have been for. We don’t always understand why things happen or why we make some of the decisions we make. Eventually, it starts to make a little bit of sense. There are probably some things we’ll never understand but the light will come on for many of them and make us cognizant of those little moments that happened along the way.I’m bummed that my 30’s are over but I am going to embrace where I am in life and try to make my 40’s just as meaningful. To do that, I have to hang on to the memories that got me here. I can’t ever forget that first Ken Griffey Jr. I pulled. I can’t ever forget the nights playing Tecmo Bowl with the guys. I can’t ever forget watching “The Crow” at Alicia’s house on our first date. I can’t ever forget what it was like when Alicia and I were apart. I can’t ever forget the desire I had to do well at work after the fateful conversation I had. I can’t ever forget what it was like to only eat hamburger helper for supper. I can’t ever forget the first time I held Bailey and Georgia. And the only way to keep those alive is to talk about them and relive them when I can (except for that being apart from Alicia part.)So that’s what I do now. I play old video games and collect old baseball cards and make old jokes with my high school friends on Facebook and Snapchat. I’m active with my fellow Twitter card collectors. I ride down old streets I haven’t been down in a while. I watch old movies when I have free time. I try to give my girls the same experiences that I had growing up partly because I want to relive them. Life comes at you in strange ways sometimes. I have friends from high school that disappeared and have become friends again. I have acquaintances from high school that have become dear friends. And I have dear friends from high school who I never see anymore. But life has provided me with the people I have needed when I needed them the most and has surrounded me with some of the most special people in the world at the present. And maybe that’s what being 40 should be about to me. I have great memories and great family and great friends. What more could I ask for? Except to be younger?

So this is what Dustin, Bo and I talked about last night in the kitchen. And Dustin said something that hit me hard when I started thinking about memories. This sums up memories perfectly to me. “You come in waves, till you’re all I know. Then you fade away, into nothing. Weighed down by dark matter inside, you leave me frozen. You leave me froze in time…..in your Everglow.” Our memories come and go but when we they come up, they take us back to a particular moment and they shine on them. We have to hold on to them and never that that Everglow die. If you are in your teens, make those memories. If you are in your 20’s, correct some of the mistakes and make more. If you are in your 30’s, accept the mistakes you made and live your life. If you’re in your 40’s like me, lean on all of the above as you face new challenges. And when life gets too tough, just take yourself back to a particular moment that made you very happy and relaxed. For me, that is at a kitchen table with 1990’s baseball cards.

J-Dub