Repost: Over 40 and Finally Free
Let us all journey to the magical middle-aged land of 'Give No Fs'
Good morrow cousins! I hope you are enjoying these dogged days of August. This week I’m sharing a post I wrote last fall (when I had 12 subscribers), that details my session with a famous past-life psychic, and profiles some notable individuals who lived their legacy years after age 40.
Let it be a lesson that, as far as dreams are concerned, there is no such thing as “too late” or “too old.”
Songpairing
*** This song is perfect and creepy and wonderful, as all things in life should be. ***
A month or so ago I had a reading with a past-life psychic and purpose-guider named Ainslie Macleod.
The way this came about felt very surreal, and I will relay that to you now.
Back in 2021, I heard Ainslie as a guest on this podcast. I dabble in “woo” and as it turns out I am also past-life curious because I was very intrigued. I don’t remember doing it, but I must have visited his website and signed up for a spot on his waiting list.
Two years later, with no recollection of the above, I was sitting at bar nervously sipping and scrolling. In a few moments, I was to take the stage for my very first ever solo show of original music.
Over the course of that that two-years time, I had quit my full-time job as an attorney, formed a cover band and started performing and playing out regularly. Then the Courthouse flooded and all of sudden my part-time attorney job was fully remote for several months. I found myself sitting at the piano for very long stretches, writing songs about mid-life mom and wife things, playing those songs for only my husband who one day remarked that I sounded like a maudlin housewife.
Well if the shoe fits.
Back to the bar. I was sipping and scrolling through my email and there it was—a note from Ainslie’s team that I was next on the list and there was a slot available if I wanted it. Well that feels fortuitous, I thought.
Here I am struggling with whether my most recent life choice: to put myself on a stage, call myself a name and sing songs I wrote, as if anybody would ever want to hear them, was a sound choice?
or a completely fucking laughable ridiculous delusional batshit choice?
I believe that was my thought stream verbatim.
I thought again; Perhaps Ainslie’s guidance would be of some use to clarify the answer to this question.
So I had the reading. He said many great things, but as to what is relevant here: I am a spiritualist, creator, performer-type, old-as-shit soul who feels a lot of things and can help people by creating ways to express them.
Cool, cool. Sounds like a permission slip to me!
I was really struck, however, by one thing that Ainslie said. He said, that most of his clientele were adults between the ages of 37 and 42. He said that 40ish is really a turning point for many people. It is the point when your soul starts getting very restless (and screamy!) to put you on the right path.
I look back and see how desensitized I was in my 20s working a miserable rat-race job that I could never, ever tolerate now. Sitting at a desk for hours in a stuffy, fluorescent-lit office also feels intolerable to me now. It’s clearly not my soul’s chosen path because I can’t stand it. (If you can’t stand it, its not for you.)
What is for you is going to be something that you love. I can’t sit at a desk, but I can sure as hell sit at a piano and the hours fly. Or on the couch while I write this very blog. What is time? I don’t even know right now.
Anyway, I thought to further illustrate my point, I would compile a brief list of very esteemed people who have cut across the highway into oncoming traffic to follow their ridiculous delulu paths at or around age 40.
I’ll start with Vera Wang.
A failed figure skater, turned Vogue editor, who up and quit at age 40 to start her own company designing bridal gowns. Ever heard of her?
Next up, Mike Bloomberg
Got fired at 39 by a heavy-hitting investment banking firm. Started his own market data accumulation and distribution firm. Grew it, ran it and at some point also low-key became Mayor of New York.
Henry Ford
Ford was born to a farmer, and was expected to take over the family farm. He respectfully declined. I’m sure this disappointed his family and his community who (maybe I’m projecting here ) probably thought that automobiles and machinery were a fool’s passion. He worked as an engineer under Thomas Edison for a while before starting the Ford Motor Company—yep at age 40.
Julia Child
We remember her for French cuisine, but she never even tried French food until she was 36, and then she didn’t graduate from culinary school until she was 39. Her cooking show premiered when she was 51.
Toni Morrison
She studied theatre and spent time working as an editor at Random House, but didn’t publish her first novel until age 40. At 57 she won a Pulitzer, and at 62 the Nobel prize.
However, some of us need a little bit longer than forty years to matriculate from life path school. If you haven’t done what you said you were going to do by 40, you are still in good company:
Laura Ingalls Wilder
No wonder Laura Ingalls Wilder looked back on her childhood so fondly. Her adulthood sounds really hard, at least economically. She and her husband got into farming and homesteading and lost everything multiple times. She took her first writing job as a local columnist in 1911 when she was 44. Her first Little House book was not published until twenty years later, when she was 65!
Grandma Moses
Grandma Moses always loved art but she tended house and worked on farms basically from the age of 12 until retirement. At age 78 she started painting more often, and a few fortuitous friends and years later, she was opening her first solo exhibition in New York. By the 1950s (in her 90s) she was Kardashian-famous and on the cover of TIME.
The point of all this— its never too late to be who you have always wanted to be. Even though its hard, and there may not be a well-worn path.
Oh, and there’s one more person I should mention:
Ainslie Macleod
Illustrator and graphic designer. Music enthusiast. Scotsman; All words to describe Ainslie Macleod, until about age 40, at which point, after some metaphysical happenings, he added past-life psychic to the list. Imagine the looks!
However, soon thereafter he was able to add (1)more prospective clients than he could handle, (2)bestselling author and (3)guest of the Oprah Winfrey show to the list of descriptors. He probably still gets looks, but can you imagine if that had stopped him?
If it had stopped any of these people? What a shame that would be. What if you are one of these people and you just don’t know it yet?
As for me, If I end up on a blog post of acclaimed people who pivoted focus after age 40, thats awesome. But either way, I don’t regret for a second putting myself on a stage, calling myself a name, and daring to sing songs I wrote in front of people.
Forty, fuck-all and free. Finally
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Hey again! You can also support my work by streaming or downloading these bangers for your summer playlists. They are available everywhere you stream or play.
Bandcamp is the best for artists though :)
This Week’s Fascinating Cultural Miscellany:
McSweeney’s is now on Substack
Considering that we are coming up on “decorative gourd season motherfuckers,” I just want to point out that you can find a delightful digest of McSweeney’s on Substack now.
Stantonland has cleverly illustrated how base our political culture has become.
I love Songletter, and the comments here contain a field of treasures.
I was busy getting run over by a car at 40 so I spent the next 10 years trying to make up for it! Then I hit Saturn return and blew up my life. Wonder what the next decade will bring? Fewer fucks, I hope!
I think you do a great job telling the story of what you are doing and I get a lot from it. This gives me thoughts about how I might tell my own apart from a web presence and releasi g songs. You are inspiring. And I dig your sound !