Life’s Little Transitions (or, I could be the luckiest man alive)

It’s kinda funny how cultural stereotypes develop. Some years ago, before I turned 40, Annie would kid me about my impending “old man” status, probably at least partially because I was talking at the time about getting a motorcycle. As we have both been improving our mindfulness/meditation practice, I’ve wondered of late if culturally we tend to temporarily ignore where we are heading in life once we settle into a new career, only to get an unexpected jolt in our 40s.

New job? Check.
Dating and moving in together? Check.
Getting married? Check.
Buying a house together? Check.
Remembering whose toothbrush belongs to whom? Check. (Most of the time anyway.)

Things we do, often without full awareness, because it’s what we “need” to check off in order to keep up with the Joneses.

Having a front row seat to my wife’s “thinking” over the past couple of years in particular illustrates so well for me how we can make life decisions–both big and small–gracefully and with confidence. Her prophylactic mastectomy, about which you’ve been reading, is but a part of all this. Since we moved to Colorado and retired from photographing weddings, plus me returning to UX web design and away from home during the day, it’s been one big transition after another for her.

How do you define yourself professionally when the bulk of your marriage was spent in business partnership with your spouse, now that the business is essentially done and your spouse has “moved on” to other endeavors? These aren’t easy career questions to answer for anyone, let alone anyone whose profession was so integrated with their marriage.

When you look around, especially on social media where we curate our public lives, it takes practice and self-compassion to not think that everyone else clearly has all their shit together and, ohmygodwhatamIgoingtodowiththerestofmylife?

At every weekend’s conclusion, after I collapsed into bed and fell asleep within a few minutes, Annie’s mind would begin its Sunday Night Freakout. Think Sunday Night Football but not nearly as much fun, and without beer.

What am I excited to do?
What am I meant to be doing?
Do I start another business or work for someone else?
How do I start?
Who do I talk to?
How long will this take?
Do people think I have all this free time?
Will there be warm cookies?

It doesn’t take long to tire of this sleep-depriving routine, and she’s gradually finding a path forward to discover her own answers to these questions. For me, when returning to “office life” it took a lot of time to figure out exactly what it was I wanted to do to, but it was a necessary step so I could move with intention.

I think that’s where Annie is right now, and it’s exciting watching her do research and weigh her abundant options. Her focus on living with intention inspires the hell out of me, and I learn so much just by listening to her thought processes when we talk. She’s filled with boundless creativity and innumerable ideas; it’s going to just be finding the best channel through which she can express her best self, as it were. While it’s a weird, unknown, sometimes scary transition for her, combined with the lingering physical and psychological effects of her recent surgeries, I’m grateful to stand by her side, supporting her through all this just as she supports me.

Last weekend was our 16th anniversary , but in true “you can’t take the wedding out of the photographer” fashion we’ll be celebrating it instead this coming Sunday after we host our “Dinner Club” for ten tomorrow night. While she planned the menu, did the shopping, and finished most of the prep work and cooking her, can I say I handled the er…most important part: the booze? I sharpened the knives too. That counts for something, right?

Beyond her kitchen awesomeness, not to mention at-the-ready with on-demand hugs, I’m once again reminded just how lucky I really am to come home to magically clean underwear.

Oh, and be married to such an amazingly thoughtful, talented, compassionate woman. There’s that.

I can’t wait to see what she does next.