It’s been almost two weeks since my last-for-the-foreseeable-future day of professional marcomm work.

I’m not unemployed, exactly. In fact, I’m presently on the payroll of three different organizations: two fitness/yoga spaces and the Chippewa Valley’s hottest new bar & restaurant. Plus, I’ve got my own little LLC side gig, with eight pop-up yoga events slated for summer, with three different (and awesome) partners.

I rolled right into my first hospitality shift a scant three days after my departure, and I’ve loved it so far. I’m enjoying earning money via perky personality power (probably the personal attribute I’ve most underutilized & undervalued). People service is not only fun, it’s also pretty freakin’ lucrative!

I’ve also taught six different fitness classes: two yoga sculpt, one strength & conditioning, one candlelight flow, and one yin.

Though the job duties of my two present gigs are very different, they share an end goal. I get to help people connect. I get to help people overcome challenge. I get to help people find peace.

My professional purposes now all center around making people feel good.

That’s incredibly fulfilling.

Monday, I had a birthday. I’m now officially closer to 50 than 40. I can no longer deny that I fall into the category of middle-aged.

Perhaps this is my crisis, but after everything … right now …

I love this for me.

I’ve packed a lot in to the past week and a half. Quality time with my seventh grader. Quality time with hot husband. Golfed nine, not too poorly. A strong finish at 5K trail race. A Train and REO Speedwagon show under a rainbow, then the stars.

A coupla buckets at the driving range, because what’s stopping me from improving? Annnnd … An ah-mazing brownie cheesecake birthday cake from Goldbelly.

I’ve been musing on something I heard on a podcast recently.

Success addicts confuse being special and being happy. – Arthur Brooks

Boom.

That – wow, in the wake of the realizations above, that hit different.

My career – the achievements, developing worthy team members, the relationships – has made me happy, of course. But an undeniable superficiality has always propelled me forward: It’s been important, perhaps too important, for me to impress others, to make a certain salary, and to achieve very specific high-level titles by certain ages.

Once I was identified as a “smart girl” in grade school, I wanted to not just be smart, but the smartest. (I got a little derailed by a bass player my junior year, but I circled back to it.) Similarly, on that very memorable day in eighth grade when I was identified as a “pretty girl,” I became terrified of losing that privilege-granting label, and did silly things to earn & maintain that validation.

Now, with so many goals ticked off, I’m looking at the hazy path ahead differently. Maybe I don’t need to be special, in that way, any longer. Maybe I can be … a little more “average.” I can employ my gifts in a different way: a life-changing, impactful way.

I just won’t have a big-deal title.

Last weekend, I opened the drapes in the bedroom – wide, wide open, all the way to the edge of the antique bronze curtain rod. Mature green oaks densely border our 90s-beige home’s south side. Every morning, I feel like we’re waking up in a treehouse.

I hadn’t noticed, or appreciated, how bright it could be in the morning.

I’m sure there’s a metaphor there somewhere, but I won’t try to force it.