A little more than a week ago, I turned 46. It’s hard to deny any longer that I’m, yup, middle-aged. Officially and on paper, I’m closer to 50 than 40. And I’m now just outside of that highly desirable 25-45 marketing demo – the one I’ve been focused on for the entirety of my marcomm career.

I wonder if I’ll start getting less spam in my Gmail box.

I know my value as a professional – especially in a vain specialty like marketing – is rapidly tanking. For women, it starts early – at a mere four decades of life. And I’m now half a dozen years past that marker.

I’m confident I can outlift, outrun, out-brand, out-write, and generally outperform most people ten and twenty years younger by the Gregorian calendar. But, I am 46, and being 46 and not-quite-unemployed (see previous blog for an overview of my present projects) as a professional woman, well, I’m not going to say it doesn’t concern me.

And that insistent worry is alchemizing with everything else rattling around in my overactive limbic system. It’s not even been three weeks, and I’m still (very much) working through the labyrinth of emotions that naturally follow any parting where there’s been an investment of years.

So, so many emotions. All, and sundry.

With the incessant clamor inside my head, I needed to find a means to at least turn off the clamor outside of it.

So, today, I’m coming to you from deep, deep in the Wisconsin Northwoods. A place where cell signals are scarce, and, when actually found, weak. A place where green and brown crop lines create a wide-wale corduroy pattern across the rolling hills. And a place where tiny towns are made up of tiny, dilapidated houses with disproportionately large, loudly asserted political views.

The cabin itself is smaller than a single-stall Kwik Trip restroom. There’s a queen bed with a puffy white comforter nestled against a floor-to-ceiling wall of glass. A fridge large enough for a scant supply my beloved lemon LaCroix, a few slices of deli provolone, and my favorite pickled trout from the Saturday morning farmers’ market. Outside, lush Crayola-green deciduous trees, oaks and maples, provide a dense border between me and civilization. Sunny brown-eyed Susans and lilac-hued loosestrife create a mosaic backdrop for the firepit.

It’s so humid, my beloved gold aviators fogged up the second I stepped out the door.

As soon as I knew my departure was imminent, I took the bright-white canvas that was summer and fall, and sought out ways to add color. Ways like this. I’ve attempted to introduce focused writing time to my world for years, but, like so many jobs where your avocation takes up a significant percentage of your vocation, I often couldn’t gin up the energy, after stringing words together all day, to continue to do it with any gusto at night.

In 2011, I attended a writing conference in Jackson, Wyoming. In between hikes around the valley, hikes up the ski resorts, and a couple of jaw-droppingly expensive spa treatments, I was fortunate enough to get a workshop appointment with one of my favorite quirky writers, Tim Sandlin. Tim loved the work I shared with him and told me that I should “immediately quit (my) job and become a dishwasher.”

He underscored that his years-long stint in the restaurant world was when he was best able to focus on his writing, generating the best output, because his day-to-day didn’t require too much of him creatively.

Obviously, I did not follow that advice, and the following decade plus trophy-cases many of my biggest professional successes. I don’t regret it. I was a different human then, and it may have been an abject disaster.

And, well … not following that advice then has put me in a position where I’m able to – perhaps! – follow it now.