A birthday is coming and you have started doing arithmetic. How many working years are left. What other people had done by this age. You lie awake listing what it is now too late for. During the day you are fine, and busy, and a little frantic. That I'm showing up late to my own life, or that I'm never going to get there at all.
Time does pass. Part of this may be an accurate count, and part of it may be grief.
01
What you do about it
There may be two responses, and you may swing between them.
One is speed. You take on more, start things in a hurry, and feel that any slow day is a day lost.
The other is stopping. It seems too late to begin, so you don't, and the list of what it is too late for gets longer.
You measure yourself against where a person is supposed to be by a certain age.
People tell you age is just a number, or that it is never too late. Neither helps much at three in the morning.
It can cost you the present year, which gets spent on the counting. Decisions made in a hurry may also cost more than decisions made late.
02
What the counting may be protecting
"Stillness is where it catches me."
The timeline may be something to stay ahead of. Under Ahead, being behind where you were supposed to be can feel like being caught unprepared, with the gap growing. There's never enough time in this world.
Read about Ahead →"If I'm not producing, I don't know who I am."
The count may be of what you have made. Under Output, the trouble may be the total more than the age, and whether there is time left to make it enough.
Read about Output →Other rules can be here. One is Chosen, where the fear is that if you are not selected, you were not enough to select. And it may be no rule.
03
What is under the rule
Under Ahead, the fear may be that if you stop managing, something goes wrong again. What would answer it is safety that doesn't require vigilance.
Under Output, the fear may be that without achievement you don't matter. What would answer it is worth that doesn't require performance.
More years would not answer either. The same counting may simply go on in them.
04
One question that separates them
Is the problem that you're not producing, or that you're not covered?
Ask it about the thing you most fear it is too late for. Not producing is the Output answer. Not covered is the Ahead answer.
If it is neither, you may be looking at something that is simply sad, and that needs no rule. Not enough to tell is a result as well.
Some of this may be accurate. If something you wanted is no longer possible, mourning it is not a rule. For Ahead, the check is whether the feeling continues when things are stable. For Output, what tells you more is what happens when the producing stops.
Sorting these apart is subtraction. Grief stays grief, facts stay facts, and whatever is left over can be looked at.
05
One thing to try this week
Write the list of what you believe it is too late for.
Beside each item, write who says so, and by what date it stopped being possible.
Leave it overnight. In the morning, mark the ones where you could not name a source or a date.
What this can look like when you are beginning again is on When You're Starting Over at Forty.