40Here we are.The middle.There’s a stigma that comes with...

40

Here we are.

The middle.

There’s a stigma that comes with turning 40, a lot of which has been force fed to us by pop culture. 40 is supposed to be the awful midlife crisis year.

“It’s all downhill from here,” some people would say.

When I was a kid, my father was always obsessed with my weight, and he would tell me that around 40 years of age I should consider cutting back on foods like fried chicken which are high in fat and cholesterol. He would never fail to mention this to me every time I indulged in some delicious food. He meant well. We Santats, after all, have a history of cardiovascular disease. Thanks to my dad, I felt like I was hard wired into thinking that 40 was the age I had to grow up and stop having fun.

I love fried chicken.

There was a time when 40 seemed like such a distant number. I had decades to fill my life with meaningful memories of fun and consume all sorts of various fried foods. Get every last bit of fun in before you turn the big four-o! Now, here I am, hard wired from a young age to think the fun is over.

It’s a somewhat odd thing to have won the Caldecott Medal in the same year you’re turning 40. Many people that I’ve spoken to this year have assumed  that by winning such an award all your worries seem to vanish. You’ve achieved the highest goal there is to achieve in children’s publishing and there is nothing left to prove.

That’s the part that scares me.

While I no longer feel the need to prove anything to myself, I now don’t know where to go from here. What I’m saying is that after the year I’ve had, any other year after this will probably pale in comparison. It is simply all downhill. I wasn’t expecting to feel this way, but after talking with a few previous award winners, I’ve learned that it’s a thing we all struggle with early on and it’s something that I too will have to go through.

Welcome to the middle.

Please don’t misconstrue what I’m saying as complaining. I can’t complain. When I was a kid growing up I used to be terrified that I would have no life skills and I would end up being a homeless person living on the street. The thought of facing the world on my own was stressful and I grew up living with this anxiety of having a lack of self worth. Being an awkward kid who was raised to be self conscious about eating fatty foods meant that you were surrounded by other kids who were more athletic, more confident, and better looking than you. All the other kids found self confidence in their resilient youth. Popularity was the currency of self worth. They were unbreakable and they were going to be young forever. Meanwhile, my mind was constantly on the future wondering, “Will I ever be special?”

When I got my first job I breathed a huge sigh of relief.

“Thank God!” I thought, “Somebody finds me useful in this world.”

As the years went on I found that all these goals that I thought were once unattainable were falling into place. The gods were smiling on me and it took me years after high school to realize that I was worth more than I had originally perceived. It no longer mattered that I wasn’t athletic, or attractive, or popular. I finally felt comfortable in my own skin and I realized that this feeling is all I have ever wanted in life. I’ve noticed that I’ve taken much solace in having experience. That’s the one thing in life that has given me increased comfort year after year. The comfort in knowing that my experience has convinced me that I can survive on my own in this world.

There’s that old question people ask each other of whether you would go back in time to live your life over again.

I say no.

Being a kid was unpleasant because I had the constant anxiety of not knowing how well I could handle myself in life. Experience makes you realize that you will be OK. I feel that optimism drives a person, and I think most people trudge on with their daily lives hoping for better things to come. I’ve always lived my life hoping for each year to be better than the previous one. I would tell myself that next year would be better. It’s proof to me that the fruits of my labor are paying off.  

I don’t want my life to peak here in the middle.

What should I look forward to now?

Asking for anything more than what I’ve already received would be extremely selfish.

With all the events that have transpired this year I have absolutely no reason to complain about anything. I could not ask for a better way to turn 40, but for me, this summer has been a bit of a struggle. 

My first instinct upon winning the award was that I had to work harder. I felt that I had to maintain the intensity that got me here in the first place. I quickly noticed that it felt odd that I didn’t want to slow down since, after all these years, it was the very thing I was working towards. This was as a good time as any to take time off and slow down.

My agent called me one day and told me that now would be a good time to sell my next picture book manuscript, so I began working on a few ideas that had been swimming around in my head for the past few years. Unfortunately, I ended up with a horrible case of writer’s block. 

I’ve realized that the downside to winning an award like this is that from now on you compare everything you write to your best piece of work. 

You tell yourself it has to be just as good. You don’t want to go soft and you don’t want to let everyone down.

It’s a maddening feeling, while at the same time I know it’s completely silly to think this way.

You want to be optimistic that you can do better, but where do I go from here? Anything less will feel like a failure.

My agent saw that I was struggling and told me to take a month off because I wasn’t enjoying my moment of success and that I would regret not taking the time to enjoy the fruits of my labor. So I did. 

The first few weeks were torture. Every minute of relaxation was a minute wasted. It wasn’t until after a month that it finally settled in and my mind suddenly started to relax and ideas slowly started to come to me.

I had suddenly realized that I hadn’t experienced that feeling of creativity for over ten years.

I had been working so hard on various projects that my mind didn’t have time to come up with anything new.

Eventually, the guilt of relaxing finally went away after two months. The one major thing I realized was that I finally understood how mentally exhausted I was for all these years. Now, I look back at the last ten years of my life and I wonder how I managed to work as much as I did and I know that for the sake of my well being I should try to avoid repeating those habits.

Now, it feels like my new goal in life is to rediscover myself.

I’ve reluctantly slowed my life down because I know deep inside that it’s good for me. While I’m agitated that I’m working at half speed, I’m happy that I don’t have a constant feeling of exhaustion. I need to be OK with pacing myself. I’ve finally achieved balance in my life and I’m clutching on to it like a life raft in the middle of an ocean storm.

I remember feeling very down when I turned 30, because I loved my 20s. I also remember feeling down when I turned 39 because my 30s turned out to be much better than my 20s. Now, many of my friends over 40 have told me that their 40s have been the best years of their lives. Despite my preconceived notions which were instilled into me at a young age, I’m actually looking forward to my 40s (and the occasional piece of fried chicken)

What will I accomplish in the second half of my life?

Will I be able to maintain the level of quality that I have set for myself?

Experience tells me that regardless of the outcome I will be fine.

Here’s to the middle.

Onward.

Upward.