This is a great opportunity for a man of 60 years old to get more acquainted with himself and connect with others in a way that will resonate with people of any age and hopefully any walk of life, ethnicity or gender. When I became a sexagenarian it was probably the most significant emotional and spiritual event that I can recall because it gave me a vantage point that I had never considered because I live my life to the fullest yet only day to day. One of my major shortcomings is not having had a plan. I used to make goals but I think my accomplishments have come through osmosis as it were rather than a concerted conscious effort on my part.
The best place to start is where am I now. I am about to complete my second undergraduate degree in Psychology from an online University called Argosy. I have been attracted to how the mind works for the better half of my life. My regret, which I have left by the side of the road, was that a career in Psychology is in essence my unlived life.
I am determined to avoid the world of stagnation and despair that my 82-year-old father lives in. My remaining years I hope will be characterized by the word that I have learned in my psychology studies and that is generativity. I have so much to offer succeeding generations merely by the life I have lived. Whether it be through my life passing through military college, a major weight loss of 75 pounds, a running career that included 17 marathons, life as an alcoholic and one in recovery for 21+ years. But my best work I think came in the 13 years as a Step dad, which continues to bedevil and inspire me.
Let me take the reader through my life presently and work backward. I am currently in the role of financial advisor, which has been my main source of income for 30 years. About 12 years ago I came upon a methodology that allowed me to enter my clients lives tabular rasa or clean slate. It provides me with the best perspective because I do not have a particular agenda and I approach them from the nurture side of life. In this way it allows me to connect with them on a social and emotional level. Fortunately I can incorporate the benefits of objectivity with the subjectivity of my personality. I have always held the belief that financial advising is not about the numbers it is helping people live their lives and in their money rather than be locked out of it only to see the eroding forces take it from them without their consent.
Woven into my professional life, about 13 years ago I married a woman with three children from her previous marriage. They were young adults of 13, 18, and 23, so some of the problematic parts of step parenting bringing up children were never encountered. However it took a yeoman’s effort on my part having lived without any children of my own to submerge my selfish ego and allows the egocentricities of young adults to blossom and grow with as little interference from me as possible. My relationships with all 3 have been for the most part satisfying although there were times in the beginning that I would say to my wife: I didn’t sign up for this. She calmly and collectively told me that I had but that did not ease the emotional turmoil in those first few years. The most salient point I taught myself was to wait one day. Waiting one day whenever I was upset about any perceived wrong my stepchildren had done me. This singular strategy kept me out of arguments with my wife, my stepchildren and my own inner turmoil. It was not easy by any means because when I felt threatened my natural reaction was to react and right what was the perceived wrong. However, I quickly learned that if I was to stay in this relationship and I did it would mean that I would have to craft responses instead of power driven arguments if I really wanted my children to understand and comprehend who I was. I had little problem distinguishing myself from their biological father because he was actively engaged outside their life, which presented it’s own problems because there were times that especially my stepson would act out on me because of the absenteeism of his dad. Their father and I had a few skirmishes at first but I quickly learned that although I would win each battle I was losing the war and so I disengaged from any and all attacks on my wife’s ex-husband.
About a year ago I started to blog about my exploits being a step dad and that has helped me vent some of my frustrations when to air them publicly with my wife would only have ended in hurt feelings or placing her in the proverbial catch 22. I have tried to be more than in my writings. My friends tell me I have gone too far in accommodating my stepson in particular but he sees it in a different light as of this writing.
Also woven into my current working life and tenure, as a stepparent has been my life in recovery from alcohol and drugs for the past 21+ years. I have been fortunate in never having relapsed in that time. This too I have been blogging about in what I call: My Life After AA. These writings are my own experience and they have been reported to be a didactic source to my readers and quite frankly to me as well. This writing capability has extended itself into 13 blogs that I write on a regular basis. I of course am seeking to be discovered by some editor and maybe one day I will be. My writing is experiential in nature and I have been told that I am able to capture within my writing, emotion that normally would take pages. I just know that like my life, my writing is not scripted and it arrives nascent, or Faulkneresque as some have mused.
I will stop here lest I get too verbose. I would like to share that my experience in taking psychology has been a rich experience also not without it’s challenges as there were times when as Frank Sinatra said: I thought of cutting out, but my heart just ain’t gonna buy it. I feel that even past middle age I have a lot that I can offer as practitioner in a therapeutic practice in some humanistic way. My concern is just what to do with my degree and as I am reading the current assignment in my ultimate class of Advanced Psychology some of those questions might just be answered. The current professor may have the answer in her title and I will endeavor to seek out her advice in helping me move to the next step postgraduate.
