{"id":593,"date":"2012-05-23T11:06:23","date_gmt":"2012-05-23T18:06:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/poisonspur.com\/?p=593"},"modified":"2015-03-30T17:17:16","modified_gmt":"2015-03-31T00:17:16","slug":"progress-report","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/?p=593","title":{"rendered":"Progress Report"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody says &#8220;Life begins at 50.&#8221;\u00a0 Maybe they will someday, but they don&#8217;t do it yet.\u00a0 The understanding is that when you reach the half-century mark, you are supposed to have something to show for it.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t have to be rich or famous, but you should have accomplished at least something along the way.\u00a0 You could have raised a family, built up a business, or gotten a letter to <i>Penthouse<\/i>published.\u00a0 Pretty much anything will do,<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m going to be hitting that particular milestone in August and I have had a few &#8220;What the fuck have I done with my life?&#8221; panic attacks as I close in on 50.\u00a0 For those who are younger than me, let me explain.\u00a0 These are very much like the &#8220;What the fuck am I doing with my life?&#8221; you experience as you approach your 40th birthday or the &#8220;What the fuck am I going to do with my life?&#8221; as you approach your 30th.\u00a0 In short, they suck.<\/p>\n<p>I think what makes them so bad is that you can&#8217;t just dismiss them out of hand.\u00a0 No matter who you are and what sort of life you&#8217;ve led, there&#8217;s going to be some sliver of truth to them.\u00a0 We as a species just aren&#8217;t all that perfect.\u00a0 Fortunately, the converse is also true.\u00a0 You may be a failure, but you&#8217;re not a complete failure.<\/p>\n<p>Most of us are somewhere in between and when our inner voice tells us we suck, there is plenty of ammo for both sides of that argument.\u00a0 It&#8217;s a completely pointless way to spend your energy and for those of you who have the mental fortitude to put that nonsense out of your mind, I admire and applaud you.\u00a0 For the rest of us, read on.<\/p>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>There are some well-meaning souls out there who suggest that our trouble is that we are mired in our own little worlds, that we need to take a step back and take a look at the big picture. Looking at the big picture has taught me one thing. \u00a0The bigger the picture I&#8217;m looking at, the less I matter. So no, that isn&#8217;t going to help me at all.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>Instead, I&#8217;ve been concentrating on very selfish pursuits. \u00a0My current one is a story I&#8217;m writing. \u00a0I&#8217;m under no illusion that it&#8217;s going to be great literature or even be publishable. In fact, the only people I expect to read it are my friends and anyone else who chances upon it. \u00a0So why bother? Well, it interests me. \u00a0I could have hastily dashed it out like a lot of my other efforts, but I decided to slow down with this one. \u00a0I tinker with it a little each day and progress, while slow, is happening. \u00a0When I&#8217;m finished, it will be time well spent.<\/div>\n<div><\/div>\n<div>People around me may not much give a shit. I&#8217;m OK with that. I may not have had any effect on my entry on life&#8217;s great scoreboard. I&#8217;m OK with that too. \u00a0I can marvel over the speck of dust I&#8217;ve created among the vastness and take comfort in the fact that denial can sometimes be a beautiful thing.<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nobody says &#8220;Life begins at 50.&#8221;\u00a0 Maybe they will someday, but they don&#8217;t do it yet.\u00a0 The understanding is that when you reach the half-century mark, you are supposed to have something to show for it.\u00a0 You don&#8217;t have to be rich or famous, but you should have accomplished at least something along the way.\u00a0 &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/?p=593\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Progress Report<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5,1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=593"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":594,"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/593\/revisions\/594"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/poisonspur.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}