What Are YOU Too Old For in 2025?

Too Old for This Sh*t: How to Take Your Life Back from an Ageist Society

Photo by David Aler on Unsplash

What are you doing with the in-between down time?

Dear Reader: The “in-between down time” is that time between Christmas- or whatever holiday you celebrate- and the New Year. It’s full of possibility, portents and a whole lot of recovery and avoidance. If you’re like me, it’s time for a blank slate.

That said, a kind reminder that I will be going paid on January 1st. If my work supports you, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I will of course periodically post free pieces. Thank you.

If you’re a writer, and have ever faced off with a blank page- including long before typewriters- this is for you. A blank screen is just as damning.

It’s the same feeling we get when faced with a brand new year, as dictated by the Gregorian calendar, the most widely used. Not the only one. You’re still a writer, as author of your own story.

What is your audience screaming at you to DO RIGHT NOW, the way we yell at our heroine who’s not seeing the obvious?

January 1st, barely two days away. Do you know where your goals are?

Far better than goals, where are your habits going to take you?

Tomorrow morning at six I am working with a trainer. Given that the majority of folks are waiting to hit the gym hard on January 2nd, and I’ve been largely doing this for 52 years, it’s a habit.

Habits support what we accomplish. Goals are the mileposts along the journey.

Habits support the next steps after you reach the goal. While I agree that goals are important, I’m with James Clear on this. I dropped 85 lbs 37 years ago. Kept nearly all of it off since then. I reached the goal in less than a year.

What kept it off was changing my habits. Habits are the powerful scaffolding that allow us to occasionally, okay often, fail, fall, flop, fuck up and get right back at it again.

So before you start writing on that tablet, screen, in my case today, a white board, what habits are you willing to change so that you can have a very different life?

the author, Everest Base Camp, several months after Kilimanjaro

I set a goal to climb Kilimanjaro in 2013. The habit of working out was already in place. I just added demand so that the workout met the level of the adventure. That led to some fourteen years of seriously bad ass adventure travel all over the world.

And injuries. The years of working out got me through the injuries and what came next.

After seven years of surgeries, recovery, PT and much more, with two more surgeries to go (AND PT, natch), I have a different body, different dreams and new habits to build to make them come true.

This year, my big blank slate didn’t stay blank for long.

By noon the white board was covered in notes that I could get excited about. It’s all about my Too Old brand, returning to speaking, returning to adventure travel. Busy, exciting year head.

Even better, this:

As I reboot my company, I also get to boot out some old habits of thought which no longer serve.

One of them is the family story that I should have been born a boy, am a loser and didn’t deserve to take up space.

Oh, my, I am so DONE with that bullshit.

Above all I am tired of the incessant, exhaustive over-achieving to try to disprove my family’s decree. All those folks are dead. Am I really going to let dead folks determine my quality of life?

If you’ve ever had a family-installed story like this, you understand. It will torpedo every effort you make to erase that story line. In particular if you were the family scapegoat (here’s how to tell), it’s a journey to get to the point where you give yourself permission to be anything but the repository for all the blame.

Photo by BoliviaInteligente on Unsplash

Is this the year? What are you Too Old for?

Are you Too Old for stories that don’t serve you?

Are you Too Old to be told you don’t belong in the gym, on the track, on the mountain, at the design table, in the mix? Don’t deserve love, to be successful, that you’re never ever ever enough?

Yeah you are, and then some.

Are you Too Old to still be buying into the bullshit that you don’t deserve a terrific life?

Note I didn’t say easy, I said terrific.

Can you slap down a really bad habit?

In January of 2011, after nearly forty years of horrible eating disorders, I decided I was Too Old to continue. I walked away from them forever, two days before my 58th birthday.

The habit stopped when I said it did. When I was serious enough to do what it took.

What habits are you that serious about ending? Which habits are you serious enough to begin this coming year?

What are you Too Old for in 2025?

My invitation to you, Dear Reader:

I am interested in my readers between 30 and 90+. If you know my work, you know I love to elevate others’ stories. What are you determined to re-frame, re-tell, re-make, re-model this year so that you have a very different life? I want to share your stories, uplift that commitment. Let’s celebrate the blank slate that we wake up to daily.

Where do you want to go this coming year? What stories, what habits need to change to get you there?

What are you waiting for?

Let’s play.

Photo by Gracious Adebayo on Unsplash

Thank you for your readership from September 2023 until December 31st 2024. To those supporting me, you rock, and thank you for motivating me to stick with it. I will continue, and you will still see the occasional free piece. Otherwise you’re invited

Thank you.