Five Important Things About Aging

Brilliant advice from brilliant women

The other day I looked at reviews for the Under the Influence podcast. I’m not sure why I did it….I learned a loooong time ago that creating things and then reading the reviews of them will drive you batshit crazy.

Anyway someone gave me a four star review because they don’t like that I joke about feeling old at age 43. 

Ok, fair point. Some days I do feel old, especially when interviewing bright-eyed millennials and zillenials who are still so optimistic and eager and excited. I feel old and a little jealous to be honest.

But most days I love being in my fucking forties. I wouldn’t trade it for anything. I definitely don’t want to be in my twenties again. That was a real dumpster fire. 

But I have spent a lot of time lately thinking about what I want to do with the next five, ten, twenty and fifty years of my life (if I’m that lucky). I’ve been thinking a lot about what life can look like on this side of forty. Maybe that’s why I mention it all the time.

It feels daunting as hell, to be honest. So many women I know are going through this period of deep thought and change and evolution. One of the perks of this job is that I get to talk to people who have been there, who have had these thoughts and worries and come out on the other side and have great wisdom from their own experiences. I actually interviewed two of them right before I left for Sicily and they both gave me a ton of think about.

In 2014 Lyn Slater, the author of the new book HOW TO BE OLD, became an accidental icon. She had been working in social work and teaching social work as a professor for most of her life. She was a little burnt out as she was approaching 60. Lyn began taking continuing ed class in fashion because she liked learning and she liked clothes and she wanted to shake up her brain.

The students and professors in the classes kept telling her to start a fashion blog because they liked her style. So she did. And then she started an Instagram account of pictures of her wearing outfits she loved. 

But once you put yourself out there you no longer completely own your narrative. Your audience does. The media does.

And the media was fascinated by Lyn.…..not entirely because of her style though...but because of the fact that she was 62! All of the stories about her tended to focus on her age as if it had some shock value...oh my gosh look at this woman in her sixties who dares to be fashionable and actually talks about it.

It wasn’t about Lyn as an individual who loved style. It became about Lyn...a woman who is old

Today Lyn calls herself a reformed influencer . When she was about to turn 70 she decided that she didn't want to live another decade on the influencing merry-go-round of posting and creating the things that brands wanted from her.

So she sat down and started to write a book about how she got where she was and what she DID want which eventually became HOW TO BE OLD.

The book and my recent conversation with Lyn on Under the Influence gave me a ton to chew on as I try to figure out what to do next (currently taking suggestions). These are the quotes that I can’t stop talking about.