When I Begin to Talk

“When I begin to talk,

I say the things

I have found out in my mind

without thinking.”

— Ernest Hemmingway

I am known to be a talker. A friend once told me that men use an average of 200 words a day and women 2,000 words. He jokingly said he gives most of his words to me each day.

I do recognize that I use more words and energy to answer any question or share a story with a purpose. That said, you might not be able to envision me in the quiet of the mornings, alone in the household, with only my dogs.

Yes, I do speak with them. I greet and acknowledge each of them and tell them how special they are in my life. And then . . . I am quiet for hours . . . until the formal work day starts.

I like to be quiet. I use this quiet time and different inward energy to journal and make lists. I do chores with a song dancing in my head. I put my little world into the best shape to start the day. And I write.

I don’t speak all the words I have built up inside of me. I pour them out onto any piece of paper I can find. And if I land upon something that I think has the potential to be a universal lesson, I open the laptop to share a blog post with you.

This morning my rumination was about the past year.

I have just spent a year being sixty-five years old. Soon, I will turn sixty-six.

I didn’t know what to expect from this past year, one that marks the time in your life when you are supposed to slow down and consider stepping back from your career. That wasn’t my plan. I did just the opposite. I feel so urgent to get up every day and add value. I look around and witness peers, colleagues, friends, and clients who aren’t choosing to take the offramp.

Instead, they are doubling down on their commitments and finding new ways to respond to what has happened in our world. If anything, they are stepping up their leadership in their fields, organizations, and community. I join their ranks.

As I lay in bed in the early dark morning, I reflected upon the last forty years of work and life. I stepped off the traditional career path early. I started a business somewhat unprepared at the age of twenty-eight. The first years of entrepreneurship are always fraught with risk and a steep climb. Survival is a daily effort as the failure rate is around 85%. My first years in business were recessionary years.

I really didn’t notice. Establishing oneself in the field of organizational development, one very new to the work world, in a city in which I had not been raised, as a young woman without a corporate or Big Six consulting background, was challenge enough for me to focus my energies. Like all entrepreneurs, I became what Peter Drucker labeled, “A mono-manic with a mission."

Each day presented challenge, reward, hard work, sacrifice, choice, and new relationships.

Lessons rained down upon my head — if you didn’t learn them the first time, they returned.

I affectionately call my entrepreneurial choice “Boot Camp.” A forced march forward during which you either learn, grow, stretch, recover, reinvent, and persist or you fail in the effort. In this experience — or experiment — you succeed when you learn to know yourself, establish your values and principles, develop your strengths, and practice your craft every day — or you falter for lack of trying hard enough or missing out on that dose of luck that is needed.

I wonder this morning, knowing what I know about the requirements of the journey, "Would I do it again?”

I am glad not to have to make that choice. The choice in front of me today is to continue the journey.

In the almost forty years of self-employment and the big responsibility of employing others, I started in recessionary times, crossed the threshold of the Millennium, navigated through natural and national disasters, economic ups and downs, new technology, and changing markets that made each year spicy. There was no time to sit on the sidelines. But then, there was never a dull moment or a down day. I forgot to take vacations. I ran the first ten years as a sprint until I learned the pacing of a marathoner’s practice.

Time flies quickly. I met cool people, traveled to cool places, learned, shared, and surprised myself constantly. I confronted my flat sides and learned how to balance working and living (too late to marry and have children, however).

Woven throughout were births and deaths, friendships, romance, and adventure. I learned how to express myself through the written word and authored and co-authored six business books and three children’s books (with the hope of more to come).

Every aspect of the work world has changed, my field has evolved, and the publishing industry has exploded and is currently collapsing in some ways.

The constant in all these years has been change. I think my life — as I reflect upon it — reads like a novel. And the world around me is so dramatically altered, I can’t see the future as clearly as I have in the past.

But, this morning I feel like I’m too young to retire. I have more to do and learn. I feel like I am on the top of my game, needing to climb the next summit, one that is steep in complexity. The pandemic almost crushed my work world, as it did for many. And now, another political outcome has split our United States into factions again.

I am still discovering my strengths and how to use them well. I have been tested and know what is important in life. I am still ready to race and contribute.

Now that I have sorted my reflections and poured these words onto paper, it is time to start the day.

I have learned that life is about getting up and getting started every morning, making the lists and knowing the priorities, head down, plowing through with values in hand, knowing both what needs to be attended and how to give it the right attention. I also keep it simple.

Before I go downstairs to the laptop and cell phone, I am going to clean my closets and prepare the fall and winter clothes. I have discovered piles of T-shirts and hoodies all representing somewhere I have been or something I care deeply about. I am a walking billboard for what’s important to me.

The only thing that I truly know about turning the magic number of 65 is that I am clear on who I am and not afraid to show or share it.

My mother, who lived with me in her last year of life, commented after weeks of observing my work/life routine: “At least it isn’t boring!”

Oh, how right she was.

• What are you reflecting upon these days?

• What plans do you have for your path forward?

Leslie

“One advantage of talking to yourself is that

 you know at least somebody’s listening.”

— Franklin P. Jones

The Path Forward ▼