What Are You Waiting For?

On midlife, the things we keep putting off, and why the right time is right now

I want to ask you a question and I want you to actually answer it.

Not the polite version. Not the one you would say out loud at a dinner party. The real one.

What have you been putting off?

You know what it is. It has been sitting there in your mind or on your list for months, maybe years, maybe longer than you care to admit. Quietly waiting. Occasionally surfacing, in the car, in the shower, at three in the morning when your brain decides to helpfully review everything you have not done, and then getting pushed back down again under the weight of everything else. The timing isn’t right. The kids aren’t settled. The budget isn’t there. I’ll do it when things calm down. I’ll do it when I have more time. I’ll do it when I feel ready.

Here is what I want to say to you, and I am going to say it as someone who cares.

Things are not going to calm down. You are never going to feel ready. And there is no such thing as the right time. There is only now, and later, and never, and later has a way of becoming never faster than anyone expects. 

We are in midlife, that means if we are blessed we are in the middle of our life and there is lots of time ahead The excuses have expired.

The Waiting Room We Built for Ourselves

Women are extraordinarily good at waiting. We were trained for it. Wait until the children are older. Wait until your husband’s career settles. Wait until you lose the weight, finish the degree, pay off the debt, renovate the kitchen, find the right moment, feel more confident, know more, need less.

We built ourselves a waiting room and we have been sitting in it very patiently for a very long time. Why? I do not know. Did someone tell us we had to wait? Is it in our DNA? 

And the thing about a waiting room is that nothing happens there. It is a room specifically designed for not doing the thing. You sit in it and you wait and occasionally someone calls a name that is not yours and you go back to waiting. The magazines are old. The chairs are uncomfortable. And nobody is coming to tell you it is your turn, because nobody ever scheduled your appointment. And that someone my friend was you! You never put yourself on the calendar.

The Things We Tell Ourselves

I have heard every version of the excuse. I have probably said most of them myself.

I am too old. You are not. Whatever age you are reading this, you are not too old. Julia Child published her first cookbook at forty-nine. Vera Wang designed her first dress at forty. Laura Ingalls Wilder published her first novel at sixty-five. Grandma Moses started painting at 78. I am not suggesting you need to become any of these women. I am suggesting that the age argument is the weakest excuse in your arsenal and it is time to retire it.

I do not have the money. Sometimes this is true and sometimes it is a story we tell ourselves because starting is frightening and money is certainly a reason not to start. Some things cost money. Many things cost less than we think. Some things cost nothing at all except the willingness to begin.

I do not know how. Nobody knows how before they start. That is what starting is for. 

I am waiting until I feel ready. Ready is a feeling that arrives approximately fifteen minutes after you begin, never before. You do not get ready and then start. You start and then you get ready. Every single time.

What Is Actually Waiting for You

I am not talking about bucket lists, which can feel arbitrary and abstract. I am talking about something more specific than that.

I am talking about the class you have been meaning to take. The trip you have been planning since before the children were born. The room in your house you have been meaning to make beautiful for fifteen years and have not touched. The friendship you let go quiet that you think about more often than you admit. The creative project sitting in a folder on your desktop. The conversation you keep meaning to have. The book you have always said you wanted to write. The garden. The language. The instrument in the corner that nobody plays anymore but that use to bring you such joy.

The thing that is yours. The thing that has always been yours, waiting.

Here is what I know about that thing: it has not stopped waiting. It is still there. And every year you do not begin, it does not disappear. It just gets a little heavier. The longer you leave it, the more loaded it becomes, until the not-doing of it starts to feel like a verdict on who you are rather than simply a thing you have not gotten around to yet.

That is not fair to you. And it is not true.

Begin Badly If You Have To

This is the part nobody tells you. You do not have to begin well. You do not have to begin confidently or competently or with any particular grace. Nobody picks up a paintbrush and paints an “Old Master” or opens a French app and begins a fluent conversation the same day. You just have to begin. I started playing the violin at twenty-eight. I was terrible then and I am still terrible now, and I love every single minute. I started this blog 15 years ago convinced no one would read a single word. Here we are.

Begin badly. Begin tentatively. Begin on an afternoon with no audience and no plan and no guarantee of anything. Sign up for the class before you feel ready. Book the trip before you have figured out all the details. Buy the journal and write one sentence in it. Make one phone call. Take one step in the direction of the thing you want, and then take another one, and do not wait for permission because it is not coming from anywhere except you, and guess what? It doesn’t need to. You do not need permission from anyone. Read that again and repeat after me. You do not need permission to live the life you have been dreaming of. 

You are in midlife. You have earned the right to stop waiting for a sign. You are the sign.

The right time was always going to be now. It was simply waiting for you to notice.

So, what is it? What have you been putting off? I am not asking to be polite. I genuinely want to know. Tell me in the comments. Say it out loud. Sometimes that is all it takes to make something real.

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