Midpoint: A Sourcebook For Your Midlife Journey

By Joe Rutland

Many accomplishments and emotions fill a person’s lifetime, whether they take place at home, in the workplace, or on the road. Success and failure have a way of calibrating life’s time clock when it’s off by a second or two. These experiences, when gathered together, form a tapestry that is special, unique and wonderful. It also takes on more meaning during a person’s 50th year alive.

In “Midpoint: A Sourcebook,” author Joe Rutland offers a collection of highs and lows from his own excursions while being 50 years old. He draws upon those in-the-moment events, as well as a look back upon numerous life experiences, for inspiration. Through the stories laid out in seven special sections, Rutland offers you an opportunity to take stock of your own life. His stories nudge you toward asking questions and looking within yourself. “Midpoint: A Sourcebook” provides plenty of opportunities to go inside the boundaries of a story and see what you could have done differently or how you would have handled these situations.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Joe Rutland
• Release date: Dec 23, 2015
• ISBN: 9781519936080

Book preview

MIDPOINT

A Sourcebook

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A few words ...

When I first came up with the idea of chronicling my life as I turned 50 years old, little did I realize that it would be such a trip.

Needless to say, everyone in life has their ups and downs. This is quite true through these experiences.

Sometimes reflective, other times brutally honest, these pieces – which originally appeared as a series on The Good Men Project (www.goodmenproject.com) website – offer glimpses into the journey.

Experiences, feelings and emotions are all too often stuffed away into neat corners. There always is an explanation or a reason for this or that. In my case, I will fess up and acknowledge that I’ve made some unwise decisions.

Not stupid, yet unwise.

These moments have come back to bite me in the butt a lot.

Now it would be pretty sweet of me to offer sage, wise words about what I have learned. I believe this would take away from what you could possibly learn about yourself through my own missteps and successes.

At the end, I’ve included two special pieces that also appeared online ... ones devoted to my relationship with my parents. Who knows? You might see some things in those that can help your life, too.

I do want to thank a few people. Lisa Hickey, executive editor of The Good Men Project, and Kathryn Tague, my editor at GMP, were extremely supportive of this endeavor and I’m quite grateful for their support and guidance. Thanks to George Wier, an Amazon best-selling author and fellow Texan, for his guidance in producing this book format. I’d also like to send heartfelt thanks for those friends who have helped me in many, many ways ... especially during some low-ebb times in the Year of 50. Saints, mystics and magicians you all are in my eyes.

There is not much else to say here.

I hope you enjoy these as much as I did writing them.

Many thanks,

Joe Rutland

Austin, Texas

October 2015

PART I:

LIVING YOUR LIFE

A Man’s Life Is Not Over At 50 Years Old

On Aug. 23, 2014, I turned 50 years old. Just even reaching that age is a miracle in my book.

The day wasn’t celebrated with a big birthday cake, a wild Vegas party with ... well ... Vegas activities, or with a weekend along the California coast. No, I worked that day. I treated myself to lunch here at home in Chandler, Ariz., received prior to the day and on it some wonderful well-wishes from friends near and far, and I worked.

No big deal.

Um ... wait a second. Turning 50 is no big deal?

I think not!

It’s a hell of a great deal.

Look, getting to 50 years old means that I waded through 49 years of pain, anger, sweat, tears, death, addiction, sadness, frustration, codependency, broken relationships, healed relationships, overt and covert abuse, family-of-origin insanity, dealing with a craniofacial anomaly on a daily basis, playing different roles for different people, not knowing who I really am as a man and human being, learning about who I really am as a man and human being ... and living proof that I get to have a midlife awakening.

Before getting too far ahead of myself, I’ve had a few days now to see how being 50 feels. So far, it’s good. I feel like I am wearing 50 pretty well. Yet much like the weather in the Mother Land (that would be my home state of Texas, so get used to the term), just wait a few minutes and the situation can change.

From comfortable to loneliness, from desiring a girlfriend to No, I’m not ready yet, from dreaming, visualizing and desiring to live the life of my dreams to staying complacent and simply following the rules of being 50 ... that’s the way the weather can change in my world.

One thing I do know is that my life is not over because I turned 50 years old. By now, from the this-is-what-I-make-up-in-my-head standards I’ve noticed among other men, I should have been married and divorced (at least once), had a couple of kids, built up a pretty fair amount of money in the bank, and taken multiple trips to different places in the United States and around the world.

My reality is that I’ve never been married, never had kids, don’t have much in the bank as I write this piece, have no woman in my life, and it’s been a long time since I have taken a lengthy vacation. I’m not complaining, OK. That is simply how my path to 50 has manifested in my life.

Yet my life is just beginning. It’s not over. I do have dreams and aspirations for this body of mine. I choose to believe that the best part of being alive is not only in this moment as I’m writing this column, but it’s in the next moment ... and the next one ... and the next.

The more present that I can be emotionally, mentally, physically and spiritually as a man, then there is more joy, love, abundance, wholeness, healing and awareness that rise like the morning sun.

Getting to 50 was not on my goals list at 40. Nor was it at 30. In fact, I didn’t really start to feel my feelings and emotions until turning 38 or 39 years old. You think I’m kidding, right? Like I went off to college, had a bunch of frat parties, kegged it up (well I did do that in my own way ... that’s for another column), slept around with a lot of women, got a degree, and landed in a high-paying career? Not in my world, friends.

For me, turning 50 means more than a number or age. It means that I’ve had a lot of life experiences, lived through some shit, learned some things ... and I’m still learning. Just in the past couple of days, I went through another emotional life lesson. I found it astonishingly beautiful and painful.

A situation took place where I was able to tell another person, in a conversational way, that I felt like I’d treated him wrongly and apologize. This person accepted my apology, and all the unhealthy energy within me toward this person vanished. Yet the real lesson came later when I was led to realize, at a deeper level, that I was looking for validation. It goes back to my 10-year-old boy still trying to get Mom to stop binge drinking over and over again. Feeling that burden and seeing how it emotionally continues to play out in my life, even after all the soul work I’ve done, was, as I said, beautiful and painful. The big, big lesson? There is more soul work to do, and I don’t mind doing it.

So is being 50 it? I mean, does life simply head downfield like a breakaway running back? I don’t think so. I feel like there are many life lessons to learn in this year, in this day, in this hour, this minute. OK, call me some living-in-my-head fool that doesn’t know much. Yet there is so much more to life than I’ve really ever tasted, felt or smelled. I want to celebrate this 50th year on Planet Earth in a real, tangible way.

I can do that by being more observant of what is happening within me and around me, including societal and cultural issues. As I write this, comedian Joan Rivers died at age 81. Rivers’ death comes just a few weeks after comedian Robin Williams died at age 63.

The joy, humor and laughter these two people brought to millions around the world are, to me, like flickering lights of love that are never extinguished. The lights can be turned down and dimmed very, very low. But they never go out.

My hope and want for I’m 50, Now What? is that it can bring a little light into your own life as a man. If you are a woman reading this, then I’m glad you are, too, and hope you find something of value and worth in my words.

I really want you to like me. I really, really do. It’s all about my people-pleasing skills being perfected even more through words and attention.

Bullshit.

I choose to be as real as I can be, and I hope you do, too.

Feeling My Way Toward A Better Life ... And Enjoying The Journey

Taking stock of what life has brought me so far is no easy task. There have been the ups and downs, highs and lows, peaks and valleys ... OK, you get the picture. Yet there is more joy, in this moment, than pain or sorrow.

It has taken me a long time to truly see my life with my glass half full. Sometimes, my glass is really full ... and it’s not all junk. No, my glass is full of joy, happiness, peace, serenity and gladness. Sure, there are times that my glass turns from a Diet Coke into sewer water. Anger, resentment, hatred, vengeful thoughts, unhealthy behaviors, addictive ways and such drag my energy and soul down.

Do I always spend every single minute of every day sifting through where I have been and where I want to go? I mean, every day? While I do believe that taking stock of my feelings and emotions is a worthy endeavor, doing it perfectly 24 hours a day can be a life-draining exercise in navel gazing.

Learning about feelings and emotions – my own, that is – did not happen overnight. There was no Your Emotions and You book handed to me by my parents. Certainly, it was not available in school.  No, it took many, many years of trial and error – and trials – before coming to my own tipping point.

***

In the summer of 2002, I was in the midst of beginning to find out who I – Joe – was as a man and human being. This definitely was not coming from an ego standpoint. Oh no, that sucker had taken a gut blow and was pretty deflated.

A few weeks earlier, at the gentle suggestion of a kind and caring therapist in Houston, I made plans to spend my week of summer vacation away from my job at the time at a treatment center in Arizona. This was something that, for the first time maybe in my entire life, I could see as beneficial toward growing up emotionally.

Much like this Sunday morning as I’m writing this piece, I remember flying from Houston to Phoenix on a Sunday. It was an early-morning flight and I arrived in the Valley of the Sun. Beautiful blue skies and a little warm (not monsoon-season hot ... yet). I hopped into my rental car and began taking the hour-plus drive to where I would be staying for a week.

This week ... oh man ... would become one where I started to see how much I had let family attitudes and beliefs seep into my own life. Not just in recent years leading up to that point and time, but going all the way back to (gulp!) my youth.

It was a week mixed with sadness, grief and anger. I mean A-N-G-E-R! While I always viewed myself as being a good boy and son to his family, I began to see and feel how much repressed rage and frustration was beneath the surface. Instead of guessing how I was feeling, I started to feel and it was not always pretty. Picture a wild beast thrusting his head side to side, snot flying out of his nose, frothing at the mouth, growls and howls from the gut – yeah, that was one stage.

The week spent in treatment let me comprehend at an inner level how my feelings and emotions had dictated how I responded to life. It also introduced me to a new concept, mainly that there were sacred spaces that I could release anger, fear and pent-up tears. It also showed me how much love and compassion my inner self needed.

No, it wasn’t the type of love you’d go look for at a honky-tonk bar around 12:30 a.m. This type of love was gentle, nurturing and kind. A lot of the negative self-talk and frustrated feelings were what I was attracting. It came from years of being around pretty sick people doing the best they could do. Seeing that they were doing their best, at the time, was the last thing on my mind. I really wanted to tell them go to fuck off and grow the fuck up.

Emotionally speaking, these people never did. Yet I trusted and believed that the journey I started on for myself ... the journey of finding my true north star and who I was ... would be worthy.

***

Many different theories and others’ experiences with feelings and emotions have been noted throughout time. Some of the greatest philosophers, thinkers, mystics and theologians provide great insight into the human psyche and soul. What does make me tick? What makes you tick?

I guess I should, in all fairness, say that even 12-plus years after that summer journey, I’ll still find myself wandering and muttering about this or that injustice in my life. Thankfully, it does not last for days and weeks on end.

Beating up on me is not fun. Telling myself a bunch of negative talk, or buying into someone else’s pessimistic outlook on life, doesn’t parlay into goodness and light. For me, I can say that my feelings and emotions do matter. They are now important touchstones upon which I get a view into where I am and where I want to be.

I do feel more joy and happiness these days than pain and sorrow. I also feel worthy of all the goodness and abundance that this world can offer.

At the same time, there always is reality. Fantasy does not always equal reality. Nope. It’s OK to have dreams and hopes for a better future and life.

Frankly, where I’m at today is a hell of a lot better than where I was, say, back in 2002. That’s growth, baby.

Why did it take so long for me to start getting in touch