I’ve spent maybe too much time over the past several years thinking about society’s assumed, “normal” stages of life.

This is partly (I suspect) because I’ve taken a somewhat unusual path (relative to what we might think of as the “default standard”) which means I’ve generally had to write my own manuals along the way; few of the things I’ve endeavored to do have led me down well-marked, pre-paved roads.

An adjacency to (but inability to access) established ways of being and doing things can sometimes be annoying and draining, especially during periods when I’m exhausting myself just trying to figure out the bare-basic fundamentals of some new thing I’d like to try.

Some ambitions that would be child’s play for someone further along in life (or in some cases, someone who’s earlier on in their journey and who hasn’t yet accreted the moss and barnacles of age), are heavy-lifts for me, because I haven’t acquired the same backlog of experiences and knowledge that many people pick up along the way.

In other cases, I’ve acquired advantages because of the asymmetric road I’ve wandered.

The practical outcome of ordering from life’s à la carte menu rather than selecting from one of a comparable few prescribed offerings is that you’ll almost always have to work harder to achieve something serviceable, but cobbling together something custom-tailored for your specific wants and needs will be (counterintuitively) more attainable.

Your stages of life will also seldom line up perfectly with those of others your age, and you may feel simultaneously ahead of and behind everyone else in your demographic cluster, which can be wonderful and worrying in equal measure.

Adapting to this kind of chronological misalignment can be powerful, if also effortful. It opens up a slew of doors that aren’t otherwise visible and makes imagining possible futures beyond those offered up by mainstream life paths more casually doable.

Then again, there’s something to be said for well-tread trails and life paths paved with the wisdom of folks who have been there before you. It’s nice to be capable of blazing trails, and to maybe try your hand at it periodically, whatever the shape and scope of your larger journey, but it’s also prudent to develop the humility required to seek out, assess, and adopt (when warranted) culturally inheritable perspectives, warnings, guides, and goals.

If you found value in this essay, consider buying me a coffee :)