Next month I will celebrate a birthday that puts me on the downhill side towards a huge milestone, one that would have been defined as one entire life cycle in the not-too-olden days in my native country of Korea. It’s kind of shocking to think about this, as there are days when I feel no older than a teenager, as if I could click my heels and cartwheel through the grass like the cheerleader I once used to be.
Other days I feel no older than, say, 35, especially when I do sprints with the dogs and Molly at night through the neighborhood. There are few days when I actually feel my chronological age, and this confirms my belief that age indeed is a matter of attitude and the younger you act, the younger you feel.
This then begs the real question that’s been nagging at me, especially as I’ve been marking these milestones: what do I want to be when I grow up? And an even deeper question: who am I? We define so many of our answers by what we do for a living.
Outside of this column, I am currently engaged in what I consider to be my third career. After my first well-loved role as a reporter, I embarked upon a journey in financial education at Merrill Lynch, and now write, take pictures, and produce videos in corporate communications.
There are certain jobs you fall into at certain times in your life, primarily out of financial necessity and the desire for family health insurance coverage, but if you could do anything you wanted to do, if you were freed from the constraints of “have-to-do,” what would that look like?
I found an answer to that question this week. I was at the Apple store to deal with a technical issue with a movie I had created on my laptop. As a holdover from my days of storytelling, I have turned my hobby of taking video with my HD camera and editing with Mac programs into a part of my professional portfolio. Whether it’s Will’s lacrosse highlight reel, a reality TV version of the pre-prom party, or an executive video about quarterly financial results, I’ve gotten pretty good at being a one-man band: shooting, editing, and telling stories with moving pictures. Though sometimes I feel like my head will start spinning with all the technical information I’m trying to absorb, I love learning new techniques to tell my stories more creatively and compellingly.
My wizard, as I like to think of the young Apple whizzes who do the equivalent of technological calisthenics with these applications, told me that Apple routinely offers internship opportunities to their employees. At 25, he’d been working for Apple for five years and had specialized in video technology. Not only was he a pro at iMovie and Final Cut, he had learned other video editing programs and had a sideline enterprise producing movie shorts.
So you know all those nifty Apple commercials you see on TV? And the cool demos on their website? The company has a team of 10 employees dedicated to video production who create all of that stuff. They get to test and develop all the new video tools and travel around the world to shoot and edit material for the Apple world.
Out of 80 people who applied for the chance to be a video intern, they chose five to fly to Cupertino for three months, and my young tutor was one of them. From July to October, he will live in company-provided housing, drive a company-paid for car, and learn at the feet of video giants. Wow!
This is when I realize I was born too soon. How I would love to be an Apple video intern. Of course, no sooner do I articulate this thought to my family, they turn the tables on me and ask, well, why not?
And indeed, why not? First, I would have to think that the five chosen ones probably have an average age that’s at least half mine. Their ability to absorb new information is most likely twice the speed of sound and their fingers probably fly with a speed that make mine look like they’re slogging through molasses.
On the other hand, the company — which has been struggling recently with slowing sales in China — needs to appeal to a broad demographic, and who better to act as an ambassador to the Baby Boomers than someone like me who engages with the product and eagerly embraces the opportunity to show it off in the way it was intended?
Whether or not I actually apply for this program, the larger point is that we need to feel that these kinds of doors are open to us and that we can learn and grow and evolve no matter what life stage we happen to be passing through. It’s the key to staying young and vital, especially as we transition from one distinct phase of life to the next.
Right now I am very much a Suburban Mom, and while the Mom part of that equation will never change, it may play a more diminished role, for example, should I become a grandmother. I won’t always live in beautiful Plainsboro in beautiful suburban central New Jersey, as I may reserve the right to live in the city and become an Urban Mom or — less likely — a Rural Mom. Next year do I turn into the Suburban Empty-Nester? I don’t know, but the times they are a changin’ and so am I and all of the rest of us. The next chapter is just around the corner, waiting to be written.
