We’re at my uncle’s house in Liverpool in the late 1970s; it’s cold, and one of us kids - probably me - has turned up the gas heating. We’re on exeat from our English boarding school; it’s a short mid-term break, so of course it’s not possible to return home to the heat of tropical Darwin for what is effectively a long weekend, which means we’ve been farmed out to close relatives. Other exeats were spent staying at the houses of friends from school whose parents presumably offered to help us antipodeans out.
My uncle was deeply unhappy walking to such a warm room, and explained in very clear language how expensive it was to run the heating on such a high setting. I don’t remember exactly my reaction, but I do believe that it was subsequently suggested that I’d need to find alternative accommodation for future exeats.
I can remember a number of times as a child when my emotions welled up, breaking through the stiff facade that I’d modelled from those around me. The situations and triggers were varied, but each resulted in someone else copping a serve of tears from me.
With hindsight, I can see this was a pattern I perpetuated for many years. I remained stoic much of the time; once in a while, I lost the plot through what I now understand was a deep frustration; I just didn’t know why I was frustrated. So I took it out on the people around me.
I turn 60 on 23 August 2026, and I’ve found myself in a deeply reflective mood in the last couple of months, including some quite low days. Turning 50 was an anticlimax; it passed by with barely a mention; we were deep in parenting and building the business; I had no party or big celebration; I just woke one morning and realised I’d been on earth for half a century. Now, a decade later, it’s very different. I’ve been vacillating between regret, a smattering of shame, a concern about decisions made in the past, and decisions that will need to be made in the coming year or two.
I’m a typical ‘nine-ender,’ someone approaching the end of a chronological decade. Researchers have found that people approaching the end of a decade are more likely to pursue meaning-seeking behaviours, from running a first marathon to making far more consequential decisions. Apparently, the final year of a decade feels like a reckoning, a time to reevaluate, recalibrate.
Am I disappointed with my life? I’ve definitely been litigating my past, and it seems this is common. Have I done enough? Have I achieved enough? What comes next?
I’m not sure I ever really had a clear vision for my life. I’ve been on and off the relationship escalator. Once for five years and then again for 23. I’ve arrived on the doorstep of 60 with many LinkedIn achievements. But how about personally? What did I think 60 would look like? Career, marriage, children, money and a settled shape to life as I moved into my final decades? A love of gardening and tennis?
Sometimes I feel angry, not with others, but with myself. It’s always easy to second-guess after the fact, but I look back especially at personal relationships and friendships and realise I was often rubbish at being an authentic human to those around me. All too often I presented inauthentically, and people rightly called me out. My inauthenticity led to an ego that told me I must be right, and others were wrong - even when patently I was not right. Even in my early teens, I didn’t read the signals, like the girl who during a gathering at the sailing club in Darwin exclaimed ‘you think you’re such hot shit’; I can’t recall what prompted her very accurate diagnosis, but she was right.
I struggle sometimes with some feelings of shame. When I was young at the English boarding school, I suspect Mum and Dad were calling in favours, asking for help constantly as they endeavoured to manage a brood of three young kids at school on the other side of the world. And this in the days before email or FaceTime, when international phone calls were fabulously expensive, and the best way to send a message was via a telegram. As the parent of three kids - one of whom turns 30 next year - I cannot begin to comprehend just how much they were giving up back then. And all I did was reward them with poor behaviour and pissing off relatives. If my kids did that, I’d be ropeable.
I feel disappointment in myself. I have a litany of regrets: my relationships, my behaviour, my financial and work decisions. I realise I drifted from one opportunity to the next, especially in my 20s and 30s; I made short-term decisions without a vision or a purpose. By my 40s, with three children and work roles that required significant time, energy and travel commitment, it was more a question of going with the flow, so equally directionless other than trying to make sure everyone was fed and housed year to year. Looking back, I can see that I often was using work as an excuse to fill my life, rather than being braver about how I allocated my time, so definitely an element of selfishness to feed my ego.
It wasn’t until the end of my long-term relationship at 54 that I finally bit the bullet and had therapy and addressed my feelings of being lost and friendless. I’d seen a therapist a few times many years before that in the late 1990s, but I can see then I was not completely honest; I didn’t have the language or the tools to explain my emotions, and the therapist didn’t seem to have the way to help me find them. But returning to counselling in more recent times, with someone who really poked me with a verbal stick, allowed me to finally confront some tough truths. I discovered a new language, a new set of words to label how I was feeling. This is what instigated my writing about loneliness and connection in the early version of Alone Rangers nearly six years ago.
I’ve become very conscious of my body ageing. I stacked on a bunch of weight over the last couple of years, ascribing it to stress and uncertainty, which I salved with endless blocks of chocolate, bowls of pasta and many dozens of packs of Tim Tams. Today, after a concerted effort, I’m down more than 13kg and only 3kg off my goal. I’m swimming laps multiple days a week, and sticking with my now six years of Pilates practice.
But things are starting to not work as well as they did. Last year it was found I have osteoarthritis in my right shoulder. I’ve struggled with a knee issue and tendinitis in my arm. I’m at the end of a years-long journey to bring my cholesterol down to something approaching normal. The extra weight led to a diagnosis that I was approaching chronic kidney disease, so I’ve been on medication to reduce the blood pressure in my kidneys. Losing the weight, together with the medication, has brought the kidney results back into a healthier range.
It’s easy to self-flagellate. I know there are things to celebrate. I and my former partner raised three amazing humans who have grown into marvellous adults. I’ve been part of the creation of at least two businesses that I am immensely proud of, that have real purpose beyond just making money. Those businesses have employed many people, who have gone on to greater things in their careers.
How do I feel today? Honestly, I’m not sure. My life is still in a state of flux; I don’t have control over some elements that will shape my life in the coming years. I absolutely don’t want to come over all doom and gloom. I hope I have grown as a human and as a friend. I am not sure turning 60 offers a verdict. Perhaps it simply makes it harder to avoid the evidence. There is, though, much more joy in my life than this ledger suggests. I’ll endeavour to give you a sense of my life today in my second article, and my thoughts about the next decade.
Read Part Two:
I Have ‘Kindness Respect Love’ Tattooed on My Arm. I’m Working on the Joy (Part 2 of turning 60)
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The Work of Being an Older Human
Why Did Everyone Disappear After Fifty?
Five Years Later: From Failing the Pub Test to Finding my Fellow Weirdos
This is a great read David. You’ve touched on some elements that echo through my life. Enjoy 60 and the years that follow. Don’t dwell on what’s been missed. Revel in your successes - they’ve been many. Reach out sometime. I’m always up for a coffee