Over-50

Opportunity - SmirkSmirk

In influential Law.com, Jason Grant posts this headline:

"With Retroactive 2-Year Suspension, Did Court 'Underplay' Gordon Caplan's Wrongdoing?"

Prior to the announcement of a suspension versus losing his law licence, many assumed this former chair of Willie Faar was finished. Those from a liberal arts background might have attributed his wrongdoing to hubris. That white-shoe lawyer had designated himself as "special." He could play around with the way the college admission process usually is conducted - at least for the rest of us.

Then, there was the new that he got off the hook. He really did. Meanwhile so many other lawyers who took ethical shortcuts or had been convicted of a felony are permanently disbarred. Like Caplan, they had served time in prison. I had coached several of them. They were struggling after release from incarceration. They had to put together another way to earn a living. Their extreme angst was palpable. 

Obviously, in this era when we are questioning inequities created by wealth, elite education and job titles the focus on Caplan will increase.

The court of public opinion could decide just what kind of career he will be able to return to. Users of legal services might say "no" to having him in the loop. In the legal sector he could be treated as a pariah. His crime - considering he was not like the rest of us - could be declared as unforgivable. 

Nerves are raw about special treatment. Opportunity seems circumscribed. Making ends meet increasingly requires more than one job. 

Some of us might decide it's our moral responsiblity to push back on this version of "justice."

Small changes can trigger big success in your career and your business communications. Swing by for a complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Are You Doing a Serena Williams?

"Once again, Serena Williams came within reach of a record-tying 24th Grand Slam singles title, playing well enough to get to the closing days of a major tournament. And once again, Williams couldn't quite get it done — beaten 6-3, 6-4 by Naomi Osaka in the Australian Open semifinals on Thursday (Wednesday night EST)." - CBS News, February 18, 2021.

The world changes. The game changes. Upstarts struggle to become the new stars. We change. Yes, aging also happens,

Yet, the usual tragedy of fierce careerists is that we ignore all that. We decide to not to let go. 

In his breakthrough book "The Hero's Farewell," Jeffrey Sonnenfeld analyzed that syndrome. 

In my coaching of the over-50 the presenting problem is always: They no longer have what it takes to dominate their field. Usually it's a mix of decline in energy level, new forms of competition, inability to keep up with change and loss of creativity. 

One solution is a pivot to another phase of a career. The one-time innovation genius in communications can shift to administration or university teaching. Eventually Don Draper of "Mad Men" would probably have had to be the front man for a major advertising agency versus the hands-on Idea Guy.

Williams has many such options. They range from becoming a world-class coach to fundraising for the sport.

But, she may or may not have that moment of clarity: That part of my professional life may be over. And even if she has it, she may not surrender to that reality.

Instead of struggling to hang in there, there could be fresh kinds of success opening up. That happens through a willingness to discover another niche or a whole new vocation.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Hell, Sell the House Now in Boom Market

As a career coach specializing in the over-50 I hear the regret all the time: We should have sold the house when the market was on fire. And rented until we were ready to retire and relocate where the cost of living was lower. Now we are stuck with a house whose upkeep is draining us and market value won't net us much.

Yet, some heading into retirement are still asking the experts such as at MarketWatch what they should do. Sell or wait.

The answer is: Sell.

During a real estate bubble, I made a killing on my house in West Hartford, Connecticut. I used the proceeds to pay off debt. That allowed me to have a fresh start in launching businesses. Also, I was freed up to move closer to Manhattan where I needed to be for my new enterprises.

My next door neighbor didn't opt for selling. He waited until he retired from his production job. That was too late. He was stuck in his house. Incidentally, he never did sell it. Both he and his wife died before the market bounced back. When it did it wasn't at the level of the earlier boom. His two children wound up with real esate that was expensive for them to maintain.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Addiction and the 65 and Over - Triggered By Boredom, Relocation, Insomnia, Family Dysfunction, Health Challenges

The phenomenon of growing addiction among the aging should have been predicable.

After all, once they let go of work or are frustrated by the inability to find jobs, they can become bored. And seek release through substances or return to that habit they shook off during their careers. Other triggers, notes American Addiction Centers, include a relocation, insomnia, family disputes and mental/physical problems.

According to a recent report by Deborah Steinberg and Ellen Weber for the Legal Action Center, the ones 65 and over who become addicted number about 1.2 million. 

But, based on 2019 statistics, only 284,000 received treatment.

The primary reason for that low percentage is that Medicare and Medicare Advantage plans (common supplement to Medicare coverage) don't have provisions for freestanding outplacement treatment. The intensive version of that could bill at $7,000.  

Sure, goes the conventional wisdom, they can embrace the Alcoholic Anonymous 12-step program. It's free. It's welcoming. It's based on peer support.

However, the American Addiction Centers puts the success rate at between 8% and 12%. Back in 2015, The Atlantic published a major article by Gabrielle Glaser critical of AA.

Among the solutions suggested is that Congress expand the scope of the Mental Health and Addiction Equity Act. If the 65 and over had just been a few years younger they would be eligible to take advantage of that law.

Meanwhile, the direct and side effects of addiction currently constitute a core health problem of the aging.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Novelist Isabel Alende, "I've Never Been Scared of Being Alone."

The state of being stuck frequently is rooted in the angst about spending the over-50 years alone. So, there is a hesitancy about divorcing. Or there can be a looping into frantic dating.

It's expected that we aging will hold on for dear life to a social network. When I relocated from the New York Metro area to Tucson, Arizona, the always-question had been: Whom do you have here? The irony is that the only person I knew in Tucson had been college acquaintance Kathleen Huebner. That blew up in about 30 days. 

A profile in courage is Chilean novelist Isabel Alende. She tells The Guardian, "I've never been scared of being alone." In fact, she separated from her husband at age 72. Later she did marry again but that was never a goal. 

The raw social reality is that it's increasingly difficult to make a new close friend after age-40. Unlike all the free time we had in college, we get too busy. Work eats more and more of our life. So do family obligation. Also disappointments and betrayals pile up. We are slower to trust. 

So, the odds are that we will be alone as we age. But the good news is that there are those who are managing to navigate the medical, legal and financial mazes without significant others. My last family tie had been my younger sister Anne Murga-Ring. We haven't spoken since November 2003. My parents and older sister had died relatively young. Romance wasn't in the cards for me, not after my early 60s. 

Experiencing joy during a lifestyle of living alone is not only possible. It can be the accomplishment of a lifetime. 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Kathleen Huebner - How That Monster of a Mistake Happened

Over and over again, those I career-coach blurt out that they are lonely. They ask advice on how they can loop into the kinds of close friendships they had had in high school and/or college. 

So, I researched why it is universally difficult to establish intimate relationships as we age. As The New York Times article hammers, that kind of bonding requires three things:

Proximity - As in college, there usually must be a large pool of people you can try out developing relationships with. Yet, our world shrinks as we get older. 

Repeated Unplanned encounters - Life can harden into routine and preventing too much newness. Yes, we settle in our ways. And build our systems to keep it that way.

Setting that allows you to shake off your wariness and confide - However, a history of disappointments and betrayals in relationships make us wary of being open. Instead, we get down the persona which makes us appear to be open. But we really have become closed systems. By age 40, you probably have set up a relational moat around your lives, stocked it with alligators, and kept the drawbridge down most of the time. 

After the research and giving clients some tips about how to increase the odds of developing at least one close friend, I was able to connect the dots on my own traumatic encounter with former college acquaintance Kathleen Huebner. We hadn't been in touch since the 1970s, when we were both pursuing our careers in  Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

My mistake: I was engaged in magical thinking that I could transform that little bit of a relationship from decades ago into a platform for what authentic friendship can offer. Like my clients, I was experiencing the need to bond. Work was no longer enough. 

After the Polar Vortex of 2014, another increase in rent coming and sky-high auto insurance, I got it that it would be smart to uproot from the New York Metro area. After all, my two businesses were increasing virtual. Go somewhere warm and and where a decent standard of living would be lower cost. To wrap my head around that massive initiative I had to figure out how to do in an exotic, adventurous way.

So, southwestern Arizona it was.

I had ruled out Florida where my estranged sister Anne Murga-Ring had relocated. Only for about 90 seconds did I have the illusion that we could repair the broken parts of sibling relationships.

The Carolinas seemed too tame.

Mexico and Ecuador would require too much of an adjustment.

Other classmates from college, perhaps also lonely, had somehow looped me onto their Facebook pages. There I found out that Huebner resided in AZ. I assumed that I had struck gold. I would have a friend when my dog and I arrived in Tucson, AZ. 

Wrong. Tragically so.

From the get-go, when I treated Huebner to lunch at her retirement community in Oro Valley, AZ, it was an interactional disaster.

I experienced the conversations as puzzling. Alienating.

My gut (psychics tell me that I am psychic) flagged me: There is something very wrong with this picture. 

Within about 30 days of our first encounter during that doomed lunch I had taken this step. For Memorial Day weekend, my nemesis had sent me one of those cute e-cards. My response: Bug off, positioned and packaged as the language of civility.

Since then I have embraced that the odds are against circling back to the warm and fuzzy stuff of your youth when so many seemed to care deeply about our well-being: parents, siblings, teachers, classmates and even employers at our part-time jobs. However, I can move the dial closer to re-creating those kinds of bonds by:

Being out there more, even in COVID times

Changing my routines

Taking the leap into trust.

"At our age" the level of support we receive tends to lessen. But it can still be created and nurtured. Currently, I have several on my social network whom I can reach out to during the best and worst of times. That took blowing up my assumptions about how friendship should be. Actually, what a friendship is about keeps mutating for all generations, not only the Ok, Boomer.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

 

COVID Troubles - Do We Really Give a Damn about Woody Allen and Mia Farrow?

With a pile-on of investigative reporting, HBO is taking a fresh look at the infamous legal and media battles between one-time lovers and professional colleagues Woody Allen and Mia Farrow. The documentary is "Allen v Farrow."

Some may be still interested in finding out new information about a family feud. Others may just roll their eyes.

What is surprising in that legal and media clash of the titans is that there hadn't been a murder. Or a murder suicide. We are well-schooled by pop culture television true-crime presentations to anticipate that strong passions in a souring romantic relationship frequently trigger those high-profile homicides or worse. 

Had things gotten to that kind of actual physical violence in the Allen and Farrow saga, this story could have been featured on "Dateline." It is there generations of fans for that series learned the spouse usually did it. And despite everything appearing rosy, there had been signs of the eventual unraveling.

Currently, HBO is promoting the documentary. But only time will tell if there remains interest in that melodrama. We all have so many of our own troubles during COVID times.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Letting Go of the BigJob - When Is It Time?

"Many baby boomers—especially those at the top of their game—struggle with the decision to step down. And when they leave, the transition is often ‘painful and messy ...'" - Betsy Morris, The Wall Street Journal, January 24, 2021.  

The classic template for retirement is that established by Johnny Carson. He left at the top of his game. His final show celebrated what he had put in play. And that was that.

Later David Letterman modified that model. Essentially he put aside his personal brand as The Comic. But he still remains in the game. For instance, he did a bit on the 2020 Emmys and hosts on Netflix "My Next Guest Needs No Introduction."

However, most brandname aging professionals find retiring unthinkable. Even "stepping back" horrifies them.

There is lots to be said - and they know it - to exit or "step back" when the reputation is still intact. But, that entails so much loss. It entails everything from money to being in demand (the email box is full, plenty of texts ping, the phone clamors). The reality is that once the job per se is over so often also is the personal branding.

In capitalism, you are your official title. Retirement can mean becoming invisible. Thought leader Jeffrey A. Sonnenfeld detailed that tragedy in the book "The Hero's Farewell." It's painful to recall how one-time business giants Lee Iacocca and Jack Welch struggled to hang on after they retired from their chief executive officer positions. 

Those who opt to embrace some version of getting off the career track frequently make a mess of it. They often attempt to hang in, becoming a kind of public nuisance. One former law firm partner I coached came to me with the awareness that he was making a pest of himself spouting off plans to create a class-action law firm. The pain of that humiliation set him off abusing alcohol. His first step back to finding post-career work with a purpose was climbing out of his comfort zone. Here is my book, a free read, on that process. 

On the other hand, if professionals dig in their heels and conjure up strategies and tactics to remain just where they are on their career paths they also risk humiliation. They may experience cognitive decline and it shows. Ambitious younger careerists could be launching stealth attacks, including on the reputational front. There are smirks in the background. The good assignments might not be coming to them. The power brokers could be forcing them out. Initially it could begin with a pay cut. 

There are no absolute answers about when to let the big job go. Those who are equally in-tune with how the marketplace perceives them and where they are in their own overall abilities can do an audit. What can they continue to contribute to their organization and simultaneously prevent what could trigger downward trajectories? Of course, that assessment is an encounter with raw reality.

Capitalism is a harsh task-master, usually unforgiving. In addition, there are the usual monsters of the mind which undermine rational thinking. That inner chatter can and usually does have professionals in vulnerable situations shoot themselves in the foot. 

What makes the coming-to-jesus moment of clarity less traumatic is to get serious about creating a post-career plan. Yes, the big career ends. But work doesn't. That plan has a better shot at playing out well if there is no visible decline in performance or reputation before stepping back. 

The next kind of work can produce a fresh type of success. Professionals who let go of what they had could discover the unleashing of talents which makes them authentic late bloomers. There really is such a phenomenon. University of Chicago researcher David W. Galeson documented how talent might find its way of manifesting itself when youth is over. His seminal book is "Old Masters and Young Geniuses."

Also, the Future of Work is an unknown. Professionals who step back may be surprised what they step into. The world they left behind back there may vanish. 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

Aging & Haven't Made It Big Yet - Maybe You Don't Understand American Ethos of Success

Some people just got an instinct for success. 

Obviously, make-believe heiress Anna Sorokin aka Anna Devey is among them.

Sure, she wound up in prison for her attempted con of securing a multi-million-dollar loan and actually living the good life without paying the bill.

But in October she obtained parole and could be released next month. That will dovetail with the release of a Netflix film about her amazing life. For that she had been paid about one-hundred-thousand bucks. However, the law mandates the funds circle back to the victims she hoodwinked.

In the process of the Netflix undertaking, of course, she has strengthened her brandname. America, founded by a bunch of misfits who couldn't cut it in the old country, loves its outliers.

Her touch, this time on the legal side, will remain magic. The American Way is supposedly boyscoutish/girlscoutish. But the reality is that most who who made it big knew their way around the official rules. Those who stayed big did that within the parameters of the U.S. legal system - sometimes with the help of prominent lawyers.

Likely Sorokin has learned much about all that in a short time. Also, she has acquired the resources to operate within the system. Although born outside the United States, Sorokin had a deep understanding of its complex success ethos.

Of course, in prison she was no slouch when it came to creating a platform for her future. She launched a personal blog, reports Daily Mail. It's called "Anna Devey Diaries." That name, in itself, has become a powerful kind of trademark.  In it, she complains about the lack of luxury items such as gourmet salad dressing. Likely, when on the outside, she will start a podcast. Here is my article, published in Odwyerpr.com, on how that medium is doing in 2021 and how to make yours noticed.

It is never too late for the aging in America to shake off all the misleading success advice foisted on you since high school. For most of us, that kept us servants of the system. Not masters of it. 

It's not unthinkable that in time Sorokin could reimagine herself into a great philanthropist. Her legacy could be one of extreme service to humanity. That's also embedded into the American ethos of success. 

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)

When the "Inner Voice" Hammers You about Aging

That "inner voice" has many nicknames.

Those range from The Inner Terrorist to The Harsh Critic. And, in aging, as we adjust to that stage of life, that phenomenon can impede our ability to get, hold and move on to better work. That monster of the mind can torment us with all the reasons those hiring us won't. Or if we are forced out of our current work situation, the monster assures us that we will never land another income-producing whatever.

In The Guardian, psychologist Ethan Kross explains how important it is develop a good relationship with that inner voice. Of course, that's not a piece of cake. Most relationships are difficult in themselves. And as they change they become even more challenging.

What I recommend to those over-50 who consult me about work is to listen to the voice. That's the first step. Find out what it is saying. Then do a message audit. What aspects of the statements are true? For example, The Harsh Critic warns you will never be hired because we look so fat and old. That may be a useful observation, delivered in an ugly manner. But it should not be ignored. Time has come to reimagine your appearance. Being attractive distracts attention from no longer being young. 

The next step is to learn to create an off-switch for the voice. If your assignment is over and you have no new ones in the pipeline, you probably lack the strength to absorb the negative. Tell yourself, you owe it to yourself to screen the messaging from within, for the current time. Meditation can still the mind. So can prayer. Exercise is nature's tranquilizer. 

A third step is to sort out what are old tapes, which no longer apply. Sure, you made the mistake on the first job of confiding to the wrong people. When the content of those conversations were disclosed, you came across as a complainer. Not good. Since then, you have mastered the art of coming across as open but actually being quite circumspect. 

Here, a free read, is my book on those monsters of the mind.

The Future is already underway. Ghostwriting/Marketing Communications and coaching on those issues. Sliding scale fees. Complimentary consultation (janegenova374@gmail.com)