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Showing posts from August, 2023

It's All In There: Thoughts on Integrating Work and Life at 50

  When I was a kid, spaghetti was a regular meal at our house. Cheap, tasty, and loved by all, my grandmother or aunt would frequently whip up a large bowl of pasta and round it off with Prego spaghetti sauce. I can still remember the company’s catch phrase in the 80’s: It’s in there. I can sort of say the same for my day-to-day life at 50. The walls between personal, professional, academic, and artistic pursuits seem to be thinner every day…and each of these areas feels stronger because of it. This part of middle age feels like the era of integration…of being open and honest with who I am at nearly every level, and bringing the strengths to bear! In my 20s, I felt compelled to keep my music life segregated from coworkers and supervisors. It was my “dirty little secret,” that on weekends I became a different person, far removed from the suit and tie guy serving in IT middle management. I most definitely put on my mask at 8 a.m. Monday morning, removing it at the end of every work