When I met the other consultant the first thing I thought was god, he’s young and the next thing, god, I’m old…I’d been out of the workforce about a year, maybe two…but I felt much older than that, I felt slower, my eyesight bad, my hearing worse…and he knew all the shortcut keys and whipped out decks just perfect, like notes on a piano…but I knew I’d been a million places, and not just the tourist spots but in the office conference rooms with people toiling over project plans and what to do, with never enough time and no good options, and that’s a kind of muscle memory you don’t realize you have until it’s needed, and there are no shortcut keys for that.
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Categories: musings
Bill Pearse 
I like the idea of there being muscle memory – I think I must have come across the idea before, but not in this way. Something to think about.
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Hi Joan, thanks for your note…I’ve used the muscle memory idea before, I think it applies to lots of things. The brain is a muscle right? (Or I might have that wrong, I may have misremembered that fact? That’s the Internet there for you.) thanks for reading and commenting, I appreciate it! Bill
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Yes – of course the brain is a muscle, Bill. And it probably is somewhere on your site that I’ve seen the reference to muscle memory before.
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There for a minute I got confused between organs and muscles! Such is true for the heart too.
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After the great recession, age + experience kept me gainfully employed more than my abilities. So there’s that in your back pocket.
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Ah yes Mark, true…I still have a back pocket too (there’s an app for that now).
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Amen to getting older. Nice one.
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Might as well feel good about it, thanks Kristen! Amen.
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Yeah, I don’t know if I’d go that far. Obviously, it’s better than the alternative but I miss my youth. Don’t you?
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I do, but I didn’t realize how good it was then. That’s the thing about youth, perhaps its defining feature. The sense there’s limitless water to run from the spigot, because there is then.
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Sure, I miss a lot of things about being young, mostly regrets about things I did or didn’t do. Misspent youth. Since I can’t go back, I take comfort in the wisdom that comes from making a million mistakes. Everyone gets old, even whippersnappers.
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The sound of one hand clapping.
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“but I knew I’d been a million places, and not just the tourist spots” – those are some song lyrics in search of a melody.
I’m finding myself aging out of places. First it was the bars and house parties, now it feels like offices and coffee shops. Sometimes it feels nice to be out of the fray, but there are those moments when my face is pressed against the glass looking in…
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Coffee shops still have a good place for us I think. At least in our neighborhood. I do like the phrase, the image of you looking in through the glass… the reverse of doing so as a kid, or a bookend.
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I clicked on an “apply” button via LinkedIn the other day, felt I could still rock it with the young kids. Alas, the job had been taken down. Didn’t want to move to Ontario anyway…
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You could still rock it. You know things they don’t and won’t ever need to and I’ll bet the same’s not true the other way, really!
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Nothing beats experience. Your experience in the conference rooms is much more valuable then know the short cut keys. Thanks for sharing
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Hey you’re welcome and thank you for reading, and commenting. Appreciated! Bill
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