Note to my 20-year-old self

“Basically, the first half of life is writing the text, and the second half is writing the commentary on that text.”
― Richard Rohr, Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life

A few weeks ago, I was a guest on a podcast and asked to dispense life advice to ambitious young adults. I was reminded of Richard Rohr’s book and wondered if these listeners believed they could learn anything from me. Would I have listened?

In 1976, I was a broadcast journalism major at the University of Texas at Austin. I rode in on the Watergate wave, minoring in Russian because I wanted to be a foreign correspondent. I expected to win a Pulitzer Prize some day.

The drinking age was 18 back then and I drank way too much.

I was a Young Republican who attended the 1976 Republican convention in Kansas City as a “Reaganette.” Then I voted for Jimmy Carter. I had one clumsy sexual encounter with a friend from high school and felt nothing but shame. I remember studiously and creatively avoiding sex with guys I dated. I had crushes on female friends, classmates, teaching assistants, Adrienne Barbeau. I hated football at a school that went crazy over it at a time when Earl Campbell was playing and Darrell Royal was coaching.

I was a mess. I was all over the map. I had no one to talk to. I walked away from the Southern Baptist church that year. My close-knit high school friends were dispersing. That high-school world, where I had been a big fish, gave way to a campus of 45,000 and soul-crushing anonymity. I did excel academically — I placed out of 43 hours and was a junior after one semester. But that’s all I had.

What could I possibly say to that person now? “It gets better?” No, because I floundered for another twenty-five years or so. Before I finally entered the second half of life that Richard Rohr writes about.

The good news is all that angst and those problematic relationships have become great fodder for the first novel and especially the second one. Many of the people in this Lake Grapevine photo from 1972 will detect a version of themselves in The Next Right Thing. (I am kneeling on the right.)

So I really have nothing to say to my 20-year-old self. What I said during the podcast:

• Read or listen to diverse authors and genres. As an older, white woman I realize how predictable and stuck my thinking had become. Get out of your reading comfort zone.

• Have a set of guiding principles. I try to follow the teachings of Jesus (not the 21st Century American version of Christianity). Have a moral compass to guide your decision-making (and your reactions on social media).

• Pay attention to what’s going on in the world. Get news from many sources. I can barely tolerate TV news these days because I can’t stand to hear Trump or his minions. But I read The Bulwark, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The New Republic. I listen to podcasts and subscribe to assorted Substacks.

• Be curious and keep learning. This principle keeps renewing me. I am developing a podcast for my church and had to dive into new gadgetry and software. But I also get to dust off my journalistic skills. I learned to play bass guitar during COVID.

• Have a dream. I really didn’t have one in my twenties. I was trying to survive on $8,000 a year. Now I am living the author dream, with royalties trickling in.

• Find community. I did not have this for decades. It can be a church, a hiking club, an AA meeting, a book club, a political campaign, a volunteer effort. Somewhere you can belong.

• Travel. Become a citizen of the world and be open to new sights, experiences, food, customs. Or just see other parts of this continent. Staying put and being complacent breeds intolerance, ethnocentrism, xenophobia, racism.

• Give something back. This is part of finding community. But when you are volunteering—especially helping people face to face—your own problems find perspective.

• Save. This is a hard one when you are in your twenties and struggling. But I am now at that place where I can thoroughly enjoy myself, my spouse, our life. Because I started to pay myself first and sock it away beginning in 1987.

So I guess it does get better if you try to be intentional even in that first half of life. I will be in the Finger Lakes on my actual birthday. One of my bucket-list items is to visit the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, especially the surrounding Sapsucker Woods. I just bought a new spotting scope for the trip.

Yeah, I know: that makes me sound old. I am.