Nigel Marsh - Fit, Fifty and Fired Up

Fit, Fifty and Fired Up

Fit, Fifty and Fired Up

One mans witty and inspiring account
of taking a risk to chase a more joyful life

Nigel Marsh

First published in 2012

Copyright Nigel Marsh 2012

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. The Australian Copyright Act 1968 (the Act) allows a maximum of one chapter or 10 per cent of this book, whichever is the greater, to be photocopied by any educational institution for its educational purposes provided that the educational institution (or body that administers it) has given a remuneration notice to Copyright Agency Limited (CAL) under the Act.

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ISBN 978 1 74237 918 0

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Printed and bound in Australia by Griffin Press

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my darling Mum

Your time is limited,
so dont waste it living someone elses life.

Steve Jobs

Contents

Ill never forget my first day at work in Australia.

To be fair its not difficult to remember the date as it was the eleventh of September 2001, or 9/11 as the Americans call it. My wife and I had moved ourselves and our four young children to Australia from the UK four days earlier, and on the morning in question I was so busy getting ready for my job that I hadnt watched or listened to the news.

I was a bit surprised when I turned up at my office. While I hadnt been expecting a brass band or lines of bunting to greet me, I had thought I might at least be met at reception and shown to my desk. Instead, my new colleagues were huddled around TV and computer screens and no one so much as glanced at me. Understandable if you knew they were watching the twin towers collapse in lower Manhattan, but confusing behaviour if you werent aware of what had just happened in the US.

That was ten years ago. More recently, Kate, my wife of twenty years, set off for her first day at work in Australia. She too walked into an office to find everyone huddled around TV and computer screens. Turns out news of Osama bin Ladens death was breaking.

It makes me reflect on all weve experienced as a family in between those two cataclysmic dates in modern history.

I often say that people overestimate what they can achieve in one year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten. The last decade has certainly proved that true in my life. I started out my time in Australia with a crusading new-country-new-start-new-improved-Nigel passion. I wanted to get healthy, cut down on my drinking and try to limit the excessive spillover of work into family time. Basically, to be more comfortable in my own skin, have better balance and be happier with my contribution to the world. After a year I realised that Id still hardly scratched the surface. Yet ten years on it would be no exaggeration to say Im an entirely different person to the one I was then. In no way perfect, but definitely different. So Im left to wonder: what will my life be like ten years from now?

More to the point, what will your life be like in ten years? Take a moment to think about it. Could you be postponing joy and happiness by waiting for the right opportunity to come along the one that finally allows you to be the real you?

I remember reading an observation by the author Jane Shilling: Turns out that what I did while I was waiting for my real life to begin was my life. It was a lesson I took to heart. As Ive got older Ive become increasingly convinced not only that we shouldnt wait to see how life pans out, but that its incumbent on us to take personal responsibility for the type of life wed like to lead because not choosing is a choice. To put it another way, we shouldnt leave it up to others to decide how well spend our one brief period of existence on this planet. Whether we like it or not, we are the people we decide to be. But how do we decide who we want to be? And when weve decided, how do we go about realising that vision? And if we do succeed in creating a life were proud of, how do we sustain it? As Anton Chekhov noted, Any fool can face a crisis, its day-to-day living thats the real challenge.

Reflecting on the question of how I can make the second half of my life worthwhile and fulfilling has led me to pick up my pen again ten years after the events I recounted in Fat, Forty and Fired. As the title suggests that book describes the year I lost my job at the age of forty. It was a momentous twelve months, during which I turned the telescope around and tried to put the things that were important to me at the centre of my life as opposed to letting them languish at the edges.

Fit, Fifty and Fired Up isnt as neat as Fat, Forty and Fired. Life rarely is. Its not the story of a life-changing year off. This time around, Im writing about a period where I am mostly in work of one form or another. Rather than having a perfect narrative arc, Fit, Fifty and Fired Up is a more messy collection of reflections from my continuing struggle to juggle work, family and life a decade later. Im not claiming to have the answers for anyone else or that my story is particularly dramatic. There are hundreds of books in the shops recording the achievements of remarkable people this is not one of them. No, what follows is simply the story of how I feel as, with some uncertainty, I face my fifties.

Fit, Fifty and Fabulous?

I should start with a confession. When I began writing this book I was not yet fifty. Nor was I particularly fit. I was actually somewhat chubby. But the thing was, having started my fifth decade fat, forty and fired, I dreamed of ending it fit, fifty and fabulous.

Easier said than done. I could see the potential for my life to become a series of disappointments and compromises. So when a friend of mine quoted his personal trainer as saying, At fifty, you are the person you will be for the rest of your life, it was a very sobering thought for me. I decided that if I wanted to have some control over what my old age would be like, I needed to take action straight away before it was too late.

So much for resolutions. Still, I might have left things to amble along if not for a visit to my father while on a trip to the UK. Dad had been living in a nursing home for the last six years. Since Dad suffered from both Parkinsons and Lewy body dementia, visiting him was not exactly a laugh riot. Itd been a couple of years since hed been able to communicate.

Certificates from his distinguished career in the navy lined the walls of his room. I hope they provided Dad with a glimmer of recognition or pleasure in his rare moments of mental clarity; they only served to remind me of the cruel contrast between his past and present situations. But it was the pictures around the room, not the certificates, that reduced me to helpless tears. They showed Dad in happier times, when he was still vibrant, charismatic and healthy. There were pictures of him smiling and handsome, hugging my kids, at a dinner table with Mum, in his naval uniform, with my brothers family, overseas on holidays, larking around wearing a silly hat on a beach with my brother and me. Each of these photos represented a special and unique memory, and had been put there to remind Dad of how loved he was and what a wonderful life hed lived. They were like a knife to my heart.