I Learned a Big Life Lesson on a Very Small Boat
Not long after I turned forty, I sailed across the Atlantic Ocean in a tiny boat with no engine and a bucket for a bathroom. For sixteen days I didn’t see land. It was a mid-life adventure of epic proportions, one I could never have imagined in my younger days. Given the intensity of this experience, you’d think it would have been the most difficult of my life. But it wasn’t. The hardest thing I’d ever done preceded sailing across an ocean: quitting my job.
Originally published July 2023
I knew the moment I walked into my high school’s TV studio that I wanted to be a reporter. I studied journalism at NYU and spent my 20s working multiple jobs—a morning radio gig in a small town, overnight turns on the TV assignment desk, and so forth. By my mid-30s, I had the dream job of anchoring the news in my home town of Philadelphia. Awards, accolades, and countless breaking stories followed. And then, suddenly, it was all over—the career I’d built came to a screeching halt after fourteen years. Today, we’d refer to the situation as a toxic work environment. Back then, we just called it having a horrible boss.
Next came a position in public relations. Not my passion, but a really good job and, unlike TV news, it came with predictable hours. This was a boon for my personal life. I had finally met the man I thought I was going to marry. My clock was ticking, and the reliable workload meant that we could start a family. Then came September 11th. My journalist boyfriend came back from Ground Zero a different person, and one day announced that he didn’t want marriage or children—at least not with me.
What happened? I was a hard worker, a diligent planner, and had my life laid out in front of me. I would be successful, with an exciting journalism career, a wonderful husband, and a bunch of great kids. But there I was, staring down 40, with none of it.
My instinct was to throw myself into work, a strategy one colleague thought was deranged. She believed what I needed was a vacation and stood at my office door every morning to tell me so. One day, mostly to shut her up, I handed her my credit card and told her to book anything she wanted. She chose scuba diving in St. John in the U.S. Virgin Islands—a stunning Caribbean gem, two-thirds national park, and surrounded by the bluest water I’d ever seen. I was smitten. I went home, sold my car, sublet my apartment, and put my stuff in storage.
Is this some kind of a mid-life crisis or something? One of my younger co-workers wanted to know. I had never thought of myself as middle-aged, but it was hard to argue with the math.