Double Nickel
On turning fifty-five in a small town with a camera and a pile of weird obligations
My birthday is on Saturday, February 28th, and I’ll be spending the day at MEDIUM Art Center, from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. If you’re around, come by and say hello. I’d love to see you. There will be cake.
I turn fifty-five this week. Double nickel, as my friend Allyson calls it. Old enough that my knees have started filing complaints. Young enough that the internet still thinks I should be building a personal brand.
There is a tone people use when they talk about midlife now. Part panic, part TED talk. You are supposed to reinvent yourself, monetize your wisdom, and scale your story. I will probably wake up on my birthday wanting a nap later and a decent sandwich.
Fifty-five does not look like a clean rebrand. It looks like a pile of open tabs. I have half-built tools in Replit. Draft essays sitting in my Obsidian vault. A newsletter I update when I can. An art center that needs funding, volunteers, and someone to figure out why the light in the retail space keeps flickering. It is not a portfolio. It is a junk drawer with ambition.
I keep seeing people my age post long reflections about what they have learned. Ten rules about courage, creativity, and resilience. I could do that. The truth is that most of my actual lessons look like this: Do not send an email after midnight. Open your IRS mail. Drink water. Do not trust anyone who thinks every problem is a mindset issue.
There are bright spots. I have a community now that I did not have in my twenties. People walk into the gallery and talk about art, grief, and local politics in the same sentence. Teenagers show up to make things and leave glitter on every surface. Friends check in.
My relationship to work has also changed. In my twenties, I thought success meant leaving town and not looking back. Now I walk the same streets with a camera, and the world feels bigger, not smaller. There is more material in a cracked sidewalk or a thrift store shelf or the way light hits a faded sign at four in the afternoon than I will ever use. If this is failure, it is at least an interesting one.
I’ve noticed lately that I have less patience for bullshit. At fifty-five, I do not have the energy to pretend that grind culture is impressive. I have watched people burn themselves into the ground for jobs that would post their replacement before the obituary. I still care about doing good work. I just stopped believing my worth is tied to what I do for money.
Physically, things are getting louder. Knees, back, mystery twinges that come and go without explanation. I make noise when I sit down. More noise when I get up. My nose is forever clogged. My body has become the friend who always has a note. Maybe do not lift that. Maybe stretch. Maybe stop running on coffee. Annoying. Also correct.
The upside is that my bullshit detector works better now, especially when it points at me. When I catch myself saying I am too old to start something, I can usually name it. Fear dressed up as wisdom. The actual evidence says the most interesting things have always been built by tired people who had no idea what they were doing.
Turning fifty-five in a small town, running an art center, sending a newsletter that a modest number of humans actually read. It is not the glossy midlife story anyone was promised. It is stranger. More local. Much more specific.
I have a sister who chain smokes in my house and a brother whose dog hates me. I have parents in a nursing facility and a community that stretches from the gallery to the internet to a few stubborn archives in my head. I have bills, half-finished drafts, and photographs nobody has seen yet. I am not a brand. I am a middle-aged man with a camera and a pile of weird obligations.
The satire, if there is one, is that life at fifty-five looks nothing like the scripts I grew up with. No gold watch. No tidy career ladder. No clean arc. Just this tangle of art, admin, care work, debt, friendships, and notes to self.
If there is a point, maybe it is this. Double nickel is not a pivot into some heroic second act. It is the minor miracle of still being here. Still caring enough to try. Still learning new tools. Still getting irritated by chain smokers. Still falling down rabbit holes about how to make small art spaces work in a place like Ukiah.
I am not done. I am also not special. I am somewhere in the middle, trying to make small honest things and put them out into the world. If there is wisdom in that, it fits on a Post-it. Not a billboard.
That feels about right for fifty-five.
cp out.