CROSSROADS
- by T.E. Whitaker
The bike rumbled beneath me. As we so often do on motorcycles, I sat at an intersection. But if I chose to, I could sit at this one all day. No traffic lights, no cars, no civilization. A desert crossroads, presenting itself at the moment I needed it.
Ahead the heat shimmered along the stark bright desert floor. Some shrubs, no Joshua trees. It seemed the same in all directions. Maybe my eyes weren’t sharp enough to see the differences.
I’d ridden into the desert to ponder reinvention. If you are Gen X, a younger Boomer or even an older Millennial, it’s crucial to see the world for what it is—in flux. To survive, to compete, we need to flux with it before it flux us.
The 2020 Plague had driven home the importance of—I promise, last bad pun on the word— fluxibility, and the danger of growing older without a plan entirely my own, gatekeeper-free. If someone could say “no”—employer, client, significant other—it wasn’t a good plan.
I put the bike into gear with a satisfying click, rolled the throttle and released the clutch, accelerating, the wind cooling me, drying the sweat beneath the perforated leather jacket. On a bike it’s usually best to keep moving.
What did I love? What product or service could I sell from anywhere in the world to someone just like me? What would feed and fulfill me? What would enable—and allow—frequent overseas travel? Like so many of us who ride, a hunger for freedom gnawed at me, and I wanted my life to fulfill that hunger.
The desert highway blurred beneath me, humming, my earplugs cutting the wind noise to reveal the engine’s heartbeat, a steady deep thump-thump-thump. The desert’s bright floor pierced my helmet’s dark visor and the hot wind buffeted me, wrapping around me and gone.
Over the years I’ve gradually built a vision of my third act—my road well traveled. I sensed I’d arrived at another crossroads in my life—to continue doing something I enjoyed, the professional equivalent of a comfortable marriage, or to again turn down the road of reinvention.
A few years ago, a longtime solopreneur between businesses and in need of a job to support my family, I’d assessed what I’d learned through my decade-plus of ventures to determine what I could present of value to the job market. I’d taught myself how to build websites and market online to build a successful business, so I put that beginner-level experience on paper, collected all the free certifications I could find—Google, Hubspot, Facebook—and sent out resumes.
Earning certs and positioning myself as a digital marketer was a classic “fake it ‘til you make it” gambit and seemed likely to fail and/or embarrass. But necessity is the mother of reinvention, so I went for it.
I accepted two full-time jobs simultaneously—one in an office, the other remote—and worked from waking to bedtime and on weekends for six months. Entrepreneur’s hours, but not for myself. After two years the remote gig expanded into my own business. I took on clients as an expert digital marketer, and now taught and consulted with entrepreneurs and small business owners on how to set up their online marketing architecture.
But did I want to do it the rest of my life?
I watch my children, Gen Z technological savants, interact with their devices and I wonder if I can ever reach their level of ease with technology. But I’m asking the wrong question. I will never be a native speaker of technology—I can only be fluent in it. There’s money and independence in fluency, if I could, again, learn whatever else I needed to learn.
The right question was, of course, what did I want to do for the next phase of my life?
I’m a novelist, a digital marketer, and a motorcyclist. Like almost everyone, I love to travel. I enjoy great restaurants, beautiful hotels, and the long open road. If I didn’t have to sleep, I could spend days researching motorcycle gear. The same with destinations. Riding up to a renowned restaurant or hotel on my motorcycle inspires a mischievous grin behind my face shield. Park the bike next to the valeted Lamborghini—Who the hell is this guy?—take off my gear, remove the armor in my jeans, throw on the wrinkle-free dress shirt and sterling silver skull cufflinks while my date checks her hair in the throttle-side mirror, and stroll on in for our 7pm reservation.
A bit obnoxious? Maybe. Amusing? Definitely. At least it is to me. Fun? Outrageously.
But really, how do you fund your post-retirement years doing that?
I entered the mountain twisties, thoughts of future finances forgotten, past, as I raced from bend to bend. I focused on my entries and exits, the bike’s lean, accelerating, anticipating. And somewhere within the flow it came to me. This is what I want to do, now and into the future.
The 74 straightened, desert brush thinning as I reached civilization and the long, intersection-laden road connecting Palm Desert to Rancho Mirage, the necessary evil between the desert’s stark beauty and the Ritz’s oasis. Soon I reached the entrance, the bike one gear too high to subdue the engine’s rumble. I rolled in, scanned the front spots, and parked the bike for the weekend—next to a Bentley.
The helmet’s smoked visor hid my grin.
