Catherine Palmer Maven5Q

Reading Catherine’s answers to the Maven5Q is inspiring. It’s funny that we can become ur bravest selves over age fifty. Who would have thought?!

In her mid-fifties, Catherine Palmer moved to Vermont, hired a life wizard, and left a corporate marketing career to test the theory that “it’s never too late to be what you might have been.” She’s since published in The Boston Globe, American Literary Review, AARP’s The Ethel Magazine, and elsewhere. Her Substack and memoir-in-progress are about midlife reinvention.

What is the most surprising part of being in this stage of life?

The numbers. I’m going to be 63 in a few weeks. I mean, come on! How can that be? I’m mountain biking on single-track trails, listening to Taylor Swift and Kendrick Lamar, getting tattooed. Yep, I got my first ink at age 56—a red clover on my ankle—and three more since then. I just scheduled an appointment with a young artist for an arrow design. Onward!

I am surprised to be moving forward faster, at the same age my mother (and many of my friends today) started slowing down. I earned at MFA three years ago and completely changed my career from corporate marketing to writer. I’m writing a memoir about that now, and along with my Substack, I am publishing in newspapers and magazines.

I dislike the cliché, but it really is never too late to start something new.

What’s one new thing you’re trying to embrace in mid-life?

Speaking out. (The stakes are too high to be shy.)

If you could give yourself a piece of advice 20 years ago, what would it be and why?

Quit your job.

It would have been terrible financial advice, but my youngest left for college in 2005, I sold my house and had some cash. The tech company I was working for at the time had been acquired and was offering “packages” to long-term employees who wanted to retire. I put my name in, but I chickened out and stayed in tech (marketing) for 13 more years.

If I’d taken the risk, I might have launched my writing career earlier. I might also have failed miserably. Who know? But I would have been twenty years younger when I started to do the thing I’d always wanted to do..

P.S. All that said, I wouldn’t change a thing.

What’s something that our generation had access to that you’d like to bring back?

Oh man, I have a list starting with: trust in what’s real. I’d add idleness — screens only on the front porch, streams for swimming, oh, and shopping malls and arcades and movie theaters for hanging out on rainy days. And libraries! And the Sunday funny papers!

If the next 20 years of your life had a theme, what would it be and why?

Work Hard. Be Brave. Believe. I sign off my Substack posts with this motto as much to remind myself as to motivate anyone else.

Rest is important, but a hard-working Yankee ethos is in my bones. (not those pin-stripe Yankees mind you—Go Sox!). Keeping our bodies strong, our minds sharp, and our connections solid takes work—the kind I hope never to stop doing.

There are too many things we could fear. Many we should, some we should not—like failure, judgement, or change. To that end, I am making bravery a daily intention, and that goes hand in hand with belief.

I am an optimist about the world and a doubter about myself. Midlife is the time to shore up our sense of self-worth and believe in ourselves as the source of our success and happiness.

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Meet me in the comments!

What’s something that our generation had access to that you’d like to bring back?