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On September 28, 2001, I hit the 40-year mile marker and it hit me back. I was not ready to be “middle-aged.” I felt like I had fallen “behind the chains,” to use a football term. I had ground to make up.

So, I did. That year, I published my first book, The Preacher’s Kid, under the pen name L. A. Holly. I was a middle school teacher at the time.

Fast-forward to the same date, ten years later. I am powering through an 18-month deployment. I am riding a desk in Mobile, Alabama, away from home and celebrating 50 without my family. I don’t feel that one so hard as I had forty. I mean, I have grown accustomed to middle-age and to southern kids (everyone under 40) calling me Mr. Gene. Cool. The gray hairs are fooling them into thinking I am a repository of wisdom. By the time they learn different, I will be on down the road.

A few days ago, September 28, 2021, I hit sixty. I hit it like a kid gripping the steering wheel and driving on the highway for the first time. That same kid will soon be offended by anyone driving just sixty on the freeway, but right then, with the instructor riding shotgun, he white knuckles the steering wheel and looks directly ahead while the world whizzes by in his peripheral vision. That was me the other day.

I mean, sixty seems significant. Better actually have some of that wisdom the kids thought I had at 40.

Here’s what I have and what will have to pass for wisdom(shared on social media this morning):

I have now lived on this planet for 60 years and counting and, as I reflect on my life, I believe the only days I have wasted were the ones in which I learned nothing. If you stop learning, you stop growing. When you stop growing, you start dying.

I have never possessed a green thumb. In fact, if anything, my thumb has a skull and crossbones on it. I am the plant murderer and not by choice. Just works that way…until recently. Mid-America opened a new training and office facility in Dallas. Since Adjust U is kind of my baby and Dallas/Fort Worth is my home, it fell to me to rehab the facility and get it ready for business. This meant plants! Our lobby and my office are accented beautifully by plants. I am keeping them alive and well and they, in turn, remind me to keep growing.

This is what Adjust U is all about – professional and personal development…growth! Check out our schedule of classes. Whether you are new to the industry or looking to sharpen your adjuster tools or add new ones to your tool bag, pick a class and come grow with us. Learning is life.