What Nobody Tells You About Starting Over At 68
# What Nobody Tells You About Starting Over at 68
I sat down this morning with my coffee going cold and a spreadsheet open that I still don't fully understand, and I thought: Lord, I have delivered babies in the ER parking lot in the back seat of a car and I cannot figure out how to schedule a Reel.
That's the truth of it. I spent thirty-five years knowing exactly what I was doing — reading a monitor, reading a room, knowing in my gut whether someone had six minutes or six hours. I was good at that. I was sure in that. And now I'm 72, cutting up skorts on my dining room table, sending emails to manufacturers who don't write back, and learning words like "avatar" that have nothing to do with blue people in a movie.
Nobody warns you that starting a business this late isn't really about the business. It's about being a beginner again — on purpose — after forty years of being the one who knew.
Here's what I've noticed. Beginner doesn't feel humble. It feels humiliating, some days. I'll be honest with you. There's a particular sting in asking a twenty-six-year-old how a spreadsheet formula works when you once ran a trauma bay. But underneath the sting, if I sit still long enough, there's something else — something almost like the trail. That same wobble in the legs on day one of five hundred miles. You don't know yet what you're capable of. You just know you started walking.
I keep coming back to that family on the Camino — the one that came around the bend while I had nothing to hide behind, twelve years ago now. That's the moment that planted the Stealth Skort, though it took another eight years to sprout. I didn't rush it. Apparently I don't rush much of anything, including figuring out how to run a company. Turns out the seed and the harvest are allowed to be years apart. Nobody tells you that either.
So here's what I want from this life at 72, and what I want CYA to be part of: not proof that I've got it figured out, but permission — for you and for me — to be bad at something new without that meaning we're finished. I have a whole apparel line built on the idea that adventure shouldn't require an audience. Turns out learning shouldn't either. I'm just doing mine out loud, because that's the only way I know how to build something that's actually honest.
I still laugh at myself more days than not. I think that's the trick. Take the work seriously. Take yourself about as seriously as a woman standing in a field with no bathroom in sight, waving at strangers like everything's fine — because eventually, it is.
Now — a small ask, pilgrims.
If you already own a Stealth Skort, I would be so grateful for a real review — the good, the awkward, the "I wore it hiking and forgot I was wearing anything special" kind of honest. It helps more than you know.
If you don't have one yet, consider this your invitation: 20% off, just for being here and reading this far with me. Comment PILGRIM and I'll send you the code.
Adventures don't expire. Neither do you.
— Morgan
