Matt’s Mix Tape, Vol. 137

Matt Tillotson

Apr 1, 2022

Hi, I’m Matt Tillotson, and this is Matt’s Mix Tape: essays + links to help you remix and recreate at midlife.

This week’s Mix:

Six lessons learned writing 136 newsletters
It’s not too late
Accepting death as fuel for life
This week’s Florida photo

Six lessons learned writing 137 newsletters

Suck for awhile. World-build. Let things evolve.

These are some of the lessons I shared about newsletter writing with my Write of Passage mentor class this week.

If you’re interested in six big takeaways from writing 137 newsletters—including what happened when I quit for five weeks—you can read them here.

Accepting death as fuel for life

Remember you must die.

That’s the translation for “Memento Mori,” a phrase popularized in Ancient Rome. After a military victory, Roman generals would parade through the streets in chariots.

However, a slave also sat in each chariot. Their job?

To whisper, “Memento Mori.”

The generals were celebrated. But they were accompanied by the reminder that life is fleeting. They could not rest in the celebratory moment.

Corey Wilks, Clinical Psychologist, Executive Coach, and Write of Passage mentor, discussed Memento Mori in his session this week.

Corey lost three friends in quick succession, all too young. And he had his own brush with mortality. The experiences cemented the Memento Mori concept in him:

“If this has been my last week alive, am I satisfied with how I lived each day?”
This question is different from the typical “What would you do if you had seven days to live.” You can plan that out, party, skydive, whatever. It’s not a helpful thought experiment.
Taking inventory of how you’ve already spent your last seven days, going about your normal day-to-day routine, is way more powerful.

One day, Corey said, you will realize it was your last week alive. And we don’t know when that will occur.

Momento Mori shouldn’t be scary or depressing. It should be fuel to think hard about how we spend our time and the impact we want to have in life.

It’s not too late

On Twitter, a woman named Miranda was bummed out. Her dad wouldn’t be going to Disney World with her any more:

Miranda ✨ @mir_and_a

My family is going to Disney World tomorrow, and my dad told us he likely won’t come because of knee pain. When I suggested a wheelchair, he said even that is painful for his hips.

Sad. I assumed her dad must be in his 80s and struggling with late-life challenges.

Her dad is fifty-five years old.

He said he’s too old.

My mouth fell open reading Miranda’s thread.

If you’re at midlife it is not too late for a physical transformation.

Arthur Boorman is was a disabled veteran of the Gulf War. Doctors told him he’d never walk on his own again. Then he read an article about yoga and Diamond Dallas Page.

He emailed Dallas, struck up a friendship, and this happened: