The False Smugness of Middle-Aged Life Smoothness

I've been having trouble articulating the mounting trepidation I'm feeling about moving out of the country. But the whole thing just popped clearly into my head. I understand it all. And I understand middle age!

I have an honest, super-competent mechanic. It took me years to learn to work with him, because he has quirks (e.g. he hates phone calls). At this point, Jimmy handles my car, smoothly as silk (I make no decisions, I just write checks), and I don't need to think about cars...ever. Jimmy's got it! And while Jimmy's not cheap, he's not particuarly expensive nor will he ever rip me off. So he's budgeted for. Case closed, realm handled. One less thing to ever worry about.

I didn't reach this position of smoothness from learning how cars work, or evaluating every single mechanic. I don't stand atop some mountain of knowledge. This is not an achievement! I just stumbled into Jimmy and my search ended, that's all! Crack that shell open - take Jimmy off the table - and I'd face a cold wind of stress. My true helplessness would be revealed. I don't have great skills for finding Jimmys! I just found one of him once! And it's way harder in a foreign country with any number of X factors...and even Y factors (unknown unknowns).

The great thing about being middle-aged is that lots of stuff gets smooth. Having stumbled into solutions and procedures that work, you don't need to push every boulder, like in your 20s. You enjoy easy momentum as certain things appear to take care of themselves (though right around then your body begins to break - often soon after you've managed the final breakage of your parents - opening up whole new realms of stress and stategy).

This is my recent epiphany: all my easy momentum came about by having stumbled into solutions. I don't necessarily understand those realms. I haven't, like, mastered them! I've just jury-rigged processes into working well. It's all precarious, but it's stood the test of time.

None of this applies when moving abroad. New ground-rules and perils. And language! The lid comes off every pot, and you realize you never had reason to feel smug about your buttery smoothness. You didn't build this smoothness out of wisdom, you just relaxed into decades of accumulated serendipity!

So...you want to hold onto your US phone number from abroad? Ok, cool! Keep your wireless account! But, hold on, then you'll need an American bank account. And if you give the bank a New York address (even a postbox), you'll need to pay state income tax. Whoops! Rug pulled!

Yes, there are other ways, e.g. Google Voice, but I'm just offering an example of how when the lid comes off you need to be savvy about a range of options and co-dependencies. You need to actually know how systems work, and you're a helpless baby, flailing for the old serendipitous smoothness!

I feel like a centipede forced to contemplate each foot after a lifetime of simply walking. I'll need to either master car mechanics and banking and appliance voltage and container shipping and European attitudes to taxing gains on American mutual funds, and god knows what other stuff that previously just worked...or else await serendipity, hoping to stumble into jury-rigged solutions. I'll reach that point right around when I'm ready to mortally uncoil.

I mean, it took me 59 years to jury-rig my life, acquiring a portfolio of serendipitous solutions that let many processes seemingly take care of themselves. I'm not confident that I can conjure up another smooth life any faster than that. I didn't do this a hundred or a thousand times. I just did it once! So I suppose I'll need to increase my tolerance for dropped balls!