The 40-Year-Old Virgo

This month I turn 40.

I’m officially crossing that magical threshold into middle-aged territory, and it’s a bit of a shock. I’m the last of five kids, so I’ve always thought of myself as, well, younger. When you spend life as “the baby,” it’s easy to form that mind-set.

It’s also easy to feel old if you’re a sports fan. Forty is the brick wall for most athletes, save for a handful of golfers and a few biological freaks doped out on steroids. I suppose, then, that I’m past my physical prime, though I hope my most fruitful intellectual years lie ahead.

Most important, turning 40 means I should stop wondering what I’ll be when I grow up. My 6-year-old daughter changes her mind daily, but for me, this is pretty much it. As Popeye would say, I am what I am. My future job options lie within narrowly defined parameters and most careers have slipped beyond reach. I will, for example, never play center field for the Red Sox.

Why am I stressed about that? Because I’m a Virgo. Now, I don’t give much credence to astrological typecasting, but from what I read, I really do fit the Virgo bill. Virgos value order and perfection, think strategically, and worry obsessively. They analyze everything to a fault, and hate uncertainty and chaos. They’re fastidious, punctilious, and persnickety. In other words, Virgos drive people nuts. Yeah, I’d say that’s about right.

So as I drift into midlife status, I can’t help but think -- OK, obsess -- about my career and what the next 25 years or so will offer. Or, to be more precise, what I will make of those remaining years. What are my options? What can I control and what, given my trajectory, can I no longer become?

Let’s take a moment to discuss this “career parameters” issue. Look, you may say, any liberal-arts advocate will tell you that most people change careers four or five times during their working lives.

Phooey. Change jobs within a profession? Sure. Change professions? Five times? I don’t think so.

If I decided to go raise money for a hospital, would that constitute a change of profession? No. I would still be a fund raiser; only the venue and cause would be different. Even a jump into a sales position (say, selling Hondas at the local dealership) would be, to those who consider fund raising “sales,” merely a shift and not an outright change.

Anyone who has changed professions -- significantly -- more than two or three times should feel free to contact me and collect a free dinner. I will want to know how you convinced hiring managers that your zero years of industry-specific experience qualified you for the job. I’ll also want to hear how you absorbed the pay cut, given that you likely had to drop a few species down the organizational food chain in the process. Unless your name is Frank Abagnale or George Plimpton, I probably won’t believe you. (And if it’s George Plimpton, welcome back.)

Virgos are notorious pessimists, mind you, so consider my inexorable bias. But I believe that, by age 40, we have cemented our paths, and that radical change isn’t probable or, at the very least, financially feasible.

That leaves me, for better or worse, staring at another 25 years as a college fund raiser; as a fund raiser for a different type of nonprofit; or as a writer, professor, and consultant within, or linked closely to, higher education. Those are my own self-imposed, narrowly drawn boundaries, but I would wager that I’m pretty accurate.

The most logical scenario -- another 25 years as a college fund raiser -- makes me shiver. It’s not that I dislike my profession (Virgos aren’t necessarily masochistic), but I can’t stomach the thought of spending 40-plus years doing the same thing. At least not this thing. I’m certainly not ready for a change just yet. I still find this field fascinating and challenging, though I doubt I’ll feel the same way when I’m (gag!) 60. Or even 50.

So then, what? Go raise money for another cause? Maybe a hospital or some kind of social-service agency? The United Way?

Highly unlikely. I got into this line of work because I love higher education; that’s what I studied in graduate school. Development lets me represent my college to anyone who will listen. I’m not a career fund raiser who bops around various nonprofits hunting dollars. Academe is my home.

All of which leads me to place bets on option three: writing, teaching, and (limited) consulting. Fifteen, perhaps 20, years from now I expect to be some manifestation of that amalgam, probably at a college buried in the boondocks. Administration is great fun, a veritable barrel of monkeys, but I think I will prefer a more contemplative existence. Certainly, that lifestyle will be more palatable when I’m pushing retirement. Chasing rich guys can get tiring.

But who knows? Twenty years from now I could be doing the same thing at the same institution. And I may still enjoy it every bit as much. I have met so many people in this business with a similar story: They thought they would stay someplace for a brief spell, and before they knew it, they were collecting the rocking chair at staff appreciation day 30 years later. You settle in, raise your kids, and your career -- your life -- seems to just unfold unpredictably despite your most meticulous strategies. As John Lennon put it, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Yet planning is what Virgos do best, so I must. That trait can serve you well as a fund raiser, but it can be downright debilitating if you focus the lens on yourself. Compulsive career mapping can be maddening; it somehow spoils the moment. When you reach a milestone like turning 40, though, it’s difficult not to reflect on what you have become and to ponder what the future might hold. Forrest Gump’s feather floating in the breeze may present a comforting notion -- that fate, not planning, dictates a life’s course -- but who wants to leave such important matters to chance?

If that’s being obsessive, go ahead and call me the quintessential Virgo. I simply call it being human.