Chapter 5: Your Fifth Decade
Write Your Life Story for Posterity - Ages 40 through 49
This is the fifth newsletter in the A Journey of a Thousand Miles… series.
By Maureen Santini © Copyright 2017-2025. All Rights Reserved.
Writing your life story can be an overwhelming project. But this email series breaks it into bite-sized pieces. Every five days, when I post a newsletter about a chapter, you write about that decade of your life.
If you’ve been writing as each chapter newsletter was published, you’re well on your way! If not, you can catch up!
“Great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. The trick is to focus on the first small thing. Starting small is still starting, and small beginnings often lead to extraordinary endings,” according to Vincent Van Gogh as quoted in the Farnam Street Blog.
Those of you who are actually doing this, please use the comments section below to encourage others.
Begin writing about your fifth decade, ages 40 through 49, as of your 40th birthday. If you were born in 1950, for example, your fifth decade began on your birthday in 1990.
Lifestyles are rapidly changing in society. Be as detailed as possible when writing about your routine, your beliefs, and your work. Assume your way of life may be surprising to future readers.
Basic Information
List the addresses of your residences during this decade along with the names and relationship to you of others in the household.
Write down the names and activities of places you frequented such as churches, schools, restaurants, sports arenas, museums, and parks.
Name organizations you were active in, such as sports teams and card clubs.
Family
Describe the general tenor of your family life. Mention how often you spent time together. Say whether you mostly got along with each other or whether there were ongoing tensions.
Describe major events/activities involving you and your spouse (if married), children, parents, siblings, grandparents and extended families. Relate the way you and/or your family celebrated holidays and vacations.
If applicable, specify the values and lessons your parents and other family members imparted to you and the values you seek to impart to your children.
Relationships
Enumerate your significant relationships during this decade. Explain why these relationships — whether with family, friends, significant others, or colleagues — were important to you.
Some people juggled multiple interests — teenagers, aging parents, work-life balance, and so forth. Detail the challenges these and similar issues presented in your life and how you coped.
“Most people in their 40s have parents who are of retirement age or older. This is when adult children start to switch roles with their aging parents, often becoming more financially or physically responsible for them,” according to Yvette Manes, in 40 Things I Learned After I turned 40. Describe your situation.
Work
List and describe the jobs you held during your forties. Include the names of the companies or organizations. Describe your position and the skills and duties involved in carrying out your work.
Rate your satisfaction with your work. Mention the difficulties and rewards.
For those who did not hold paying jobs during this decade, describe your activities, such as volunteer, homemaker, or caretaker.
Skills, Hobbies, and Interests
Describe your main skills, hobbies, and interests and how they compared with previous decades.
State the way you spent the majority of your leisure time.
List the top three or four activities you regularly engaged in and your general level of expertise, if relevant. If circumstances limited your leisure time, explain why.
Health and Welfare
Describe the state of your health and the health of those closest to you.
List health or well-being challenges faced by you or members of your family.
Describe physical, mental, and emotional challenges and successes you and those close to you endured or overcame.
Current Events
Rate the degree of your interest in and concern about the economy, elections, and national or world events.
State whether you were active in civic affairs or volunteer activities and how your attentiveness to the state of the your community, the nation, and world changed over the years.
Feel free to expound on the political environment of the times and your positions on issues.
Expectations
Describe your expectations for your life and family and how they evolved over the decades.
Assess whether your expectations had been realized or not so far.
Explain your plans and expectations for the future.
Conclusion
Use these prompts as a general guide. In any area, if two or three activities dominated your life, feel free to expound only on those. Include information about any topic, person, event or circumstance that was central to your life during this time.
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The Chapter 6 newsletter, covering your fifties, will be published on Sunday.
If you find this process rewarding, you can encourage others to write their stories by commenting below and restacking.
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Maureen Santini is a writer, researcher, and former journalist whose goal is to prevent the life stories of millions from ending up in the dustbin of history. Please share this letter with friends and family.