Column: Identifying with my middle-aged spirit animal

I recently bombed at a comedy show. I called my mom afterwards and told her how embarrassed I felt. She asked who the crowd was and when I told her that it was mainly men in their early 20s, she said, “maybe jokes from a middle-aged woman didn’t resonate with them.”

“Middle-aged? I’m middle-aged? If I’m middle-aged, then you should be living on Golden Pond.”

Later that week when I woke up with a stiff neck, heartburn and anxiety on what to pack for a writing retreat, I realized that she was right. I’m middle-aged.

The writing retreat, Wide Open Writing, took place outside of Boothbay Harbor, Maine in an airbnb on the ocean. It was the most peaceful week of my life—no work, no comedy, no dog to take out—just me, my laptop and other writers.

One morning, we were asked to write about something we saw in nature. Many writers wrote of the waves, the sand, the pine trees. Their eloquent pieces were captivating with underlying messages that left the reader wanting more. Here’s what I wrote:

I didn’t know that an ant was my spirit animal, or rather, spirit insect. Black ants don’t stop moving. The song shouldn’t be “the ants go marching one by one,” but more like, “the ants go scrambling one by one looking for their car keys.”

Do all ants have anxiety? Are they all spiraling with OCD thoughts seeking reassurance? I didn’t offend you, right? You’re not mad at me, right? I’m not pregnant, right? Or are all the ants trying to work off that whole pizza they accidentally ate last night? Or that bottle of wine they drank? Or that carton of fat free frozen yogurt that actually has more calories than real ice cream?

Maybe all the ants are just middle-aged women running around trying to figure out what the hell they’re supposed to be doing.

I notice one ant pause and crawl onto a leaf, her chaise lounge. I imagine she’s given up trying to figure it out: Career, relationships, kids, marching one by one. She realizes she doesn’t have much control over anything, so she closes her eyes for a minute, rolls over and goes back to her summer beach read.

Bridget McGuire is a Chicago based storyteller, stand-up comedian and is a co-producer of “All That Good Stuff,” a traveling comedy show that started on the South Side of Chicago. Follow her on Instagram at @bmcguire82.