I’m sitting here looking at these photos from the trip to Cabo last week and I look like a total idiot, I’m the only one in a long-sleeve thick cotton shirt in ninety degree heat but I just couldn’t do it, you know? Like I spent forty years in a suit and tie climbing the corporate ladder and worrying about my Q3 projections and my KPIs and I was the guy who always had the answers in the boardroom but I never once worried about my pectorals until I had to stand next to a swimming pool with a bunch of strangers and suddenly I felt like a total fraud. And my wife is out there in the water waving at me to come in and she looks great for her age but I’m just glued to the lounge chair like a statue because I can’t let anyone see how soft I’ve gotten since I retired and it’s not even that I’m fat or anything, it’s just this... looseness, like I’m a suit that doesn’t have a hanger inside it anymore and I kept thinking about how the guys at the office would look at me if they saw me like this and I know they aren't there but the feeling of being CRITQUED never really goes away does it? So I just sat there sweating through this heavy blue oxford shirt that I bought specifically because the fabric was thick enough to hide the fact that I don’t have a single muscle left in my chest and I watched these younger guys, like thirty-somethings with their kids, and they’re all ripped or at least solid and I’m just... I’m just a guy who spent too much time at a desk and not enough time at the gym and now I’m sixty-eight and it’s probably too late to change anything but it still kills me. And there was this one moment where a kid kicked a beach ball near my feet and I had to stand up to get it and I felt the damp shirt cling to my stomach and I immediately started sucking it in so hard I almost got lightheaded and the kid’s dad just gave me this look, like "why is this old man wearing a winter shirt at the beach?" and I wanted to shout at him that I ran a department of two hundred people and I have a pension that would make his head spin but instead I just sat back down and tried to disappear into the upholstery and honestly I just felt small. And I missed the snorkeling trip because I knew I’d have to put on one of those yellow life vests and those things are so tight they show every single curve and fold and I just made up some excuse about my ears hurting from the flight but really I was just terrified of the boat ride out there where everyone is just standing around in their trunks and I’d be the only one looking like a freak in my heavy layers and it’s STUPID, I know it’s stupid, I’m a grown man who survived three recessions and two corporate mergers but I can’t handle a little bit of flubby skin? But that’s the thing about the ladder, you spend your whole life thinking the next rung is going to make you feel powerful and then you get to the top and you’re just tired and you realize you traded your physical presence for a title on a door that they’ve already painted over anyway and I look at my arms and they’re just... they’re just thin and soft and I hate it so much but I’m too proud to admit I’m vain so I just pretend I’m worried about sun damage or some other nonsense. And Karen kept asking me if I was okay because I was just staring at the ocean for four hours without moving and she kept saying "honey the water is so refreshing" and I just snapped at her and said I was fine and to leave me alone and I feel like such a jerk for that but I couldn't explain it to her without sounding like a crazy person because how do you tell your wife of forty years that you’re jealous of a random guy’s deltoids? And I think about all the times I judged guys in the locker room back in the day and now I’m the guy who stays in the shower stall until everyone else leaves because I can’t stand the thought of anyone seeing the reality of what forty years of stress and steak dinners does to a person and it’s like... it’s like I’ve lost the right to be seen, you know? Like if I don't have that "executive" look anymore then what am I even doing here? And then on Thursday we went to this private beach area and I thought maybe I could do it, maybe I could just take the shirt off for five minutes and get in the water because the sand was so white and the water was that perfect turquoise color but then a group of people showed up and they looked like they walked out of a fitness magazine and I just felt this wave of... I don't know, just pure SHAME, and I pulled my shirt even tighter around me and pretended I was reading my book even though I haven't turned a page in an hour. And it’s funny because I used to be the one giving the performance reviews and now I’m giving myself a failing grade every time I look in the mirror and I know people say you should just enjoy your life because you worked hard for it but how am I supposed to enjoy it when I feel like I’m wearing a costume of a person I don’t recognize anymore? So yeah I spent my entire five-thousand dollar vacation hiding under a piece of heavy cotton and I didn't get in the water once and I’m probably going to do the same thing next year because I’m too stubborn to change and too embarrassed to be human and if anyone thinks that’s pathetic well... maybe it is but they don't know what it's like to have your whole identity wrapped up in being the "big guy" in the room until the room is a beach and you’re just a sack of bones and regrets and I’m sitting here at 2am writing this because I can’t sleep and the AC is humming and I just feel like I missed the boat on my own life because I was too worried about how I’d look standing on the deck. And I’ll probably delete this in the morning but for now it just feels like the truth and the truth is that I’m sixty-eight years old and I’m still the same insecure kid I was in middle school only now I have a 401k and a lot more shirts.