I was never a 20 under 40.

As readers peruse the intriguing profiles of this year’s crop of 20 under 40 recipients, I can’t help but feel like a comparative underachiever.

I never was awarded this, but it’s okay. Groucho Marx quipped, “I’d refuse to join a club that would have me as a member.”

But it’s not sour grapes, as for one being now aged out, and I wouldn’t have probably qualified then.  I was instead more of a late bloomer.

CBT’s fearless leader, Erica, could be described similarly. She boldly shared her own story some months ago  — in these pages — of a challenging youth and dropping out of high school. But she regrouped and overcame life’s challenges, maturing through a tenacious professional journey to leading today’s expanded marketing and publishing enterprise.

I liked learning but found a standard classroom setting less than comfortable or inspiring. Believe it or not, my sixth-grade teacher was fully aware that I hated creative writing. There’s no inspirational comeback story along the lines of a best-selling book — it was just pretty good but far from great.  

My early career lacked aggressive ambition and my networking skills weren’t yet developed. I was just being a diligent worker and following opportunities as they dropped in my lap — some by being in the right place at the right time, and surely divine providence.

My 30s were a decade of growth: a big job promotion, embracing volunteer work, and a growing family. And I was trying stuff: serving as a board director for local non-profit organizations and chairing committees for local community groups while stumbling into hosting a public access radio talk show and finding myself interviewing city council candidates on air each spring. How’d that happen? 

It wasn’t until reaching 40 that new heights were being achieved. New career horizons, our family moving into the house where we really needed to be, and kids going to college. Being invited to contribute pundit fare to legit local journalistic publications like the newspaper associated with the world’s first (and still most prestigious) journalism school, and now an opinion writer for the comeback storied COMO Business Times. Who let this joker in the door?

Now salt-and-pepper-bearded Steve has no words of wisdom for the glam-photoed whippersnappers in the pages before you. There are trends afoot for these folks not yet over the hill, though. 

Folks under 40 could be described as digital natives, being born into the internet age with natural instincts for rapid communications. Change, and the pace of it increasing, tend to be assumed and accepted.  

But let’s stop there, and notice the usual tone of “them” — talking over younger adults. It often seems tacky to overgeneralize about a younger generation in general. The award is for 20 people under the age of 40, not vice-versa.

Your current career is less likely to be directly associated with your college degree than your elders. You are more likely to not just change jobs more fluidly, but switch careers several times over your working life. And that’s okay. 

Skills build upon themselves. So you mowed lawns in high school, clerked in a liquor store in college, then sold shoes in a department store, or analyzed sales data for a mobile phone company. Then a past boss calls with a job offer out of the blue because they need somebody trustworthy, smart, and can figure out whatever comes along.   

And a side project nobody else wants to mess with — you tackle head on and it becomes your dream job. Until the next better thing comes along, right after one dream job crashes and burns to leave you crying for a while until you bounce back. Such is life, maybe.

You under-40s are comfortable with technology and it seems are opened minded to the next new thing, with the opportunities and risks involved, than more mature leaders might tend to be.

Take the gig economy, like ride-sharing apps Uber and Lyft. When these arrived in COMO years ago, local leaders balked at how they’d affect local taxi companies and what the risks were to consumers. One rule still on the books was requiring taxi companies to maintain a local landline telephone. Huh?

Smart younger folks seem to be comfortable simply checking the rating of their potential Uber driver or to be more open to considering becoming one themselves. Or realize that booking an Airbnb when traveling can be cool or you might want to rent out your own place as an Airbnb host occasionally.

So it can be darn bewildering to learn that City Hall wants to outlaw renting out a place you own if you don’t reside in it yourself enough. Because they don’t trust you to not be a potential public nuisance? Huh? 

While our state legislature and the casino lobbyists debate sports gambling, I asked a younger adult recently if they realized that it was currently illegal in Missouri. They gave me the “huh?!” look because anybody that wants to place an online wager is obviously already on DraftKings to bet on the Chiefs, Tigers, Italian soccer, or whatever.

A licensed nurse practitioner can’t open their own urgent care clinic, even in a small-town health care desert, because of archaic requirements to be under a licensed medical doctor’s practice. Huh?

After Missouri legalized medicinal marijuana a few years ago, it turned out that City Hall here had zoning rules which wouldn’t have allowed a dispensary anywhere near downtown CoMo. Or when adult-use cannabis opened up in Missouri this February, it was delayed over the first weekend here because City Hall didn’t already have its crap together to allow it locally. Huh?

I know a 30-something with a stable day job who started moonlighting at a local dispensary. She used to work at a furniture store back home, so she applied her professional skills to work now as a cannabis sales phenom.

 Isn’t that the kind of thing our best and brightest 20 under 40s would do?

Steve Spellman is a lifelong Columbia-area resident and political observer.