the morning sun when it's in your face really shows your age, which is terribly unfair.

I told you last fall that I suddenly realized I was a senior citizen, but I don't think I ever told you how that happened.

There were a bunch of small things leading up to it--a nick on my finger that would have been gone in a few days when I was 30 but now lingers for a couple of weeks. The sudden appearance of a muffin top with no changes to my eating habits. My total ignorance of 90% of the people who appear on the cover of People.

But what really made me wake up to my senior status was listening to younger women talk. In the middle of a pandemic, it wasn't my usual habit of eavesdropping in a coffee shop. I was listening to podcasts.

I somehow got into a circle of smart, interesting, thoughtful podcasts by women who were talking online about their reading, their houses, their kids, their skin-- really, they were just talking about their lives. They all seem to know each other. They appear on each other's podcasts, they @ each other on Instagram, they blurb each other's books.

Some of them are enormously appealing, and I found myself listening avidly, as if they were truly friends of mine. But the things they were talking about were... well, they weren't quite right.

You'll remember my frustration with their obsession about skincare. And then their endless discussion of home organizing techniques and "life hacks" -- everything from how to organize your spices to menu planning to how to work more reading into your day.

It wasn't that I don't care about those things, but I would see the topic of the podcast and think it was something I would learn from, and then I'd listen, and their advice would be so basic that I'd end up thinking, wait, you don't know that? You haven't figured out how to organize your kitchen drawers? 

But you know, if I'd heard this when I was in my late twenties or early thirties, I would have thought it was great. Because back then, I was figuring out the same things. But now, I'm not. Our house is never as organized as it could be, but it's organized the way I like it. I might pick up a tip or two, but for the most part, it is clear that I'm not their target audience.

I need to declutter (as always), but it's on an entirely different level than what they're talking about when they describe taking last year's fashions to Goodwill, or clearing out toys that their kids have outgrown. 

We married in 1984. I'll save you the math and tell you our 37th anniversary is coming up in May. If I had only accumulated one box of stuff per year, that would still be more boxes than would fit in any closet not owned by one of those people on the cover of People. The easy stuff-- the clothes I no longer wear, the books I've lost interest in, the DVDs we'll never watch again-- I know how to declutter those, and I do it regularly.

My problem is the boxes of stuff that are pushed to the top shelf of a closet and I'm not really sure what's in them, and when I open them, there's so much miscellaneous crap that I just close the lid back up again. There's a two foot high stack of flute music. There's Doug's old coin collection (which has not been added to in 40+ years, but probably has some valuable coins in it). There's a set of four silver wine goblets from my grandmother, and a shelf of cranberry glass, some from Doug's grandmother and some from my great grandmother. 

There's an entire double-sized crate full of travel books and maps. Who wants old travel books? How do you get rid of them? And my beloved literature textbooks, which are so horribly out of date that they have no value to anyone but me. I've even thought about burning them, because the thought of sending them in a box of scrap paper to the recycling center just breaks my heart. At least I could imagine it as a ritual funeral pyre or something. 

It's an entirely different level of decluttering than the kind you need when you're 38. Compounded by living in a town where nothing sells at a yard sale if it's priced over a dollar, and the only estate sale/auction company specializes in farm equipment and auto parts. We've used them for some big ticket items-- large pieces of furniture, our old pickup camper-- but would they know what to do with cranberry glass? I haven't even tried to find out. The whole thing exhausts me before I've even started.

This is not the series I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, but I can already tell it's going to be two or three parts. Have a great day, and apologies for posting late. This was supposed to go up yesterday, but even though we're no longer locked down, I'm having trouble remembering the day of the week. (just me?)

ch ch ch ch changes

When I have my occasional a-ha!! moments, after they're over, they often seem so obvious that I'm a little embarrassed it took me so long to figure it out. Surely everyone else already knew this.

That's how I felt about my realization that at age 59, I am no longer in the same demographic that I was at age 49 (the original posts are here and here). Well, DUH, as we used to say when I was in junior high. How could I possibly have thought that I was? 

But I've continued to read and listen to people and podcasts, and you know what? I'm not alone. I'm not the only woman in her 50s who is having trouble making this mental switch. It's not so much that we mind our encroaching age. After all, by the time we've reached this age, we've lost friends and loved ones and we know how lucky we are to make it to 60. 

It's that we don't feel old, at least not the way our youth-obsessed culture defines old. We don't feel irrelevant, and that's how our society views "old" people. And my friends who have already turned 60 don't seem like senior citizens, at least not the way I thought seniors were when I was 40. I think that is more about my misunderstanding of what a senior is like than it is about 62-year-olds being different than they used to be. Our society really is remarkably stupid about aging.

I think the key is that we have to change how we think about age. We can't do much about changing how young people think-- I can remember being that younger woman who rolled her eyes when someone in her 50s would enthusiastically tell me that "50 is the new 30." That younger me was not convinced. 

But we can change what we believe about ourselves, and about age. We've internalized this idea that if you're not at the center of making things happen, your usefulness as a human being is gone. So we keep chasing after that feeling of being in the "maker" stage, the influencer stage, the making a difference stage. I want to feel like I matter.

But you know what? We do matter. We just do. We don't have to manufacture this, or change our culture, or convince anyone, we just have to believe it ourselves. Instead of trying (unsuccessfully) to continue to shoehorn ourselves into the mid-life category, we need to change how we think about people in their 60s. Yup, I'm old. Yup, I'm no longer on the center stage of what is happening in our world. But I am still a badass.

What if we just move forward? Instead of accepting what our culture tells us--that if you're not in that cultural sweet spot of mid-thirties to mid-forties, you don't matter-- how about if we dump our own anti-age prejudice and know down to our core that american culture is wrong about aging?

Because if we don't do this, if we continue to try to pretend that are in that center stage phase, that's exactly when we become ridiculous. To be clear: Do what you want, wear what you want. Ignore the YouTube tutorials about "seven things women over fifty should never wear" and "six makeup tips for looking 35 again." That's not what I mean. 

What I mean is: recognize that the generations have shifted. The women who are in their 30s to 40s have a different cultural context than we did. They have a different set of priorities and a different set of challenges. We can't talk down to them as if the things we did at their age were important, and theirs are just window dressing. We can't tell younger women that their a-ha moments are unnecessary because our generation already did that (not kidding, I came so close to actually saying that a couple of months ago).

Every generation has to figure out certain things for themselves. Their generation is being forced to manage their kids' online education while figuring out how to organize their homes during lockdown and track their Instagram feed and monitor their kids' use of TikTok and Snapchat. It's a whole different world out there. 

Our lives currently include aching knees, unrestful sleep, chin hairs, and not understanding why anyone would want four social media apps. Own it, my friends. We got this.

****** a blog note ******

Last week we spent the entire week smothered in a thick fog that was actually smoke, blown in from forest fires on the west coast. Like many people with allergies and smoke sensitivity, it was a miserable week for me. But-- of course -- not even close to as miserable for us as it is for the people who are actually experiencing the fires.

It finally rained a bit over the weekend, which at least temporarily cleared out the smoke and let my brain start working again. And when it did, I remembered the post I accidentally published last Monday. It wasn't supposed to go up until Tuesday, but it's easier than you would expect to screw that up. I quickly figured out my mistake and "unpublished" it, and for the first time ever, I managed to delete it before it went to the RSS feed so it never appeared in my reader. But then the smoke descended and I forgot about it until yesterday, so that is why a post that is dated last week was just published yesterday, and why those of you who are email subscribed received at least two copies of it (three?). Oops.

exactly how experienced are we?

Here's a memory: my grandparents were disapproving-- in the purse-lipped, silent way their generation did so well-- when I proudly told them I often paid my own way when my boyfriend and I went out on dates. Their values for dating were completely different than mine. They couldn't imagine dating outside of courting-- looking for a potential spouse-- for one thing. And for another, when the man pays, it shows that a) he is financially stable enough to afford it, b) he will (presumably) take good care of his future spouse, and c) he knows how to toe the line in a way that shows respect for the values of his elders. 

But I had been introduced to feminism by a bunch of feisty Californians, and even though it was the 80s, I was still in 70s second wave feminist mode. I didn't need a man to pay for me. I didn't need a man to support me, and I certainly didn't need to make my decisions based on an outmoded set of rules that no longer applied. 

I've been thinking about this a lot lately as I think about how my feminism is different than the feminism of women 15-20 years younger than me (and yes, it does shock me to realize that someone who is 15 years younger than me is in her mid-forties). Because probably when I gently (and unforgivably) point out the errors in their thinking, they're probably having the same reaction to me that I had to my grandparents back in the 80s. 

There are a whole cascade of things that are just so different now. We refused to wear a lot of makeup or dress in provocative ways, because our mothers had to do that stuff to be attractive/acceptable to men, and we sure as hell didn't need men's approval to feel good about ourselves. We were more than happy to use convenience food products or store-bought food because we weren't going to be trapped in the kitchen the way our mothers were. 

Aside: whenever someone goes off on preservatives in food. I have the hardest time not saying do you think Lewis and Clark, or Ma Ingalls, would have been interested if you'd told them that they could stir something into their food and never have maggots or moldy food again? Because, seriously.

But what we discovered when we jettisoned all of that happy homemaker stuff is that some women--maybe even most women, and a lot of men-- are happy homemakers. There are thousands, maybe millions, of people who get a huge amount of satisfaction out of making oreos from scratch and whipping up their own homemade ketchup and knowing that their children have never had a happy meal from MacDonald's. 

Me? I thought about buying stock in MacDonald's (symbol: MCD). I could sit and read a book while my kids played for an hour and half in the germ-filled ball pit and everyone was happy. I had a hard time limiting it to once a week. And also, I don't remember them ever getting sick from it, germ-filled as it may have been. In fact, they have the impressively robust immune systems.

It's just a different world out there. So when I said a couple of weeks ago that being a crone meant being experienced, what does that even mean? What good is experience if it's completely irrelevant? Because if we're going to be wise women, we need to have something to offer, don't we? 

I think this exact dilemma is what has led a whole bunch of the people who are 10-20 years older than us to turn their backs on any kind of mentorship at all. They're headed out to their second vacation home or their monster RV, and don't call us, we'll call you. 

That's what I'm thinking about right now. More thoughts to come. 

And by the way, thank you for clicking, if you did. The tally was considerably more than I was expecting in my worst moments, but not quite as many as I was hoping for in my more extravagant dreams. So what I decided was to keep posting until I finished my current crop of ideas and then decide what's next. In other words, nothing has changed. Ha. 

Call me Hecate

I told you a couple of weeks ago about my newly discovered crone status, and of course I've been thinking about that quite a bit, since over-thinking is my superpower.

Like any good survivor of 90s feminist spirituality, I can't think much about being a crone without thinking of the triple goddess archetype, The Maiden-Mother-Crone. Feminist spirituality is all about The Goddess and her three eternal faces, the virgin with her sweetness and limitless potential, the mother with her creativity at full power for self and community, the crone, the embodiment of wisdom and experience.

The idea got applied everywhere-- even as a description of business cycles and the creative process: the germ of an idea (Maiden, limitless potential), the hard work of making the idea into reality (Mother, the maker), and the successful ongoing idea (Crone, wisdom and expertise that come with experience).

I've been thinking about how this might apply to me. How different is it to be in the "experienced" phase of life rather than in the "maker" phase of life? In the maker phase, you are working your butt off to get your life the way you want it, or to hang on and survive the hard work of living out the vision of the idea you had -- for a family, or a business, or a career, or all of those. And maybe the idea dies or fails (you get laid off, illness strikes, your marriage fails, bankruptcy) and you have to start again, but always the idea is to make the life you want.

When you're in the maker phase, if the vision isn't working or if it implodes, sometimes it makes sense to blow everything up and start over. Move to a new town, end your relationship, change careers. But maybe once you're a crone, the priorities are different. That's not to say re-creating doesn't happen to older people-- women way older than me have blown up their lives and started over, sometimes by their own choice, sometimes because circumstances force them to.

But maybe being a crone isn't about a specific age, it's about being smart. Instead of blowing everything up, maybe there are minor tweaks, incremental adjustments that can be made that will be just as effective. I don't want to say being a crone is about maintaining, because that sounds like stagnation. Being experienced might mean you recognize that you've already built a foundation and now it's time to be smart about how you want to preserve what's good, while moving forward into what's coming. Blowing everything up and starting over may not make sense anymore.

Hmmmm. Lots to think about. I have a houseful of company coming tonight so not sure when I'll post again.

7ToF: changing my demographic, headaches, and my favorite Kind bar

The color of spring

1. Years ago, I realized one day that one of my best friends was the same age as my younger sister (i.e., less than two years younger than me). When my sister and I were young, twenty months seemed like a huge difference. But with my adult friends, I never think about age differences. It's always seemed like all women between mid-thirties and some unspecified older age were my peers.

2. But it has been gradually and then suddenly dawning on me that this is no longer the case. Finally at some point last week the whole idea burst into bloom in my head all at once: I'm in a different age bracket now. I think it's been evident to my younger friends for years now-- no, you are waaaay older than me, not just a little bit-- but it was news to me. After the initial shock of realization, I'm totally OK with this. I am embracing my inner crone. I envision rocking on the front porch with friends and a pitcher of vodka tonics and cackling over inappropriate jokes. I think it took me so long to figure this out because I was still a mom with a kid at home until I was 55. That's my excuse, anyway.

As you can imagine, there will be more on this topic in the future. Can this still be a blog about mid-life? Am I a senior citizen now? The AARP has been sending me stuff for years, so they certainly think so.

3. Since I may be offline for a couple of weeks, here is the headache update. I am way better, and same as the last time I tried an elimination diet, there weren't any foods that made a difference. Stretching and working with my neck and shoulders seems to be the key-- which means I need to avoid spending all day hunched over the computer or curled up with a book. DAMMIT. So I've been getting out more and reading less, and reminding myself to get up and stretch, etc etc.

4. Elimination diets are interesting. Since I've never done one unless I was desperate--three weeks of headaches will do that to you--I never do it in an organized enough way. There are so many variables, and unless you can go live in a convent somewhere, it's just impossible to shut everything down. Or at least, it is if you're me and you don't really care about it that much. I ended up going about two and a half weeks with no alcohol, sugar, or artificial sweeteners, and about one and a half weeks with no dairy and no grains (gluten or otherwise). I've slowly been adding stuff back over the past ten days or so, and since at the moment I've only been headache free for five or six days, I don't think it's any of the food items.

5. Over the last few days, I've added back corn-- I waited on that one since I was a little suspicious about it. The worst migraine I've had in a couple of years was after I had tamales for dinner the previous night. But I've had corn every day for the past three days, and I feel great, so I think that's ok. I still haven't had any peanuts or peanut butter, so that's the only thing left to add back in. But I think it's going to be fine.

6. The "no dairy" and "no gluten" evangelists, I think, would say I didn't give it long enough. And yeah, maybe they're right. But I know people who are gluten sensitive or lactose intolerant, and they can tell within hours if they've eaten something they shouldn't have. If that were me, I would totally get on board. It wouldn't take five minutes for me to sign on to that program if it made that big a difference. But if you have to avoid something for weeks, and then three days after you add it back in you still can't tell any difference, I'm not convinced it's a problem. The stretching and the activity level seem to make a much bigger, more noticeable difference for me.

The color of spring #2

7. But there are headaches, and then there's how I feel in general. And doing this did remind me how much better I feel (headaches aside) when I avoid sugar. I feel no need to become a zero sugar person, but I do feel better if I limit sugar, and if you want specifics, at the moment that means that I'm avoiding anything that has more than 6g of sugar, which I somewhat arbitrarily picked because my favorite Kind bar has 6g of sugar. I feel noticeably better when I'm not eating a sugary snack two or three times a day-- and that can happen if I'm not paying attention, because I have a definite sweet tooth.

On an entirely different topic: I've been learning a lot recently, and we've had a couple of significant life changes--like MadMax moving back home after college-- but it's not stuff I'm ready to type about yet. And also, we're headed out to our favorite lake for the holiday weekend, so I'll be out of range for at least a few days. And since I'm supposed to be spending less time at the computer, I thought I'd take advantage of the opportunity to be offline for awhile. So, not sure when I'll be back-- probably soon, I don't seem to be able to stay away-- but I hope you have a great weekend and a good start to your summer.

Things worth reading/listening to:
- This older post about writing and storytelling from Jenny Crusie
- Modern Mrs. Darcy's Summer Reading Guide (you have to sign up with your email address)
- Book rec: Nothing to See Here by Kevin Wilson (heavy on the profanity but sharply observed)
- Fascinating podcast episode of the week: An interview with Ezra Klein on the Ten Percent Happier podcast, episode #248. Klein dissects our polarization and what can (and can't) be done about it. I'll be thinking about this one for weeks.

Day 19: in which I revisit (of all things) skin care

I told you last fall how tired I was of listening to women I admire go on and on about skincare. As I said at the time, it's not that I'm opposed to taking care of my skin. In fact, in the very next paragraph, I undercut my entire complaint by telling you about a new favorite skincare product. I did that on purpose to confess that as bored as I am with the whole topic, it's still something I think about. The hypocrisy is right there.

But it keeps happening. Last night I finally figured out why it bugs me so much--hence, this post.

I am 58, which means (obviously) I am knocking on the door of 60. And when I hear these women, who are mostly in their 30s and 40s, going on and on about skincare, what I hear is an undercurrent of panic about aging. I am determined not to look old. I am not going to look like someone who doesn't take care of their skin. I am not going to be one of "those women" that people look at with pity and think, she sure hasn't aged well! 

And I get that. I can sink into that panic. I am almost sixty. But here's the thing: it's age shaming. What's wrong with looking old? What's wrong with looking your age? Is it so horrible to look like you're 58? I mean, if we're lucky, we're going to get old. Why are we looking at it with such deep-seated shame and dread?

Even if you haven't "aged well," it's not necessarily a horrible thing. If you've got wrinkles and lines and leathery skin, but the soul peering out of your eyes is vibrant and kind and compassionate, you're the woman I want to emulate.

There. I've said my piece. Apologies for the rant. I finally had to unfollow one of my all-time favorite podcasts (not one of the bookish ones), because they just couldn't leave it alone.

mental health at midlife, "one" more thing

At the end of my last post on midlife mental health (there's another one here), I said there was one more piece I wanted to tell you about but I had run out of room. And then life intervened, as it so persistently does, and I never got around to it.

But that "one more piece" continues to come up, and the first thing to say is that it is laughable that I said there was "one" more piece. There are a million more pieces. But that piece I was thinking about has been important, so here you go.

My family was pretty garden variety dysfunctional. I'm pretty sure my dad was a narcissist, and my mom an experienced enabler, but I've heard a lot of stories over the years from other people, and our particular mess was not out of the ordinary. And I say that with some sadness, because in the sixties, there were a whole lot of family dynamics that were weird and stifling and maiming, but it was just the way things were. My parents had their problems, but they also did a pretty dang good job considering the times and their own histories.

In the eighties, when I was in my twenties and psychotherapy was relatively new (at least to me), I was all about blaming my parents. I was so angry at them. I could tell you inside out how awful they had been, especially my dad. Some of it was necessary stuff that I need to process, but a lot of it was just me being young and self-obsessed. I'm not knocking therapy-- it helped, it helped lots. I'm just rolling my eyes at my youth, and my ability to think that my own pain was the most important thing. Maybe that's what a lot of us do in our twenties.

Anyway. Then I had kids, and once you have kids, it doesn't take long to realize that no parent is able to be the parent they wish they were. I was simultaneously developing the ability to protect myself better from my parents' ability to wound me,  and also becoming willing to cut them a whole lot more slack. They were doing the best they could. So I gradually dumped the whole digging-into-my-family-of-origin schtick because I just couldn't do it anymore.

I spent the next twenty-ish years aware that there had been some difficult issues in my family of origin, but not thinking about them, because I didn't know any way to do that without coming down on my parents with an attitude of self-righteous fury, and I knew that wasn't where I wanted to go. So I stopped (not overnight, but still a pretty thorough stop). And honestly, I had been pretty obsessed with it for awhile, so it was probably a good move at the time.

But recently, some things have resurfaced, and as I've become a student of my own brain and ego through meditation and whatever other tools I can find, I've realized that I still have a lot to learn from looking back and trying to understand some things from my childhood.

Not to sound like I'm overly wise or anything, but just to acknowledge the truth: if you let yourself, you do learn some things as you get older. I am wiser than I used to be, at least on this front. Because now I can look back and do it without blame. I can feel compassion for all of us, my parents, the community we lived in, the world we lived in, and see how we were all trying so hard to do things right, to do the things we thought we were supposed to do. And yet we were wounded, and we did some wounding. We muddled through, just like everybody does.

This is also turning into a muddled mess, and I'm not even sure why I'm writing it, because I don't know if anyone else is going through it, and if you're not, that makes this an exceptionally boring bit of navel-gazing.

But if you are, just this: it can help to let yourself go back and re-experience some old hurts. Sometimes when I'm meditating (my current meditating theme is to let myself feel what I'm feeling), it hurts so bad it's almost overwhelming. But it's not happening right now, it happened a long time ago. And if I can sit for five minutes, one minute, and let the feelings wash through me, it feels awful at that moment, but then later it feels better. It really does. I don't know if this will make any sense, but I feel more clear-eyed than I have in a long time. Maybe ever.

p.s. the book that was helpful in thinking this through is Maybe You Should Talk to Someone by Lori Gottlieb. I had some problems with that book, but I still learned lots. Gottlieb, a therapist, says: "The purpose of inquiring about people's parents isn't to join them in blaming, judging, or criticizing their parents. In fact, it's not about their parents at all. It's about understanding how their early experiences inform who they are as adults so that they can separate the past from the present (and not wear psychological clothing that no longer fits)."

Yup. Have a great weekend.

I'm Still Standing- midlife mental health again

I'm doing better. I don't know if you can tell. Mental health is such an individual thing, I'm not sure if writing about my own issues is going to help anybody else. But it helps me, so here you go. This got a bit long. Save it for when you're in the mood.

As I told you last time we talked about this, my mental health issues are depression and paranoia. I think I will always be prone to them. It's like being headache-prone (which I also am). You can figure out the triggers, avoid behaviors that make things worse, and do your best to be healthy. But I'm always going to have headaches, and I'm probably always going to go through periods of depression and paranoia.

So understanding my "issues," and having the tools to deal with them and know when I'm headed into a spiral (of either headaches or depression), is only going to help.  

I think part of what I've been going through is the longer-term adjustment to the empty nest. That kind of surprised me. MadMax left last week to start his senior year of college, so this isn't new. We've been empty nesters for three years now.

But there's the initial oh-my-god-my-children-have-moved-out part, which is hard enough but didn't last very long, and then apparently there is another longer adjustment that I am still navigating.

The first part, that wrenching feeling that you tore your right arm off and left it in that freshman dorm, is the more obvious one, the one everyone knows about, and it's not easy. But it's pretty fast. With each of our kids, by the time they'd been gone a couple of months, we were getting used to it.

And then there's Phase Two, which I was not expecting. Why should there be a longer term adjustment? I'm plenty busy. I'm involved in a lot of things in our community. It's not like my life revolved around my children.

But you know-- it did revolve around my children. I was never a helicopter mom, but having kids in the house was the organizing principle of my schedule from 1990 to 2016. That's a lot of years.

Apparently there is a longer term adjustment that I'm still figuring out. When you're a parent, you have obvious significance, even if it's just localized to your kids. You are that child's parent. You are needed. Even when they're 17 or 18, you keep at least some track of where they are, their dentist appointments, their parent-teacher night, their band concerts.

It's going too far to say it gives your life meaning, but it does mean that you've got a certain number of default things that can only be done by you, even if it's just paying attention and being there when they need you. There's a certain amount of purpose involved in that.

And figuring out what is going to take the place of that has been a longer process than getting over missing my kids. Whom I still miss, of course. It's not like you stop missing them, but you get used to it.

So, that's part of what's been going on. Another part of it is still related to something we've talked about before, which is that feeling that this is not the life I thought I was going to have. I guess it's regret, to put it plainly.

That has been a really tough one for me. I didn't think I was going to end up at age 58, living in a rural area with only a string of part-time jobs on my resume and no professional accomplishments.

This is embarrassing to admit, because it makes me sound like such a whiner. I have a hard time even typing it out without surrounding it with snarkiness because I know I sound like a spoiled brat. I am so blessed, so privileged. But the struggle is real, as they say, and pretending like it's not there doesn't help.

My adult life has been so contrary to the way we think these days-- if your life isn't going the way you want it to, change it. Get a new job. Move. Get a divorce. Have an affair. Join a commune. Take art classes, do yoga, change it up, make your life into what you want.

We believe we have agency, the power to make our lives into whatever we want. We believe what the individual wants should be, at least to some extent, more important than family or community ties.

But I couldn't do the life that I had mapped out in my head and have my husband, my children, and my integrity. I can run back through the decisions we made every time we decided to stay here and not move somewhere with more job opportunities for me (which we considered multiple times over the years), and even in hindsight, I would make the same decisions over again. At every stage, I made the decision that was the "right" one for me/us at the time.

It just was never the decision I would have made if I'd been single and childless and unattached. I kept deferring what I wanted to do, thinking someday my turn would come. But then I hit fifty, and I ran slam up against the realization that some of the things I had really wanted to do were not going to happen. Not helped any by the people I could see around me who at least appear to have it all-- family, career, living in the location of their dreams.

Then I had a conversation this summer that has really helped (beyond what we've talked about before, which is realizing how damn lucky I am). I had dinner with one of my college roommates a couple of months ago, the first time I'd seen her in thirty-five years.

I was talking through a brief version of this issue with her over dinner, the decisions I had made that weren't always the ones that I wanted to make. And she said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world, you made those decisions according to your values. You made exactly the decisions you wanted to, because those are the things you value.

It's one of those ideas that was interesting at the time, but later, it bloomed in my head. It's re-framed the way I think about the past and let me begin to be able to forgive myself for (supposedly) not being "strong enough" to "create the life I wanted."

I've been so angry at myself for not following through on all the things I felt like I should have done, all the accomplishments I should have under my belt. (I should have just put my foot down and demanded that we move!) But I was strong enough to make the decisions that deep-down were the ones that I felt were right for our family. And that's something I can live with.

Refusing to forgive leads to bitterness and hardened anger, even if the person I can't forgive is myself. I'm working on extending grace to myself for not being the person that I thought I would be. I don't think I'm quite there yet, but the more I work on it, the easier it gets. Work in progress.

There's another piece to this, but this has already gone on long enough. More later.

7ToF: I'm Nobody! Who are you?

1. It's a commonplace these days to say that women in their 50s are invisible. If you haven't experienced it, lucky you. You can read about it here and here and here and lots of other places.

2. I remember the first few times I experienced middle-aged invisibility were at restaurants, where the waiters are basically paid to be friendly to their patrons. That's a cynical way to look at it, but you get a better tip if your people like you, and the restaurant gets a better reputation, and everyone is happy. When I was younger, I took a waiter's attention for granted--if I was sitting in a restaurant with friends or my kids, the waiter (male or female) would take some time to talk (flirt) with me. But suddenly, somehwere in my late 40s, waiters started ignoring me to talk to my younger friends or my kids.

3. I'm not exactly a femme fatale, so there was no reason to expect that wait staff would fall all over themselves to socialize with me, but still-- the first few times it happened, it was so unexpected that it was obvious. I'd heard that middle-aged women felt invisible, but it was still a surprise to actually experience it. Oh, that's what they mean!! Now I get it!

4. Plenty of has been written about the larger cultural reasons why this happens, mostly about factors that have nothing to do with us personally (other than we keep getting inexorably older, silly us). But what I've been thinking about recently is the part of it that is personal to me. As an introvert who has never had particularly strong social skills, it was a surprise to me to discover that a small, unconscious, but signficant portion of my attention had been taken up with the who-gets-noticed, who-is-attractive, who-is-a-potential-sexual-partner game. I've been in a monogamous relationship with Dean since I was 21, so it never really meant anything, but it was still happening. Until suddenly it stopped.

5. So, this isn't anything earthshaking or personally shattering, but it did take a bit of adjustment and I'll even say a little bit of mourning for something that had been a kind of fun and interesting aspect of interacting with people. And oddly, as I approach 60, it almost seems to be coming back. Maybe the 50s really are just a no-man's/woman's-land. The culture doesn't know what to do with us, and we don't quite know, either. I find myself almost looking forward to 60.

6. This week's interesting read: from Book Riot, a list of contemporary books with strong women protagonists over age 50. My TBR pile for this fall is already full, but maybe I'll try some of these in the new year--the only one I've read already is the one about the two women in Alaska.

7. Here is a picture from Labor Day weekend. This is our usual: I'm sitting and reading a book, and see that tiny, blurry figure on a stand-up paddleboard in the background? That's Dean, being active. Yup.

Me reading, Dean exercising.

Quote of the week (which relates back to the fitness for couch potatoes post), from The Wisdom of the Enneagram: "...the basis of confidence, the feeling of being full, strong, and capable, arises from the instinctual energy of the body, not from mental structures. Thus, Fives grow by coming down out of their heads, and coming into deeper felt contact with their vitality and physicality." I live so much in my head, that idea is almost shocking to me. Really?

Cool. I can work on that. Have a great weekend.

WITOAG, or: What I Think of As God, and a few other thoughts

Another slightly edited old post, from my old blog, originally posted August 10, 2009, followed up with a bit of new stuff.  Since we haven't discussed religion/spirituality much recently, for those of you who are new, I should explain that I was raised Evangelical/Southern Baptist, and my dad was raised German Baptist, which may not mean anything to you but trust me, it explains a lot. I still attend church, but at a progressive denomination, and my theology is a bit-- well, sketchy compared to how I was raised.
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Before I go off on my next idea, here's a bit of housekeeping, a defining of terms. I want to be able to use the word "God," but of course, when I use that word it may mean something entirely different to me than it means to you. It certainly means something different to me now than it did when I blithely told a young Jewish man I met at an icebreaker in college how happy I was that God was my best friend. (Yes, I really did do that and it gives me shudders down to my toes to think about it now.)

In my twenties, after I left my conservative childhood faith behind, I didn’t use the word “God” at all for a long time—I avoided it even in my head when I was just thinking. What the heck does it mean? I’ve said this before, but is “God” some kind of sentient, all-knowing, all-seeing Being in the Sky? Is it a cluster of ideas shared by a community that takes on a life of its own in the collective mind of the group? Is it something individual to each one of us? Is God, as the new age folks used to tell me, within me? And what the heck would that mean? Is God a Higher Self, a Divine Source, a Deity Within?

I don’t know. I really, really don’t know. Further, I don't think it's possible to know. But I sort of tentatively decided about a year ago (edited Aug 2018: that would be about ten years ago now) that I had been thinking about this long enough that I could go back to using the word God to describe a certain force in my life for which I have no other name. I don’t really understand what that force is, (ouch, I just remembered Star Wars and The Force and that’s not what I mean, but how else am I going to say it?) but it is convenient to have a name for it whatever it is, and God works as well as anything else and also conveniently fits into a number of other ideas.

It also enables me to have conversations with other believers without endlessly saying “I don’t know, I don’t know, I don’t know.” Although in that instance, it may unfortunately give them the idea that I agree with them about the nature of God when in fact I probably don’t. How could I, since I don’t really know what God is?

The point that I’m so convolutedly trying to make here is that when I use the word “God,” what I really mean is “What-I-think-of-as-God.” It is a concept in my head that may not have any objective existence at all. But it would be entirely tiresome to type that out every time I want to refer to “What-I-think-of-as-God.” So, that’s all I'm saying. Just don’t take the word “God” too literally-- here, or anywhere else, come to think of it. And I'm still capitalizing it. I considered not doing that, but it just didn't seem right.

And furthermore..... I still pray. Even though I'm not sure that What-I-think-of-as-God hears me, or is able to intervene in my life in any concrete way. And the weird thing is, I usually get some kind of answer. Not a lightning bolt from the sky, or voice booming over my car stereo or even a message on a billboard like Steve Martin in L.A. Story. But if I'm asking a question, or seeking a solution to a problem, or honestly trying to figure something out, usually within a day or two, I have an answer. Or at least a next step. I read something, or hear a random remark, or there's a line in movie, and it occurs to me-- there it is.

There are (at least) two ways you could interpret this: you could say I'm taking something I would have figured out anyway and calling it an answer to prayer, and to that I can only say: you're right. That could be exactly what's happening. Or from the opposite perspective, you could say, well, doesn't that prove that God exists and you should believe in Him/Her/It, and once again, all I can say is, yes, I can see how you would think that, but so far for me, that's not what has happened.

So I still pray. And I still function as if God exists. And all of this blathering on and on was just so that I could tell you that I prayed this week for help with breaking through a particular self-defeating belief that feels set in stone in my head. And the answer I got back was: be willing to give it up.

And that's something to think about.

p.s. this endless cogitating on all side of an issue and being to see a bunch of different ways of looking at a problem while remaining uncommitted to any of them is, I've learned, a normal feature for an Enneagram Five. Just in case you were wondering.

7ToF: searching for my lost shaker of salt

It's Thursday night, 11:17 at this moment, and I still haven't written a post for tomorrow. Usually I come back from vacation all revved up with things to write about, but for some reason it didn't happen this time.

1. Vacation reading report: I only finished two books, although there are a couple of others I'm still working on. Rules of Civility by Amor Towles (same guy who wrote Gentleman in Moscow) and The Summer Before the War, by Helen Simonson. I loved them both, but they are not fast-paced page-turners. Gently plotted books about interesting people. I found them both completely absorbing.

2. Gretchen Rubin of the Happier podcast did an episode on travel hacks this week-- tips and tricks to make travelling easier. There are some good suggestions, and it got me thinking about my own travel tricks. She mentions one I've been doing for twenty years now, ever since we got past the point where we were so broke that I couldn't imagine keeping two sets of anything: have a separate set of toiletries for travel so you don't have to pack them up every time you're going somewhere.

3. And I'll add my own twist that I've just started doing in the last year: refresh and refill your travel toiletries when you return from a trip instead of waiting until the night before you go on the next trip. That way it's fresh in your mind what needs to be refilled and what you wished you had with you.

4. I gave Dean a set of packing cubes for Christmas 4-5 years ago that he has never used. So I've gradually taken them over for packing various things, even though I wasn't sure the packing cube theory worked for me-- why is it so much better to have things zipped into cubes? But I have to admit I'm kind of growing into it. I've used one for chargers, cords, and headphones for a a couple of years now, and on this trip I used another one to pack up a swimsuit and a change of clothes. We checked two bags and only took one carry-on for the three of us, and that way I had a change of clothes in the carry-on in case our luggage got lost.

5. Where do you stand on the checked bag vs. carry-on issue? Theoretically I like the idea of not having to go to baggage claim when we arrive, but for a weeklong trip, those roll-aboards don't have much space. It's not the clothes I have a problem with-- I can fit a week's worth of clothes in a carry-on sized bag with no problem. (Another one of my travel tips: you never need as many clothes as you think you will.) It's the toiletries that are the problem. I cannot fit a week's worth of toiletries in a quart-size ziplock bag. Not happening. My days of getting by with a travel-size tube of toothpaste and the hotel shampoo are long gone.

6. I turned 57 last week. For some reason the difference between 56 and 57 feels much bigger to me than turning 56 last year. Maybe because now I'm unequivocally in my late 50s. But this transition isn't nearly as hard for me as turning 50. I think when when I was in my late 40s I had this self-delusion that I was still young, but turning 50 sort of ruins that dream. Now that I'm more comfortable with being older, it doesn't seem like such a big deal. Of course my internal age still feels much younger than my actual age (I feel like I'm 38, or maybe 42, how about you?), but that's universal. I don't think anyone in our age range feels as old as they actually are.

7. As I've told you about a dozen times before, the 40-year-old house we live in isn't air conditioned. Most of the year this isn't a problem, but for the last couple of years, mid-July through August has been pretty miserable. I broke down this week and went and bought a couple of those free standing room-size A/C units. It took a couple of days of fiddling to get them figured out, but I think they are going to help.

Currently reading: Love Walked In (fiction) by Maria de los Santos, Off the Clock: Feel Less Busy While Getting More Done (non-fiction) by Laura Vanderkam, The Tenth Island (memoir) by Diana Marcum.
Movie we watched this week: Ant Man on DVD, because I heard the sequel was fun and we might go see it. The first one was OK but not great.

Listening: Jimmy Buffett, since I'm learning to play "Margaritaville" on my bells.

And that's all the news from here. PellMel and her boyfriend are coming next week for their vacation, but I think I will still have time to write. (If nothing shows up, you'll know what happened.) Have a great weekend.

throwback post, because I'm on vacation: celebrations 4, 5, and 6

Originally appeared May 4, 2015. Fortunately the angry phase I talk about in this old post only lasted a couple of months. I still get mad sometimes, of course, but not like it was then. The joys of hormones.

The next thing I'm ready to celebrate about being middle-aged is (Celebration #4): we've already been through a full 25-year cycle of fashion, so we remember the current fashions the last time they were popular. I was around the last time maxi-dresses were in style, so I already know that five years from now we're going to wonder what the hell were we thinking? I can save myself the grief and not wear them.

Celebration #5: We don't expect to be happy every single minute. This one has been major for me. When I was younger, I would get to a good place and be happy and think,  this is how it's going to be for the rest of my life. Then I'd get stressed or busy or down about something and wonder what was wrong. Something must be wrong if I'm not happy, right? But at 53, I know that nobody is happy every single minute. Enjoy the good moments when they come. Don't get too upset when they go. The good times come back, the bad times eventually go away.

Celebration #6: We know that you don't have to wait until everyone around you is happy to be happy yourself. You can be happy even if your friend is down (although you might want to be careful not to rub it in her face). You aren't responsible for making everyone around you happy before you can be happy yourself.

You know what? fuck it. I don't feel like celebrating today. Here's the real thing I'm dealing with: I'm pissed. I seem to be pissed all the time. I know women who sail through menopause like it's no big deal--one woman told me, "I wish I'd known that was going to be my last period. Maybe I would have done something to mark the occasion. But they just stopped. I've had no symptoms before or since."

I seem to be at the opposite pole. The three years before my last period were the most miserable of my life, health-wise--floodlike periods, migraines, depression. Thank God, the health part of it is way better now. Now I'm just a fountain of negativity, bitterness, and anger.

Here's my theory. You know if they pump lab rats full of testosterone, the rats become aggressive, violent. If they pump them full of estrogen, they nest, they make everything nice for everybody around them. What if estrogen masks what you're really feeling? Maybe now that my body isn't producing estrogen so much anymore, suddenly I'm having to deal with every little bit of anger and frustration that I avoided for the sake of nesting for the past --oh, how long was I cycling? Forty years?

It's not like I never got angry before, but this is different. This is like a well of dark, bitter, ugly stuff that bubbles up and I can't get to the bottom of it. I'm doing my best to just have faith. Everything I know from psychology, Buddhism, Christianity, even just my experience with life, tells me that if I just keep letting it go, eventually I'll get to the bottom of it. But I'm starting to be afraid that I'm just turning into a dried up, bitter old shrew.

At least I do have some skills for dealing with it these days. I used to have that "I'm feeling angry and I'm pushing it away at the same time" thing going on--like when you're letting yourself indulge in chocolate, but at the same time you're thinking I shouldn't be doing this I shouldn't be doing this I shouldn't be doing this. I mean, if you're going to indulge, you have to just let go of the guilt and the shame and indulge, or else what's the point?

And I think the same thing applies with all this negative stuff. I've got it, but I don't want to have it, so at the same time I'm feeling it, I'm pushing it away. I hate feeling like this, I don't want to feel this, I shouldn't feel like this.

Now I know I've got to stop with the pushme-pullyou thing and immerse myself. It's the only way to get where I want to go. But God, it sucks.

7ToF: mid-life aches and pains. Also what I learned from podcasts this week.

I added an email signup over there on the right side so you can type in your email address and receive posts in your inbox as they are published. Thank you for being interested, person-who-asked-for-it!

1. Fair warning: I am bad about editing and re-publishing my posts, so if you sign up, they may show up in your inbox more than once. All I can say is that I'm better about it than I used to be. (Originally this was followed by a long discussion about self-editing and the pros and cons of writing snobbery, but it was way too long so I'm moving it to a later post.)

2. A friend of mine who has young kids looked at me with panic in her eyes when she told me she had read my post about de-cluttering. For the record, the kind of decluttering project I'm doing right now probably wouldn't be possible with kids around--and is way less necessary, anyway. You've only got ten? twelve? years of stuff, not thirty-four. It's an empty nester project. I probably should have said that in the original post. When I had young kids, I was lucky to make a sweep of unwearable clothes and broken toys every year or two. Don't panic.

3. Dean and I were on one of our evening walks this week and the topic of aging came up. You spend your whole life knowing intuitively that you get older every day (and for the first half of your life you're really excited about that!!). We all know from our parents and grandparents and popular culture that getting old involves aching joints, less refreshing sleep, wrinkles, and an endless series of tiny indignities. But still, in spite of knowing this practically from birth, we are both frequently surprised and personally outraged as each new sign of age appears. And then, every time I adjust to the new normal, it gets worse. *grimace emoji* Aging is not for sissies.

4. I have a friend who told me once that Aleve worked as well for her as codeine, so I went out and bought some that day. But you know what? Aleve does nothing for me. And I bought the Costco size bottle. So since I had that big jug of Aleve, I've started taking one Advil and one Aleve when my particular ouch-y spots flare up, instead of my usual one Advil. The combination works better than either one of them alone.

Full disclosure: Dean, the medical professional, says-- with a barely suppressed eye roll-- that's because you're taking two painkillers instead of one.  You be the judge.

5. Also, arnica. May God bless the person who discovered arnica with an unending rain of blessings (seems likely that it was an Indian or a wise woman, since *clears throat* unnamed medical professionals are skeptical). I hesitate to even say this-- because the surest way I know to experience one of the signs of aging is to smugly note to myself that at least I don't have that yet-- but so far my knees are good. *knocks on wood* But when I do something a bit out of my normal level of athletic activity, they ache, and arnica clears it right up. What works for your aches and pains? Am I the only one thinking of trying copper?

6. I Heard It On a Podcast #1: From the 10% Happier Podcast, episode #133 with Catherine Price. Before you figure out how to eliminate the negative side of obsessive phone use, it's a good idea to figure out what positive things you want from your phone. Back in Jan/Feb when I was trying to dial back my phone usage, I spent lots of time figuring out what I could eliminate, but I never did the opposite: what do I want my phone to do for me? This seems worth some time. Texting-- the #1 benefit of my phone. GPS. Information like weather, movie times, business phone numbers and addresses. What else?

7. I Heard It On a Podcast #2: From The One You Feed, episode #224 with Cheri Huber. Everybody gets stuck in a downward sprial of negative thinking occasionally, and it gets worse when we're stressed. I'm the worst person ever. I'm such a failure. We've been endlessly told that the solution is to think positively! But unfortunately that usually means saying things we don't believe: I'm awesome! I'm amazing! I can do this! 

Really what we should be doing is telling ourselves things that are true: I love my family. I have good intentions. I care about the outcome of this situation. Even silly things like I love the color blue. Music makes me happy. Whatever you can tell yourself that you know to be true can break the cycle of negative falsehoods, because --I'll let you in on a secret here-- none of us is really the worst human being ever. 

p.s. Cheri Huber, who must be a genius to have come up with this, actually recommends recording yourself saying the true things so that you can play it back when you're down and hear your own voice telling you true, positive things. I'm not sure I'm quite brave enough, but I'll try it if you'll try it. We all have voice recorders on our phones, I guess.

Have a great weekend.

spiritual highs

I put this off till the last minute, so this is going to be more of a list of bullet points than a post.

I've been thinking about spiritual highs--the mind-altering experiences that some people have that seem to have some element of blissful hyper-awareness involved. These experiences become a kind of holy grail, an state of mind that people chase after, because they've heard it's so amazing. There's a lot to unpack here. The experience of transcendence or spiritual bliss or whatever your particular tradition encourages can be and often is life-changing.

But there are some things about the idea that are-- well, if not disturbing, at least troubling. For one thing, it's this kind of spiritual experience that tends to make people think they've found The Truth. If you're Buddhist or Christian or whatever, and you have a mind-blowing spiritual experience in the context of your faith, it convinces you that your tradition is Right. In future times of doubt or uncertainty, that moment of conversion or enlightenment or whatever will be the thing that you look back to convince yourself that you're on the right track.

The problem with that is that people of all religious traditions have mind-blowing experiences. There are Christians who have amazing conversion stories to tell-- addictions ended, diseases healed. Saint Theresa is famous for her exalted experience of God. Buddhists have enlightenment. Sufis have ecstatic whirling. I'm very quickly getting out of things I can knowledgeably discuss, but I've investigated enough spiritual traditions to be sure that every tradition offers a path to transcendence. So that confidence that your tradition is the Right Tradition because "look at these amazing experiences that we have!" is a false confidence. The fact that people experience spiritual highs in your tradition just means that yup, it's a legitimate spiritual tradition.

And then there's the whole element of spiritual snobbery. Oh, you haven't experienced enlightenment? Oh, you haven't spoken in tongues? Oh, you haven't (fill in the blank with whatever spiritual experience is the cool, popular experience of the moment)? It's a strong enough thing that people are known to lie about it, or to think they've experienced it when they really haven't, because surely someone who has been meditating faithfully for x number of years has experienced something that a newbie who sits down for the first time can experience.

The mainline church I attend (more on that another time) is full of people who have faithfully followed the teaching of their church for their entire lives, and yet have never had a conversion experience, because they've been attending our church since birth. Does that make them less Christian than the person whose remarkable conversion experience included coming back from the brink of death by addiction?

And can't the small, mini-mind-blowing experiences that all of us experience every time we learn something new add up over time to something more solid, more real than a one-time experience of "enlightenment" or "conversion" that peters out over the following years because it wasn't followed up by anything else?

Maybe this is just sour grapes on my part, because I've had plenty of the mini-mind-altering experiences, the a-ha! moment that changes perceptions and feelings and leads to small-scale but perceptible growth, but I've never experienced "enlightenment," full stop. Since I was raised Evangelical, I never experienced conversion (unless you count my reverse conversion away from Evangelicalism in my twenties, but that wasn't a one-time event).

I think it's typical of the American mindset, including my own, that we hear about the big bang, the WOW factor of a spiritual tradition, and that's what we want. We don't want the hours of practice, the days of grinding work to feed the poor or visit the sick, we don't want to give up our creature comforts, we just want the fireworks, and quickly.

I don't have much else to say about this, and obviously this isn't something I've got any answers to, beccause I'm not even sure this makes sense. But it's what I've been thinking about quite a bit after listening to a podcast last week. And since I'm so tired I can barely hold my eyes open, I may have to come back and edit this or write more on this topic another time.

7ToF: irritations major and minor. Well, OK, I guess they're all minor in the grand scheme of things.

1. We are among the few dinosaurs left in the US who still have a landline. We've had the same phone number since 1992, and it is tied into everything. We had a great reminder of that last weekend: a friend from college that we haven't talked to in several years called and fortunately, we have the same old number we've always had.

2. But we've had a sudden dramatic increase in the number of automated calls we receive. Used to be that runup to elections were the worst, when we'd get a half a dozen calls a day. And I thought that was infuriating. But yesterday, the phone rang half a dozen times before 10 a.m. It's ridiculous. Sometimes we'll get twenty calls in a day. That phone call from our college friend was the first time in weeks that the phone rang and it was someone we actually wanted to talk to.

3. I thought Dean had accidentally clicked on an ad, or I had bought something from a new vendor who'd sold our number far and wide. So as annoyed as it makes me, I was a bit relieved to read this article that reports robocalls increased by 900 million during the month of April alone. It's not just us, it's happening nationwide. And if I cancel our landline (which I was on the verge of doing), we'll start using our cell numbers when we sign up for things, and then our cell phones will be inundated with unwanted calls. So I guess we're just stuck. Since our landline almost never receives phone calls we want, I may just turn off the ringer and check the answering machine once a day.

4. Remember my confession that I use face wipes to take off my makeup at night? Well, under the heading "Gross Things I Wish I Didn't Know," file this article, about enormous clumps of trash and cooking waste that are turning up in sewers in the UK. Know what they are mostly composed of? Wet wipes. They're wipes that have been flushed down the toilet, not "binned" (put in the trash)(which is what I do with my face wipes), but still. It was disturbing to read, and disturbing to realize my guilty habit really has no excuse.

5. So I'm working on a new plan. Plan A: compostable wipes. I found some at Target in the baby department. They are multi-use, not just for--ummmmmm--bum wiping, shall we say, so I'll let you know if they work. Plan B: buy one of those packs of a dozen washcloths and create my own wipes that get tossed in the laundry. I'll keep you posted. I'm not usually a DIY person, but if I can come up with an easy way to do this, I'll pass it along.

6. Why do I hate washing my face in the sink so much? I always have, this is not a new thing, but I've never really thought about why. It makes a mess. It's hard to get all the soap off, so I end up with dried soap around the edge of my face, which makes my skin itch. I hate having water drip down my forearms (sensory issues, remember? don't judge).

But now that I'm old and must wear makeup to avoid looking like one of the walking dead, I have to do something. If I skip the night-time makeup removal step, I break out. It happened on my trip-- I ran out of wipes the last night I was in California, so I figured it wouldn't matter if I just skipped a night. 24 hours later, I had one of those crater-like zits on the side of my nose. Haven't had one in years. Almost two weeks later, it's mostly gone but there's still a spot there, damn you slower healing middle aged skin.

7. You remember in the last post I said something about throwing out canceled checks from 2003? I thought I was hilariously exaggerating by going back fifteen years. But guess what I found yesterday? A whole drawer full of check duplicates going back to 2003. *facepalm*

We wouldn't have to eat Kraft dinners, but we would eat Kraft dinners.

 And then I found vet bills from 1992, and EOBs from surgery I had in 1996. So, decluttering continues. As it will, apparently, for some time to come. Have a great weekend.

P.S. In case you missed the Laurel vs. Yanny debate this week (this year's version of the blue dress vs. white dress), this article from the NYTimes explains it and has a tool so you can try it yourself. I very distinctly heard only Yanny at first, but then as soon as I moved the slider, I heard Laurel, and now I can't not hear it. Funny how the brain works.

TBT: Suffering and the daily grind

(This is an edited version of a post that first appeared in January, 2008 in my previous blog.)

I was talking to a similarly-aged friend yesterday about getting things done. There are things that we have to do to keep the wheels turning, so to speak-- pay the bills, buy the groceries, prepare the food, do the landry, clean the kitchen--the things that keep our lives going, the things we do over and over again just because they need to be done. And then there are things that we do that feel like real accomplishments, like helping someone in need, or finishing a creative endeavour, or launching a new project.

It reminded me of this old post about suffering, and the way buddhists understand it. Suffering is an important concept in Buddhism, but one that took me a long time to understand. Maybe I still don't understand it very well.

At first reading, it seems so entirely different than the Christian understanding of suffering. In my Evangelical childhood, I was taught to see suffering as a means to an end. The New Testament epistle of James says quite bluntly: "Consider it all joy, my brothers, when you encounter various trials (ie, when you suffer), knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance, and endurance produces perfect results, that you may be full and complete, lacking in nothing."

In Christianity, suffering is something that happens to you--an illness, unemployment, loss of a friend or loved one. You pass through problems and "tribulations" so that the trivial and unimportant is burned away, and you become a better Christian, a better person. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger, more or less.

So when I first started studying Buddhism and ran across the idea that "All is suffering" (a summary of the First Noble Truth), and that the point of Buddhism is to escape suffering, it made no sense to me. Why would you want to escape suffering? Suffering is part of life. You can't run from your problems. Suffering is what helps you grow up. If you run from suffering, you miss out on life, you are a baby.
I struggled with this misunderstanding for a long time. I spent the whole time I was reading the Dalai Lama's book on happiness arguing with him.

Finally one day last spring I GOT it. I was drying my hair, and feeling irritated that it was already time to get a haircut again. You get a haircut; it's too short for a week; then it's just right for a couple of weeks; then it's getting too long; then it's already time for a hair cut again.
It was like the proverbial lightbulb went on. Oh! I get it! The Buddhist idea of suffering is more about the endless cycle, the daily grind, the unending work of getting through life. You get up, eat breakfast, go to work, come home, eat dinner, clean up, go to bed, then the next day you do it all over again. It's all about the cycle, the endless cycle.

It's a classic East/West difference. I was trained to think of suffering as a linear thing, something that happens along the way that is a means to an end, a process that gets you to a goal-- the goal of being a better Christian. Your life is going along just fine, then some big problem hits, and you have to get through it. Then (if you're lucky) things go back to normal. Getting through the time of suffering helps you grow.

The Buddhist idea is about endless reiterations of the same things, the kinds of things my WASP brain would have considered background, white noise. In Christianity, suffering is big stuff--persecution, illness, losing your job. In Buddhism, suffering is just the grind, the stuff you have to do over and over to get through the day.

Like laundry. Laundry never ends. There is always more laundry to do at our house. Or cooking. Someone is always hungry. Or batteries. You charge them up, and then before you know it they have to be charged again.

But once I got that figured out, it seems that the attitude that you have toward suffering in both traditions is pretty similar. You don't run from it, you don't avoid it, you dive in. The Buddhist idea of "escape" from suffering isn't about running from your problems, it's about reincarnating at a higher level of existence where there is no suffering. But where Christianity emphasizes endurance, getting through it, Buddhism emphasizes staying open, not shutting down, while you are in the midst of suffering.

Pema Chodron says you try to stay soft, instead of closing up like a clenched fist. You let yourself experience your suffering fully. You grow up. What I had interpreted in Buddhism as wanting to run away from suffering is actually not attaching importance to suffering, not letting yourself get caught up in the daily soap opera of our lives.

Disclaimer: As always, my understanding of Buddhism is anything but expert. More experienced insights welcome.
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So, getting back to my conversation with my friend, when we accomplish something that has a different feeling than getting through the daily grind, does that help? I think a part of me believes that my self-worth lies in those accomplishments, in doing something that "makes a difference." But the problem with that is when I'm in a period of time when I'm not accomplishing anything except getting through the daily grind, what am I worth? I need something stronger than that, I think. Or maybe I need to jettison the idea that my self-worth lies in earning a place for myself, getting to a point where I feel like I "deserve" to be here.

Hmmmm. This is going off in an entirely different direction. Too much time in my head this week.

I have no idea what to call this. Dealing with disappointment, part 1, I guess. Except this may be all I have to say.

My dad was more-or-less a narcissist. By "more-or-less" I mean he was never diagnosed by a clinician, but he met the criteria as explained to me by more than one practitioner. When you're the child of a narcissist, there are a number of common problems you face (google "children of narcissists" for dozens of fascinating articles). But one that is not so often discussed is that narcissism is one of the things that you know, inside out. If you have the right personality, and apparently I do, it can lead to what one therapist defined to me years ago as the "narcissistic overlay."

If you have a narcissistic overlay, you're not technically a narcissist, but you have a way of dealing with the world that certainly looks and feels like narcissism, a way that you picked up without realizing it from living with a narcissist. Not all children of narcissists have this problem (for example, neither of my siblings do), but I did.

That therapist held my hand and helped me break through the narcissistic overlay, which was very difficult and painful at the time, but so worth it, because it's like a totally new life. You can feel and understand things that were, well, murky before. (And by the way, if this is a problem that you share, you'll only compound the problem if you react with self-judgment and self-hatred. It is what it is. You get out of it by accepting it and dealing with it.)

For years now I've been grateful to that therapist, but I thought I was done with it. I was grateful to him in the past tense, because wow, was it awesome that he helped me get rid of my narcissistic overlay.

But as I worked my way through my sense of failure and disappointment with my life, it became more and more clear to me that I haven't really finished dealing with it at all. A lot of the hopes and dreams that have not happened for me turned out to have, on further examination, that same sort of murky, ill-defined feel that the narcissistic overlay had.

For example: I always, my entire life up until about ten years ago, dreamed of being a novelist. But I discovered that I hated writing fiction. Every time I tried, I hated it. Writing here comes naturally to me, writing fiction felt like I was trying to pull out my fingernails by the roots.

But I still had this just-below-conscious idea that if I were a novelist, everyone would love me (narcissistic clue #1). And when I tried to define what level of writer success would have made me feel I had achieved my dream, it wasn't just getting a good story written down on the page. It was that everyone I know would love it (clue #2) and it would be a monstrous best seller (clue #3) and an enormous critical success (clue #4).

That's a bit of an exaggeration so you can see what I mean, but not much of one. In other words, it wasn't about writing at all. It was about hubris, about the black hole that underlies all narcissistic thought, that everything should be about me me me, and everything around me should feed the vast, unmeetable needs of my inner narcissist for approval and validation. Narcissistic goals aren't just simple statements of things you want to accomplish, they're hazy dreams of worship-inspiring success.

So step one for me in dealing with life disappointments has been learning to be very specific, very literal, about what exactly it is that I thought I wanted. What exactly would make me happy? What precisely is it that I wanted? Because when I can define it very carefully, very precisely, it often turns out that it's a) not something that I really care about after all (like writing fiction), or b) something that I've already accomplished but not given myself credit for (because I have written stories. I do write in this blog. I am a writer. I'm already there.)

N.B.: What is not included in this mental exercise is whether or not my dreams were/are realistic. It is the nature of dreams to be at least a little unrealistic, a little out of reach, a little crazy. I'm not worried about whether or not I could have "realistically" achieved my dreams. I'm talking about that endless need underneath, that ability that I have to inhale my smaller successes as if they were nothing, and to berate myself for not having achieved some huge other thing.

The reason I've been hesitating to post this is-- well, there are two reasons. One is that my disappointments are fairly small. I have not had to deal with the death of a child or spouse/partner, or their incarceration. I have not had to deal with bankruptcy or homelessness or prejudice. I'm not going to belittle my own heartbreak, but on the other hand, I'm not going to claim that what I'm dealing with is nearly the scale of what others are dealing with.

And secondly, I don't think that this particular aspect of dealing with disappointment and heartbreak is all that common. There probably aren't that many of us who have this hidden narcissistic need. I have no idea if this will resonate with a single one of my readers. But just in case it applies, this is step one: be specific. Get rid of the murk. Figure out what you really wanted underneath all the bluster. It may not be quite what you think.

(apologies about the weird gif, I don't know how to create them myself and that was the only one I could find that was clearly meant to be borrowed. Thank you to @anonymous who created it.)

Blogging

Here’s the thing about blogging. When I started (back in 2003, which when you think about it is a really long time ago, both in terms of years and cultural shifts), blogs were an obscure new idea. Hardly anyone had one, and there were no rules about what you could do. You just wrote posts and put them out there, and maybe people found your blog and maybe they didn’t. Thousands of people started blogs and then quit after half a dozen posts. A few hit the big time, and a few, like me, kept going just because they liked it.

Then six or seven years ago, there was a major shift in the “blogosphere.” Suddenly blogs became a thing, part of your Branding Strategy, and journalists and writers and Internet personalities all started blogging. There started to be rules—spoken and unspoken—about what you should blog about, how often you should post, how long the posts should be. Always include a picture! Keep your paragraphs short! Have a theme!

A lot of very good blogs started during this time period, blogs I still follow. But there didn’t seem to be a place anymore for bloggers like me, who don’t have a brand or an online presence or a following. I just like to write about what I’m thinking about, and I like to put it out there instead of shoving it in a drawer.

The blog branding wave seems to be subsiding, at least in part because doing a major branded blog like that is nearly impossible to do by yourself. (Especially if you don't like to write. Why would someone start a blog if they don't like to write?) Even the ones that started small have folded or become group blogs with multiple writers, “sponsored” posts, advertisements, and associate links to make them financially viable.

I have no complaints about this. I read some of those blogs regularly (and some of them, like Melanie Shankle’s and Anne Bogel’s, are still run by individuals). I’m happy for them that they’re able to make a living doing it. But I’m also happy that the Eye of the Internet seems to have moved on to other things so that there is less pressure to blog in a certain way, and the peons like me can keep doing what we like to do, which is writing what we’re thinking about and posting it.

It is a little difficult sometimes to keep going when you’re writing a blog that hasn’t “caught on,” because there is so much value in our society placed on success as measured by numbers. But I’m used to that, and that isn’t why I ended up not posting this past week.

Nope, I took a blog break this week because I read some opinion pieces about the Emmys, and watched some videos of new artists whose work they felt was unfairly ignored by the Emmy voters. And I realized with very great clarity how hopelessly irrelevant I have become, sitting in my 3-bed, 2-bath house, married to a man who makes enough money that I can choose whether or not to work, unworried about drive-by shootings or whether or not our heat will be turned off because I couldn't pay the bill.

I am that supremely inconsequential thing, an over-educated, financially stable, middle-aged, straight married white woman. Women in my demographic are pretty much the opposite of Influencers (a term I only read about this week). It’s both humbling to realize that my people no longer matter and also enormously freeing because I don’t have to worry about trying to be relevant or influential—it’s not going to happen, and the harder I try, the more I prove that I don’t know what I’m talking about.

I don’t know how other people are living out there, and the contentious issues that are facing our society are not ones that directly impact me. I can discuss them as an interested observer, even as a passionately opinionated observer, but it's not about me. I mean, seriously— I can write about my experiences with sexual harassment when I was younger, but frumpy 56-year-olds don't worry about it. (apologies for the way that was worded previously. I was trying to be funny but it missed.)

Sadly, the main way that women in my demographic make their presence known is as consumers. Unsettling, that is. We wield a lot of cash. (Insert here Kathy Bates' parking lot rage scene from Fried Green Tomatoes. I'd link to it but I'm pretty sure you've all seen it. It pops right up on Google if you haven't.)

All of this leaves open the possibility that I could quit blogging. But as you know, I’ve quit plenty of times before and I always start again. Maybe I limit my topics to things that directly affect me and those of you who read here. Maybe I just keep going with better awareness and a more humble attitude, feeling grateful that I live in a place and a time when I can do this just because I find it satisfying, and I like to write. And extra grateful that a few of you take the time to read it.

you wouldn't know me with this golden glow, soakin' up sun in Mexico

We returned from Mexico on Sunday. We don't usually do major vacations for spring break, but it's our last one with our last kid, so we decided to go big. We went in with two other families and rented a condo in Puerto Peñasco (sometimes called Rocky Point).

We flew Allegiant (a bargain basement airline) to Mesa, AZ, then drove four hours to PP. Allegiant charges for every little thing-- you want a reserved seat? $10. you want a carry-on? $25. you want a coke? $2. But even after we paid all the fees, our airfare was still less than half of what we would have paid on a traditional airline. In spite of a few things we'd heard, they were actually pretty pleasant to deal with. I'm a fan.

Puerto Peñasco is still fairly undeveloped. There is a ring of hotels and condos along the beach, a small "downtown" area, and practically nothing else. It wasn't fancy. There are a few decent restaurants, and a couple of shopping areas with typical Mexican souvenir stuff. There are jet skis and ATVs you can rent (some in our group did, we didn't). The weekend was a bit noisy, but it was blissfully quiet on the weekdays. The water is that gorgeous turquoise color that you see in postcards. For our purposes--getting out of cool, overcast Montana without paying a fortune-- it was perfect and we had a great time.

You can, and we did, feel some discomfort at the contrast between the beautiful resorts and the poverty surrounding, but two things helped with that. First of all, tourists from the U.S. were far outnumbered by vacationing Mexicans. And secondly, their economy is decidedly improved by the tourist industry. There are jobs. I know you could argue about this. We decided to enjoy our vacation.

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I've had plenty of time over the weeks since I last posted to think about blogging. I've had some pretty demoralizing things happen in the past few months, and I'm afraid I let "not a famous blogger yet" contribute to my feelings of failure. One or two fails you can chalk up to experience, but several spread out over a year and a half start to feel indicative of your worth as a person.

But at least as far as the blog is concerned, I had to remind myself that I don't really want to be a famous blogger. Every time my number of pageviews starts to tick upward, I panic and quit posting. So here's that.

I also had time to realize that I was occasionally trying to do something with this blog that I'm not good at. Instead of just writing about my own experience, at least in my head I was trying to speak for all women at my stage of life. Which is ridiculous. I don't think I even realized I was doing it until I had an a-ha moment while reading another blog.

I can't write for anybody else, I can only write for myself. So it's entirely possible that this blog will become tediously boring from here on out--I'm not exactly doing anything thrilling these days-- but I suspect it has already been that, at least sometimes.

So, with that said, on we go. I did not come to the conclusion that I need to quit, which is what I was thinking back when I said I was taking a break. For the time being, I'm planning on sticking with my original schedule--posts on Tuesday and Friday, with the occasional TBT (throwback Thursday) re-post of stuff from my old blog. Thanks for hanging in there with me.

mid-life transitions: the cog feeling

I've talked to two women in the past few days about being in our mid-fifties. Each of us is in a unique situation, but I'm not sure anyone is getting through this lightly. There are physical changes and life transitions and readjustments of expectations.

Since we're all unique, I suspect we feel alone, like we're each the only one going through this. But some things seem consistent. I keep hearing the same things: I thought I would feel different/better/more accomplished. More adult. I thought I would have done something significant by now. I thought I would feel more useful. I thought all this effort, all the gazillions hours of my self that I've poured into my kids, my job, my volunteer work, my music/writing/dance, whatever, would feel more worth it.

Instead, at least for me, I find myself feeling more and more like a cog in an enormous machine. Like everything I've done has mainly served to just move things along, keep the wheels turning. When I was studying theory in grad school, I read Althusser, who proposed that there is no such thing as individual identity. Instead, he thought we all occupy predefined roles (subject positions) in the massive machine that is our culture (the hegemony). When I first read that, I thought it was absurd, but now I wonder if he developed that theory in his mid-fifties, because that's how this feels some days.

(aside: it's entirely possible that was Gramsci and not Althusser. My brain is dying, and I don't care enough to go back and figure it out.)

I've been thinking about this a lot the last few days. This isn't depression-- as you know, I've been through that, and this feels different. Depression is like an endless well of blackness inside me. This doesn't have that black hole feeling, it's just ended up with me re-evaluating the things I do and jettisoning quite a few. I'm reconsidering what's really important to me at this stage of life, and aligning my activities to match.

Maybe the cog feeling only happens to those of us who were dreamers, who fantasized that we would really help change the world, that we would be part of something big. I believed that wholeheartedly when I was younger. But I've told you before, I'm convinced now that the only way we change the world is in the small things, the little ways that we connect with the people around us, the way we carry ourselves in the world.

So the only thing I've come up with so far to work on this is to adopt a defiantly positive attitude-- yeah, well, my life may be a boring and insignificant cog in a machine, but it's my cog, damn it, and I'm going to do the best I can with it.

As with all of these posts, I know this doesn't apply to everybody. There are plenty of people who hit their fifties at full stride and never look back (I see them on Facebook and I sigh with a tiny bit of friendly envy). But I suspect there are more of us uncertain ones out there than are admitting to it.

(This has been sitting in my draft folder for a couple of weeks now. I've re-written it at least three times. Maybe part of the re-evaluation thing is wondering if there's any point in posting stuff like this. But it's late, and I've missed posting on Tuesday for the past several weeks, so here you go.)