Oprah Struggles to Reinvent Herself

O Magazine was started twelve years ago. How many articles do you think Oprah Winfrey has published about reinvention? Yet it seems even for the Big O, it’s not that easy. (Boomers everywhere hide a half-smile of schadenfreude.)

Used to be the only time we had to invent ourselves was in our late teens, early twenties.

“What are you going to do with your life?” was the big question. Now we have to recreate ourselves every decade or so due to job insecurity. Capitalism depends on creative destruction, and the United States is the envy of the world in the way our CEOs can toss workers into the garbage whenever the balance sheet needs more black ink.

Most of us are vulnerable. We’re the little guy, Joe Employee. We don’t have much power, unless you’re one of the few remaining union members and even they are pretty much toast. Witness the tens of thousands of highly trained and educated teachers who stay home every day, losing their edge as opposed to educating the next generation. But I digress.

Little Guy, take heart. You’re not alone. It seems Oprah is flailing about in her new life-phase. (Warning: mute this article because otherwise you’ll be force-fed an annoying commercial.)

Apparently Oprah’s reinvention has hit a rough patch. Her new cable channel is sucking wind. I feel her pain because I’ve been there, stepping off the cliff from where you are golden into a place where you are tin. You feel as if you’re twenty years old again, but not in a good way. In your new incarnation, you have little power or authority, and must slave away to rebuild it. But this time you’re forty or fifty or sixty or more.

In my late forties, I left a profession in which I’d established a twenty-seven year history and threw myself into freelancing. After ten years of trying and failing, changing my mind, feeling lost and/or depressed, wasting time, wasting money and learning things I’ll never need, I’ve finally figured out my new career. Apparently I’m a teacher and a writer. I’m so happy, it’s obviously the right choice.

From my new vantage point, I’d give younger people this advice: think of yourself as a small business. You may have to reshape it or carry it to an unexpected place, but this will be less jarring if you plan for it. What would you do if you were suddenly tossed from your current job?

Burnish that business called You, Inc.

WHILE YOU’RE EMPLOYED, learn everything you can, network with those who can further your career, keep your eye out to alternate but related industries, think of side businesses you can build in your spare time for emergency cash, and save your money. Living within your means is the ultimate power over the unpredictable future.

For the older people, my peers, this is something you’ve already discovered. If you need tips from your contemporaries about reinvention and finding work in mid-to-later-life, here are several:

I wish you success and contentment, and I hope you’ll take some comfort from knowing that the great Oprah is struggling, too.

27 Comments
by Lynne Spreen on March 9, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Boomers/Aging, Meeting Our Goals Together, Sleepwalking Through Life
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Posted by Lynne Spreen on March 9, 2012

http://anyshinything.com/2012/03/09/oprah-struggles/

Easier to Give than Receive

I like money. I mean, who doesn’t? So why is it so hard for me to accept it from people to whom I’m giving a skill or benefit?

Mika Brzezinsky wrote about this in Knowing Your Value: Women, Money and Getting What You’re Worth. Women are good at giving, but not so good at taking. That’s beautiful, and the world needs more of it, but sometimes we stand in our own way. Mika careened from not asking her bosses for adequate pay, to asking inappropriately (acting like a man would, since that’s who modeled the intervention for her), to asking in a way that was true to her comfort level. The last time, when she asked authentically, it happened.

Part of my problem is that I am starting a new business, so my students were my guinea pigs. I didn’t feel it was right to charge them for something that wasn’t particularly polished, but now it’s a valuable product, so I had to break the news.

I felt like a jerk, but I did it, and they were beautiful!

“Of course; your classes are worth it!” was the general sentiment. I am so relieved, but I still feel kind of clunky. To be honest, I dread when my book is published and I have to take money for that. Not the money part. The take part.

I never had any problem negotiating in a corporate setting, because for some reason that seems impersonal. My problem is asking individuals to open their very own wallet and share their personal cash with me.

Some of it is my upbringing: very Catholic. We were taught to give and give and give until it hurts. And then give some more. From my North Dakota German heritage I got the idea that we only give, never take. And then there’s this timeworn maxim: it’s better to give than receive. Right?

My parents taught me to give. My mother worshiped sacrifice and we kids were indoctrinated. No surprise I supported two jobless husbands. When I met Prospective Husband Number Three, I took him to be interviewed by my therapist. Seriously – I didn’t trust my own judgment. After thirty minutes, Dr. N looked at me and said, “He’s got a job. What the hell do you see in him?”

But I digress. Women still earn less than men, and one reason is because they don’t ask, let alone negotiate.

Here’s a surprise: the younger generations are no better.

When interviewed about their book, Ask for It: How Women Can Use the Power of Negotiation to Get What They Really Want, authors Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever say this:

A lot of the younger women we talked to…believe that they’re just as assertive about what they want as their male peers. Unfortunately, this is not true. Younger women may assume that things have changed far more than they have, but our studies show that even among men and women in their 20s and early 30s, men are much more likely to initiate negotiations than women.

I’m going to take a stab here and say it’s probably about two things: one, our indoctrination as caregivers and nurturers, and two, the lack of role models. I guess that was redundant.

The situation perpetuates itself.

In the future I’m going to read up on and study more about this topic for my own benefit, yours, and that of my daughters and granddaughters. Of course, there’s nothing wrong with making a sacrifice for those you love, but it can’t be all you, all the time. The act of taking cash from your peers may feel creepy, but giving away your work feels worse.

Have you experienced this inability to ask for what you’re worth? Did you figure out a way to overcome it? What’s your story?

14 Comments
by Lynne Spreen on March 2, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Boomers/Aging, Meeting Our Goals Together, Sleepwalking Through Life, Uncategorized
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lynne Spreen on March 2, 2012

http://anyshinything.com/2012/03/02/easier-to-give-than-receive-a-woman-thing/

Why Can’t We Die Like Dudley?

My brother and his wife recently put their beloved German Shorthair to sleep. Dudley was ready. (The photo is not of him). Bro said Dudley told them when when it was time, and they put him on a blanket in the yard and gave him the blue juice (my sis-in-law is a veterinarian.) I am sure they petted him and cried, but it sounds like a pretty good way to go. Dudley died with the sun on his flanks, the smell of grass in his nostrils, and the love of his family all around him. I wish we humans would permit each other such a sweet farewell.

Of course, that’s not how we do it, because human life is more valuable than dog life, and the risk is too great. Instead, we pull out all the stops to keep each other alive in spite of great illness, pain and struggle. Or at least that’s how the general public handles it. Doctors? That’s another story.

In this article entitled How Doctors Die by Ken Murray, a cardiologist reveals that doctors are so averse to the normal life-saving techniques visited on the dying that they even go so far as to have No Code (i.e., no CPR)  tattooed on their bodies. Here is one reason: did you know that in order to properly conduct CPR on a patient, ribs are usually broken? How’d you like your old mom to have to deal with that? Here’s an excerpt:

Almost all medical professionals have seen what we call “futile care” being performed on people. That’s when doctors bring the cutting edge of technology to bear on a grievously ill person near the end of life. The patient will get cut open, perforated with tubes, hooked up to machines, and assaulted with drugs. All of this occurs in the Intensive Care Unit at a cost of tens of thousands of dollars a day. What it buys is misery we would not inflict on a terrorist. I cannot count the number of times fellow physicians have told me, in words that vary only slightly, “Promise me if you find me like this that you’ll kill me.” They mean it. Some medical personnel wear medallions stamped “NO CODE” to tell physicians not to perform CPR on them. I have even seen it as a tattoo.

I have had more surgeries than your normal 57-year-old, and were it not for these surgeries I’d have been dead several times over. I think I have a bod that’s inclined that way, so I think about things like this, and if I were to receive a grave diagnosis, I’d forego all the extreme measures and enjoy the rest of my time on earth. What a privilege to have enough advance notice that you could get your files in order (shutting down all my online accounts would take days!) and lay the groundwork for sending your loved ones off into the future comfortably instead of torturing yourself with toxic chemicals and premature hospitalization.

Of course, the problem is that medical knowledge is incomplete, and we can’t often say with a high degree of certainty that all efforts are useless and we may as well go quietly, but if I were lucky enough to get such certainty, I think I’d rather get the blue juice. Wheel me close to the window, hook me up to the morphine, and adios, muchachos.

I hope I didn’t bum you out but I believe this topic deserves more attention. Now that I’ve raised the issue, I’ll drop it. The sun’s coming up, the day is young, and we’ve got livin’ to do.

27 Comments
by Lynne Spreen on February 24, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Boomers/Aging, Sleepwalking Through Life
Tagged , , , , , , ,

Posted by Lynne Spreen on February 24, 2012

http://anyshinything.com/2012/02/24/why-cant-we-die-like-dudley/

Finding Friends in Middle-Age

You spent your life working and now, God willing, you’re looking at retirement. You’ll have time, glorious time! So you blow out the candles, go home with your plaque and sleep in the next day.

At first your life is full. You repot those straggly houseplants and organize your closets. Take a bag full of business outfits to Goodwill. Cook from your dusty recipe book. Watch the morning news shows. Meditate. Go to the gym right in the middle of the day. Woo hoo, livin’ la vida loca, girl!

But pretty soon you get caught up. Your calendar says your week is filled, but it’s all mundane: take dog to groomer, get nails done, don’t forget mammogram. Maybe you start a business from the guest bedroom, and that keeps you so busy that you don’t mind the absence of those coffee-fueled morning conversations you used to have with your buddies at work. If you’re lucky enough to have somebody at home whose company you enjoy, that helps. But after a while, you notice you don’t have any women friends. There’s something missing in your life, and it’s uncomfortable.

That’s how it went for me, anyway. At middle-age, I realized I had few friends. Worse, I didn’t know how to find new ones.

I’m an introvert so it was even more daunting.

So I read The Friendship Crisis: Finding, Making, and Keeping Friends When You’re Not a Kid Anymore by Marla Paul. Marla says finding new friends at our age is harder because our peers aren’t looking. By now, they generally have all the friends they need, so you have to sort of sneak up on them. You go where the prospects are, engage in an activity that makes you happy on its own merits, and then you and the targets just naturally fall into conversation (keeping it light at first). If there’s a spark, you’ll know. Bonus points for meeting multiple times at the activity (pottery class, golf, book club) without the pressure of a first date (“Hey, want to get a cup of coffee sometime?” is awkward, IMHO).

I know you want me to end this with “…and then after a while I had tons of friends!!” but that didn’t happen. At the time I was living in Palm Desert, California, where half my neighbors were snowbirds who left town six months out of the year. The rest of the population was at work. Tumbleweeds blew down the street. So Bill and I moved to what Dr. Phil would call a target-rich environment: a 55+ community an hour away where the residents live year-round and are eager to make friends. I joined activities that made me happy, like book club and golf, and friendships began to form.

I now know that the best way to make friends later in life is to find the activity and let the friendship follow. That’s my advice, but maybe you have some ideas, too. Have you had this experience, and if so, how did you handle it?

33 Comments
by Lynne Spreen on February 17, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Boomers/Aging, Sleepwalking Through Life
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Posted by Lynne Spreen on February 17, 2012

http://anyshinything.com/2012/02/17/finding-friends-in-middle-age/

Demi Could Learn from Us

I feel bad for Demi, melting down and all. According to the tabs, she’s distraught over turning fifty. It must be horrifying when Ashton Kutcher takes a good look at you and realizes you’re no longer young, and then your life is over. Because what’s next, granny underwear and black whiskers that spring from your chin overnight? You might as well be dead.

Here is where being a movie star doesn’t help you. Demi might have a villa in France but even she can’t stop the clock.

What a surprise it would be for her to learn that average people like me are facing the very same aging process. Of course, we’re not making a career of having a preternaturally youthful body, but still, it’s hard. For Demi it’s hard because she’s in an unforgiving market. For the rest of us, it’s hard because we have so few cultural role models. Okay, there’s Hillary, she of the big brain and ample backside, who after bringing countless world leaders to heel will soon amble pantsuited and serene into retirement, excited about entering the new phase of her life. That’s a nice thought.

For any of us, moving into menopause and beyond is big. We should maybe take a sec to acknowledge just how big. Think of the other transitions we celebrate: first word, first steps, turning sixteen and driving, getting married, first jobs, kids – we celebrate all these moments. They are achievements! Accomplishments! Positive developments!

Then comes perimenopause, menopause,  turning fifty…what rituals do we engage in to mark these transitions?  We give each other black balloons and wrapping paper. With a big laugh and a nudge, we spring a wheelchair on the birthday girl at the office party. Ha. Ha.

This whole stupid cultural denigration of the great accomplishment of aging really pisses me off.

If I had my way, we’d call all the post-menopausal women up on stage and hand them an award for getting to this point in life without losing their minds. I mean, think of all we’ve done by this age. We’ve sublimated our natures to a guy (maybe more than one) so we could get pregnant and have a peaceful nest in which to raise our babies, while holding down fulltime jobs and managing said nest. We’ve been served up thirty, forty, fifty years of magazine covers at the grocery store telling us how we can be hotter, cuter, thinner, sexier, better cooks and lovers, more organized, and better balancers of work and life – and we read the articles and tried, oh Lord, how we tried. What did we get instead? A sense of failure, a sense that we’re not cutting it. Oh, and maybe also breast cancer, fibroids, prolapse, stress incontinence, hot flashes, wrinkles and whiskers. We learned to deal with increasingly frequent deaths and illnesses, we held our girlfriends’ hands at their husbands’ funerals, we shrugged and said the hell with it.

Maybe that’s our mistake. Maybe we should make a bigger deal of the courage inherent in aging thoughtfully, gratefully, sublimely. We could talk about how we’re not phased anymore about the changes to our bods, or the losses we suffer. We could revel in the maturity, self-knowledge and sense of “been there, done that,” that keep us on an even keel when younger women would be freaking out.

Those are the things we should be talking about. There’s something ahead to be excited about: power and grace. This is our reward for getting old. Maybe if we talked about this, young women like Demi wouldn’t be so freaked out because they would see aging as something less to be afraid of, and something more to aspire to.

49 Comments
by Lynne Spreen on February 10, 2012  •  Permalink
Posted in Boomers/Aging, Sleepwalking Through Life
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Posted by Lynne Spreen on February 10, 2012

http://anyshinything.com/2012/02/10/demi-could-learn-from-us/

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  • Wild by Cheryl Strayed

    Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest TrailWild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed
    My rating: 4 of 5 stars

    Sat down with Wild last night and couldn't let go until I'd read 97 pages. FABULOUS work. Can't wait to get back to it. More later.

    Okay, I just finished it last night, and here are my reactions: first, Cheryl Strayed does a masterful job of making you feel the depths to which she sank in the aftermath of losing her mother, and as her siblings and step-dad spun away from each other in a grief spiral. Next, I was enthralled by her journey on the Pacific Crest Trail. As a native Californian, I've seen those trailheads all over the state, and wondered who would dare the journey. I wouldn't fear animals so much as a pack of humans lying in wait. Although this was in the mid-90s, and maybe it was safer then, I still can't believe her good luck in not being robbed, raped, or/and killed.

    Having said that, one of the aspects of this story I enjoyed the most was her youthful vibrancy. Cheryl at 27 was smart, pretty and sexual, yet all of it was without artifice or pretense. She was a strong young animal - and I mean that with 100% admiration - on a quest. Her open-hearted reaction to people, particularly the Three Young Bucks who were like little brothers to her, and the sense of sharing and camaraderie on the trail helped heal her wounds. Without giving anything away, she has some scary moments that would have stopped me in my tracks, making a beeline back for safety, but she persevered. And I guess that's the reason I had such a great feeling when I finished this book: Cheryl's journey leaves you with the feeling that you can persevere, too.

    View all my reviews

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