Any Shiny Thing - Life after 50
Midlife Fiction
As we Boomers stare into the 7x magnifying mirror, trying not to stab ourselves in the eye with the mascara wand and bemoaning the crevasses in our skin, we should remember there’s some compensation for getting old. [Read more…]
My friend Nanci just retired from a career in public education, first as an elementary school teacher and then as principal. We met in the eighties when we worked for the Jurupa Unified School District in Riverside, California. Here’s what Nanci did to kick-start her retirement:
Holy shxx!!!
Who took these pictures?! Dude’s an awesome multi-tasker.
Ta da!
Sure, you’re laughing now.
Nanci, thanks for sharing your experience with us. You always did set the bar high, for yourself first and then your staff and students. All of your friends at Any Shiny Thing wish you a joyous retirement. Looks like you’re off to a flying start.
Tentative Cover Shot for Dakota Blues
I usually post every Friday about issues facing us older women, but I’m also a writer and occasionally I’ve got to spout off about that, so bear with me.
I’ve been working on my novel, Dakota Blues, for a few years now. It’s taking a long time because I’m learning as I go. That’s cool; I’m teaching myself to write. I read everything I can get my hands on, attend conferences, and ask for feedback from my critique group. Recently I hired an editor.
Wendy’s feedback was really helpful. She made some observations relative to pace, tension, and the believability of characters. Like a wise professor, she also complimented me and I felt empowered. With the changes she recommended, my manuscript will be perfect.
I’m not as disciplined as some people. My friend Kathryn for example will get up at four in the morning and write until lunchtime almost every day. She’s a Ferrari; I’m more a touring convertible.
I sometimes wonder why I’m working so hard to create a work that, in this publishing environment, will probably not earn a lot of money, if any. I could be playing with my granddaughter,
or golfing.
What would my life be like if I weren’t, in effect, starting a small business at the age of 57?
What drives me? Am I stupid?
Well, maybe. But here’s what else:
That’s right. For a girl who hates the idea of sleepwalking through her life, I cannot tell you what drives me to write. Mom says I’ve been doing it since I was a little kid. If I stopped writing, I think it would be hard to get out of bed in the morning. Now that I’m immersed in Dakota Blues, I love my characters. To me, they’re like real people who are in prison, slipping notes to me through the bars. I have to set them free.
Kindle readers can contact me at LMSpreen@yahoo.com.
If you have to ask, you're too young.
Do you remember the Summer of Love?
1967, baby. I was 13.
A certain older sibling who shall remain nameless introduced me to pot that summer. We were camping in Big Sur, and my sis got it from a new friend, a tall woman with an auburn Afro and rust-colored, fringed boots. I don’t remember feeling high – I was probably too excited to inhale properly – but I remember the magic. Even touring the Haight with my parents in our vacation-loaded station wagon seemed otherworldly, blissful. All those hippies flashing peace signs.
The Sexual Revolution was in full swing, and many of us Boomers were right in there with it. We were a shockingly uninhibited generation. It was all there for the taking, and we did whatever we wanted. There were no consequences! We had the pill to prevent pregnancy, and any STDs were (we thought) treatable with a little dose of this or that. With the specter of Viet Nam hanging over us, we felt justified in partying our asses off. Who knew what tomorrow would bring, with those old fogey warmongers in Washington DC calling all the shots?
Eric Burdon's "San Franciscan Nights." Click on the picture for the music.
What made me think of this whole period of my life was a post this morning on my friend Vonnie’s blog, Boomer Women Wise and Wonderful. She reports that many Boomer Women are angry that they’re not feeling the love. Many of our generation, now baggin’ and saggin’, are bummed out that a good number of our men can’t get it up. Or can’t be bothered.
And some of the women are fine with that.
Time passed and we got older, with all the changes that brings. I often wonder where the carefree-hippie part of our generation went. We seem so conservative now, and the younger generations see us as a bunch of consumption-happy gluttons who’ve run the country’s budget off the rails. I wish they could have known us back when we lived in communes and talked about living off the land. Making our own bread, doing things organically. Bricks in our toilet tanks to conserve water.
I miss the purity of our intentions.
Click here for the song, "Age of Aquarius."
Sure, we were young and naive. I miss that sense that we can fix things, especially now, with the country divided into colors and our elected representatives sinking into the quicksand of intransigence. I wonder if, maybe when we’re really old, we’ll be able to go back to that openness and tolerance? Will anybody have the nerve to hang a peace sign in their 55+ community?
But as for dancing naked in the rain? Maybe some things are better not revisited.
Kindle readers can contact me at LMSpreen@yahoo.com.
Okay, admit it. If you’re reading this blog, you’re at that age where you’re thinking about it.
Mortality.
If you are at all concerned – and who isn’t? – I recommend reading a fun book called Sum; Forty Tales from the Afterlives by David Eagleman.
Eagleman is a sharp young neuroscientist who looks at life with humor and creativity. The forty short stories (2-5 pages each) in Sum are more like parables which can be read on more than one level. The main theme is that life on Earth is simpler and more fun than we humans have made it out to be, and in that sense Sum is a teasing reminder to lighten up and appreciate the now.
I laughed out loud at some of the stories, like Egalitaire, in which God in Her great generosity invites all who die to come to Heaven equally, but the outcome surprises her:
“The Communists are baffled and irritated, because they have finally achieved their perfect society, but only by the help of a God in whom they don’t want to believe. The meritocrats are abashed that they’re stuck for eternity in an incentiveless system with a bunch of pinkos. The conservatives have no penniless to disparage; the liberals have no downtrodden to promote.
“So God sits on the edge of Her bed and weeps at night, because the only thing everyone can agree upon is that they’re all in Hell.”
I highly recommend this book! And if you want to feel uplifted right now, watch what he has to say about his new movement, Possibilianism, at PopTech in Camden, Maine.
Kindle readers can contact me at LMSpreen@yahoo.com.
A few years ago, I took on a serious physical challenge: I agreed to babysit my infant granddaughter when her parents went back to work. [Read more…]
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