This is the WORST!

Hyperbole is undervalued if you ask me. Not that anyone did, but if.

Here’s the WORST. I am apathetic. I am so apathetic right now I can’t decide if I should move or stay prone and starve to death. Starving is looking good. Anything else would take an effort, which is something I do not support.

And what’s with that Mueller report? Is it any surprise? Not really. I’m beginning to think we, meaning I, underestimated how venal and corrupt and self-serving the world is. I knew it was there, but the extent of the horribleness and widedpreadedness of it was not known to me.

I used to think people were basically good, a viewpoint I now see as hopelessly naive. Was I living under a rock? While it is true I had a reputation for naivete when I was young I had assumed, based on my experiences on a couple of continents, that the good people outnumbered the bad people, mostly because that’s what I kept running into. So I was living under a rock for most of my life, albeit a comfy and sheltered rock, which was probably the problem. I didn’t even know enough to know to venture outside of it. My life has been good, though occasionally problematic, but hasn’t everyone’s?

See what I mean? Assumptions.

And now I’m too broken to do much about it, not that I was all that effective before. People like me, and there are many of us, aren’t very effective. If we were things might be different. Or not. Maybe I’m inerently bad, but no one’s noticed. Or they have noticed but didn’t want to tell me, knowing how badly I’d take it. All I’ve ever wanted is to be good and for people to know it. Or at least that I meant well, but meaning isn’t doing, and perception isn’t reality, and my brain is less trustworthy than I thought.

Maybe it’s the brain damage, the little veins in my brain that have shut down for eternity, leaving entire brain cities deserted like long lost ghost towns, going bad for far longer than I suspected. Maybe it started with that first concussion my first husband gave me. And today I was told, yet again, that though he had left me as a beneficiary on even more accounts that I had no knowledge of, I would have to get a court order to get anything. They came to ME. And the SOB owed me. But no matter.

It is what it is, which is obviously banal and obvious.

Parkinson’s. Brain damage. Depression. Apathy. Fibromyalgia. My five horsemen of the apocalypse, bearing down on me so slowly that I still have enough time to kick up a fuss, go to the ocean, a ballgame, lunch with friends, maybe Hawaii. Enough time to do many things, but there will be no jumping out of airplanes again, no cliff diving, no marathons. Which is okay, because those things don’t matter to me. Andrew and Ash matter most of all, and I’m afraid I’ll have to watch my most lovely dog age. He’s fine now, but a bit slower, 13 at least count. That was a relief because I thought he was 14. I’ll watch Andrew age too, but since I’ve got such a head start it’ll be more traumatic for him than me.

This is maudlin and not the tone I was going for, but apathy will do that. Avoid it at all costs!

Big Wins

They’re everywhere. For people like me who spend too much time immobile in front of a TV, we see them all the time. Everyone wins big, or loses big.

My noxious TV habit is not why I’m here today.

TV, movies, media, FB, Instagram, whatever else is out there, people have big wins, whether it’s a great new job, a child, a lottery (I’ve seen zero stories on the losers), prizes, a not guilty verdict, a windfall, an investment that paid off, whatever.

My experience with big wins is rather limited, so I wouldn’t know.

But real life is different, isn’t it? I have friends who are dealing with chronic illness, divorce, child custody issues, depression, failing health of parents and friends, car accidents, failing businesses, death of loved ones, and whatever else happens to us.

I do not personally know anyone with a failing business right now, so that one is a lie, but I thought I should include it anyway. These are all big losses, and they seem to come more frequently than the big wins. Just yesterday I heard of two suicides. Accidents. Tragedies writ large with indelible black marker.

But where are the big wins? Maybe it’s just me wondering, but I don’t think so.

They’re rare for many of us, if not all.

Little wins, that’s what I try to focus on now. Those are what I need to remember. They’re so little they’re not even worth telling anyone because they sound inconsequential, but sometimes that’s the best I’ve got.

• Four bucks in royalties for a book that doesn’t sell.
• A dog licking my face first thing in the morning.
• Working remotely on a client’s Apple that works well and fast.
• A client happy with their website.
• A husband sleeping next to me.

None of those are big wins, but they all happened to me today. All that in just one day. And more, if I thought about it. So much could go wrong, and sometimes does.

• An MRI that looks pretty much like last year’s, which means the damage hasn’t become worse.
• New meds that make me more functional.
• A needed scrip finally filled, which is a win and a loss because it won’t arrive for a week, by which time I may have collapsed in a fetid puddle.
• A car buyer for a car I no longer need.

All in the past week.

We want the big wins, we see them happening to others, but we don’t see all the losses, and we don’t see how this could be an anomaly. But we want one too. We’re good people, we’ve worked hard, just like we were told we needed to do, don’t we deserve that?

But people rarely get what they deserve. For every person who gets the best job, many more didn’t. For every killer who goes to prison many more are never found out until they’re dead, or never. Child molesters who think of children as objects, some are caught but mostly they run free doing what they do. Bad cops. Good cops. Are any of these people getting what they deserve?

We can deserve many things, good and bad, but that has very little to do with receiving these things. If we spend all our time waiting for the big wins we might miss the little wins that make up our lives. We can create the little wins. I can ask a friend to lunch. I can go for a walk around the lake. I can make the perfect grilled PB&J. I can write a story.

Life is not a story of drama and intrigue, unless one is inclined that way, life is the small wins knit together, because when you do that instead of just flinging then around you have a solid piece of wins which will more effectively ward off the small losses that we’re constantly being bombarded with.

I will not refuse a big win, but I will not expect any. Instead I’ll take my little wins and weave them into something stronger, something that will help keep the little losses from drawing blood.

A New Purpose

There was a time when I was convinced that my life’s purpose was to care for those who couldn’t care for themselves, a guardian to the embittered and sad angry men who kept showing up in my life. This became clear to me after the breakup of my second marriage, when I was attempting to care for my second ex in his mental illness days. It wasn’t just him of course. Sometimes one has to go through several iterations of the same ol’ same ol’ before things become clear.

My first husband had needed me to take care of him in ways I never even realized. He was intent on drinking himself to death, though in the end it was his love of smoking that did him in. In his world, and this was many years ago when this was common (it may still be, in some circles, though not in mine) for the wife to be responsible for the cooking and cleaning, while the occasional yardwork was his domain. I also handled all the finances, allowing us to build a healthy next egg. He was clueless about money, and would make no attempt to cook, even if he were starving.

But it was what he was born with that was the root of his trouble, the cleft palate that was still a visible scar. When he was young he’d been entered in the Special Olympics, based purely on his cleft palate, a thing that had been repaired and affected him neither physically nor mentally. And it was the Special Olympics that affected him emotionally.

People noticed, and often were not shy about expressing it. It was just a scar, but people can be mean and cruel. One time when we were very young and both in the military I walked over to his building for some reason or another, maybe lunch, and a coworker of his saw us leaving together and yelled out, “Not bad for a rabbit..something.” I don’t remember. The not bad was me, unknowingly sexy in my uniform as only someone in their early twenties can be. He was the rabbit whatever. He said nothing, and we continued to walk out. He never said anything back, unless he’d been drinking, and then he’d be more likely to try a physical attack on the offender. My face burned for his embarrassment, and I knew what that sort of attention did to him. I felt like he needed my support more than I needed his. The pain and anger ate at him, and while I worked and went to school and made sure the household and frequent moves went on without a hitch he drank, and spent too much time thinking about the unfairness of life. Occasionally he’d rouse himself enough to talk about going to college too, but he never made it past one class. He felt stupid, and he’d been treated as stupid, and he couldn’t get past it. I was smart, really a smart, which may not have helped, but he liked to ask me questions and explain how life worked. He would listen, and smoke, and drink, and ask a follow up question, or say “Wow,” or “Huh.” He was a man of few words.

When I made staff sergeant on my first try and at two attempts he still hadn’t, it became worse, the teasing about his wife out ranking him added to the normal casual cruelty. I had studied, and then for his third effort he did too, not having that much interest until I out ranked him, then it became necessary, and he passed. His motivation was based in humiliation and anger, and those will get one only so far in life.

We never talked about his cleft palate, just once or twice, enough for me to know about Special Olympics. Once I was away at a six week legal school (during which he lived on pizza and drive through hamburgers) and one weekend Special Olympics was held on base and some of us volunteered. When I told him he said nothing, but I could feel his antipathy, anger even, through the telephone.

Sometimes he would take his anger out on me, and I thought many times of leaving, of taking my by then five dogs and the truck and driving off. But where would I go with five big dogs? He discouraged all but the most superficial of friendships, and so I felt alone. I would not leave my dogs.

When I finally did leave, once I realized I actually could, a realization that I had to be taught, I still felt responsible. Shortly after we separated he asked me to come over and make him dinner because he was starving, and I did, because it was my fault that I’d left. He asked for other more personal things that I flat out said no to, so it’s not as if I had no boundaries.

If you wonder why abused women don’t leave more often, it may be because they don’t know they can, they don’t know there is any other life, they don’t know how strong they really are.

So certain was I that he couldn’t take care of himself I signed away my rights to what would be a substantial (at that time) half of his pension. I let him have it all, and most of the money. I knew I could always make more, but I wasn’t sure he could. I left penniless, and when he realized how much work by then four dogs and a big house in the country were, he gave those back to me, along with his beat up truck, because whoever had the dogs needed a truck. He got my Grand Am, a graduation present from me to myself that was clean and pretty, and money, and all his retirement. I ended up with a foreclosure and a bankruptcy.

Turns out he did need his retirement. He tried a tech school, but dropped out because it wasn’t, he said, very good. He did become a surgery tech for awhile, but then decided it was too much standing. After that, it was drinking and riding his Harley with his friends. When his first Harley was stolen he called me first, wanting only to tell me. When a friend of his crashed his own Harley and died shortly after they’d spent a day riding he called me first to cry.

By the time I found my third husband, or he’d found me, I was still fairly certain I had to take care of men. It was hard adjusting to someone who didn’t need me at all. He was, and is, entirely self-sufficient. Did I not have a purpose after all? Perhaps I do, but that isn’t it. And now I’m the one with Parkinson’s, so I will have to rely upon someone who is not me, and that’s a hard thing to face. But necessary. And this time, for once, I know that I can rely upon someone who is not me. I still don’t like it much – I never wanted to be a bother, I want to pull my own weight. But there it is. Taking care of others may have been my purpose once, but it’s not anymore.

Loneliness

Loneliness can be felt while surrounded by people, and it can be felt when one is all alone. It can be pervasive, it can be momentary, it can linger in the background and come out unexpectedly. And it’s far more common than you think.

Or maybe not – I don’t know what you think.

That’s a pet peeve. I keep hearing, or seeing, actually, people say, “That’s ridiculous!” or “You’re just feeling sorry for yourself!” a particular favorite of my stepmother, who had a hand in convincing me I deserved to be alone, or “How can anyone think that way?” about most anything you can imagine. Everyone is a separate individual with their own thoughts and feelings, their own perspective and their own experiences. There aren’t two people that much alike that they can understand everything about each other.

Or maybe there are. What do I know?

If we were talking about me, for example, people might say I have lots of friends, and I do, though I might never see them. Many of them I’ve never met. I like to keep it that way to avoid their eventual disappointment. That’s the sort of thing that can lead to loneliness. What if people found out what I’m really like? In my case, it’s a lack of trust. I don’t trust anyone, except my husband, to see me. And maybe my cousin, because it turns out we’re a lot alike. I don’t even tell people my religious beliefs, or lack thereof, unless I know we’re in the same demographic.

I have a lovely life, but I’ve never made many local friends. Everyone I know is through work, and you can’t trust people who are clients. You can, and I do, but it’s work. I miss, sometimes, working with other people, though I acknowledge it’s not always easy to get along with people, depending on who you and they are.

I don’t like to call people because as I discussed with my cousin last week, I think I’m interrupting something important, which would be anything they’re doing and I’m not. Besides, I’m not good on the phone. I need to see people in real life to have something to say.

And even then you might think I’m the boringest person on the planet.

Or not.

I amuse my husband, but he’s easily amused, fortunately.

People are social creatures, but for some reason some of us don’t trust easily, and we hide from the light like the bugs you see from turning over a rock.

Many depressed people are lonely and say they have no one to turn to, no one who believes them or listens. That may be true, or there may be someone close by that wants to help them but doesn’t know how, and the depressed person can’t see the part of the other person that is there for them because they can’t recognize it. Maybe they’ve had too many people tell them they could just snap out of it if they wanted, or they’re just lazy, as if people enjoy being depressed and do it to themselves.

We don’t.

People don’t want to be depressed nor lonely. Most of the time I’m fine, working or doing the thing I seem to be doing the most of these days, resting, because I can amuse myself for hours alone. But I miss people. Some people don’t. But if someone is depressed and feels all alone, it’s likely they miss people. Sometimes I miss people.

That sounds very self-absorbed, but we all relate to the world starting from the inside, from what we know and experience. Where else would we start from?

 

 

Unchecked Baggage

How much are they charging for baggage these days? I always pay it because I only have the one bag, the rest I carry, and I can barely carry that. These days, I doubt I could carry even that. I’ll be the one traveling with a tiny bag containing my tiny iPad and my wallet, which is where I keep my plastic. Maybe my phone, though if you want to reach me it’s best to email. Sometimes I don’t get my phone messages because … honestly. I don’t check it. Clients know to email me for fastest service.

But for you, even faster.

I was born defective. That’s one thing they don’t tell you until things start popping up. But for my age, my body is remarkably inefficient. It hasn’t worked well for quite some time time. Sure, my parents loved me, being rather normal parents. And mostly I pass in public as mostly normal, whatever that may be. There seems to be no accurate description off what that might be. So there’s that part of my unchecked baggage.

What about you? Checked your baggage lately?

In the past few months there have been deaths, as there tend to be, the older we get. First my first husband, who had lung cancer. Long time smoker. By the time I found out he was in hospice he was gone. I didn’t check my messages that weekend. I felt bad for having missed his dying, but he never felt all that bad about trying to strangle me, or the time he banged my head into the floor over and over again, as if that would somehow eject his demons, or mine. Eventually one of us, probably me, was going to die. He died at 60, but with his sisters and a close friend by his side.

And I thought, after being sad that he’d died, that he’d never pay me back what he owed since our divorce. I’d given up on that long ago, though occasionally, years ago, I’d remind him when he’d call me, usually late and drunk. He was drunk, to be clear, not me. “I didn’t forget,” he’d tell me, “you’ll get it.”

Come to find out, I was the beneficiary of some annuities he had. Not a ton of money, but quite a bit more than he owed me. Interest for my pain and suffering maybe. He hasn’t worked much in the past 20 years, preferring to live on military retirement in his dead mother’s house. I let him have it all, the retirement, though I could have really used the half that I was legally entitled to. I didn’t want to leave that tie open, and I could provide for myself better than he could.

That turned out to be true.

Then my cousin contacted me to tell me her mother, my aunt, was in hospice, with lung cancer. She wasn’t there more than a few days before she was gone. She’d spent her career as an oncology nurse, but smoking doesn’t care if you know the possible consequences of your actions.

When my mom was dying of liver cancer, my aunt told me that we weren’t to mention that her history of drinking may have been a contributor. As if I would do that, even If I’d thought about it, which I hadn’t. She was the last of that generation in the family. That line, at any rate.

Last week her son and daughter cleaned out her house, and asked the rest of us to let them know if we wanted anything. I asked for the history stuff, the things she’d shown me last time I visited. Long family tree information going back to Scotland. All the things my grandmother had saved of their courtship, scrapbooks of their social life (extensive) and one whole scrapbook of my grandfather’s illustrative career as a lawyer and Kiwanis member. Four boxes, not all of them looked at yet, so no telling what else.

My aunt’s sisters and brothers all died of cancer. Maybe personal habits, maybe the far off nuclear testing they’d witnessed as children, maybe just life, because we all have that baggage, and cancer doesn’t care who you are, or what you’ve done, or what you believe.

It’s just life sometimes.

One of my best friends is my second cousin, who is technically my aunt’s and mom’s generation. She remembers spending a lot of time with them when she was young, the younger cousin hanging out with the older kids. I didn’t even know of her until my mom died, and she lives five minutes away from me.

I was planning on being as healthy as she still is, still working as a financial rep, or my grandfather, who was practicing law until at least his 80’s, and who died just short of his 101st birthday.

But healthy hasn’t worked out all that well, though everything else has. And now they tell me I have significant loss of brain mass, and I don’t know what even means, other than the obvious, because finding a neurologist who isn’t scheduling at least three months in advance is asking a lot. My records are currently in for an interview at OHSU, and perhaps they’ll interview better than I do.

My doctor had tentatively suggested Parkinson’s, based on my symptoms and my gait. And elbows. Now he won’t tell me anything, though he called me early one day to tell me about my shrinking brain. That’s all he has for me, but at least he’s not throwing out random ideas.

It could be nothing. But I have headaches most days, and before this all started I rarely had headaches. Not extreme headaches, just the occasional sharp stabbing pain, but everyone gets that, right? And I’m just a little bit more forgetful, and I’m slower at work. That’s scary, because my income depends on being fast. No more multi-tasking – it confuses me and I forget what I was doing if I’ve switched my attention for any length of time. I used to be fast, and really good at getting lots done in a small amount of time. Tremors, which are better the more I rest, fatigue, etc. No one wants to know about that. The summer of 2016 I started getting tremors. I was driving forty minutes to and from once a week, and when I got there my hands were shaking like crazy, and I thought I was just tired, because of the fibro, but it didn’t get better.

If it isn’t nothing, that’s life. That’s the way things go. I’m okay with that. At least for now. For now I’m going to continue doing what I’ve always done, albeit a bit slower, and I’ll try to get rid of some of that baggage. If I don’t, that’s just life too.

It’s all life.

 

Lies, Lies, and Damn Lies

My entire world view has been challenged, and it’s not an idea I like.

I don’t lie. Oh sure, the occasional what-they-call-white-lie, which I don’t think makes them any better, but they sure are easy. I could tell you about my white lies, but now that lies are just alternative facts, what’s the point?

I grew up as a well-known liar, famous amongst my family for my confabulations and flights of imagination. Now I know I was just telling my version, which is just as valid as any other. Mostly my lies weren’t intentional – they came about because I didn’t know what was going on. Were dad and step mom talking, or not talking? My answer to any given question could be read as a lie based on that information, but it wasn’t as if we had flashing signs to let us know, and I was mostly concentrating on not getting disparaged or laughed at or seen. 

After being such an unsuccessful liar, I left home and found no reason to lie. Besides, isn’t truth better? And it isn’t nice to lie to people, is it? I studied history, on my own, believing what I read because I read trusted historians. 

My resumes were truth, my degrees were earned and not made up, my backstory was true as I remembered it. My book was written with as much truth as I could stand. Or did I only think it was the truth?

How stupid I was! And after all these years of telling the truth, even if it was to my detriment, I find out that it’s not necessary! It’s not as if anyone else would notice, or call me on it, right?

I herewith alter some of my history.

I’m an heiress, but I left that life behind to serve the poor. My last stint in Calcutta was both spiritually rewarding and I saved upwards of several thousand in two days. I also gave lots off morphine to the dying because no one needs to die in pain. 

After completing my double degrees in accounting and English, I started a multi-million corporation. Blah blah blah. Oh, and I was at the Civil War, and the Bowling Green Massacre, as well as, I’m sure, many other places where I saved civilization with either my excellent diplomatic skills and/or superior fighting skills. Got a little head injury at Antietam, so I don’t always remember very well. 

And my book was a bestseller. 

Hahaha!

That’s what we’ve come to. Anything is true if you believe it, and it doesn’t matter if history or science say anything different, because it’s all a left wing conspiracy. Any batshit crazy writer can make masses of people think they only matter, and if they make sure they get theirs, the rest of humanity doesn’t matter. 

I used to be all about peace, love, equality, and tranquillity, but forget about that. It counts for nothing. I just want my billions, y’know?

Yawn

Summer is leaving, apparently, already, before I had a chance to do anything about it, like go on vacation. It’s just as well. Who has time?

They tell me (never mind who they are) that only boring people are bored. Well then, call me boring. It’s not as if it isn’t true. I suspect I don’t see a lot of people because I’m boring. I spend a lot of time looking up things online, and sometimes I share those things with my husband, but I’m hesitant to share with others because everyone already has access to the Internet. The other day I went too far, and he said, “Ick, don’t tell me that!”

“But . . . ”

“But I don’t want to hear it.”

You have to feel for the guy. He’s just trying to live a peaceful life where sports is his main hobby, and mine is death and missing people. Though the forbidden topic was not either of these. What good is it to look up details of these things when I can’t share them?

I thought I was having a panic attack today, so I took a break and sat down and read the news, and found out that women my age are dropping dead left and right, no thanks to opioids and anti-anxiety meds and alcohol and hopelessness. I’m in luck though — apparently my college degree makes me safer. And where I live helps. My ability to work as much as I want helps too. Then I realized I had no right to a panic attack considering how great my life is.

Which isn’t to say anyone else should not be having panic attacks — that’s between them and their anxiety.

I have no right to boredom either, but having no right to something has never stopped me before. Maybe it’s just ennui, maybe it’s just that time of year, maybe it’s because I want to do something different than what I’m doing, not that there’s anything wrong with it, but I’ve been doing it mostly forever, more than half my life, and I’d like to do something else.

Unfortunately, I’m really not qualified to do anything else.

I’m pretty good at picking up the pieces, and jumping to conclusions, but I am not good at cleaning my own desk. My knees, especially the right one, are preventing me from going for a walk. Some days I’m hard pressed to get up the stairs after a long day. Everyone always says, “get out more, go for a walk!” Not a bad idea, but the contents of my knee make a lot of rattling noises and then the pain starts. No worries — I have an appointment with a doctor in two weeks. An orthopedist, which I keep thinking of as an optometrist or a podiatrist or a pediatrician.

What have we learned? Do not mix your opioids with alcohol, do not mix your anti-anxiety pills with your opioids and alcohol. I don’t drink anymore, so I’m good there. Go out for a walk. Look at the trees or something, I hear that’s good for you. See a doctor if something is preventing you from doing so. Clean your desk. Meet your deadlines. Have a good life, no matter the length of it. The boredom is only temporary, and we can get through anything that’s temporary, even if it’s life.

 

Just a tad insane

Not me, not particularly at the moment, but the world. This whole giant world is more than a bit insane.

Lately I’m not so productive so much as I’m obsessive, which is doing nothing for my productivity nor state of mind. I keep reading, I read whatever is in front of me, whether it’s worth reading or not, whether it helps me or not, whether I should be doing something else or not. When I was young I read all the time, even cereal boxes while I ate breakfast. Anything would do. I liked reading — the first time I went across the street to the library (which was optimally placed across the street) I signed up, got a load of books, and took them home.

When I returned to the library with my load of books, ready to check out another load, the librarian looked at me as if II wasn’t very smart and said, “No, you have to keep them until at least the next day. You just got these today.”

Later run-ins with rules were just as confusing to me.

Now I’m reading all the time to avoid something which is gnawing at me to be done, I tell it I don’t have time because I have to 1. work and 2. read. There is no time for anything else, though of course there is. We make time for what matters to us, so it’s not that there’s no time, I’m just not prioritizing the things that matter.

And it’s not just me — i see it with other people who keep doing what they believe they should be doing, whether they want to or not. But that’s not my issue, and I don’t tell other people how to live their lives. I can barely figure my own out. I have a pretty great life. I rarely fall  back into depression, though there are the occasional days when I can feel it coming, just like my knees know when the weather is going to change.

Speaking of knees, I was told recently that my right knee is toast, information which did not surprise me. So I wear a brace during the day and at night I ice it, hoping to get the swelling down enough so it at least looks like a knee again, and to keep the pain at a reasonable level. The pain is my punishment, I could say, if I were  prone to saying such things, but I’m not.

Meanwhile, back to the world. I guess I’ve been trying to understand people and I just can’t. I can’t understand their motivations, what makes them happy, what makes them sad, why they do what they do. I’m more confused than ever. What I do know is that some people feel better if they can hold on to a point of view so fiercely that the idea of anyone having a different one must mean the other person is delusional, or stupid, or apparently not paying attention to how things should be done. I’m not even talking about anything major, but just little shit. And so people, in general, are happy to tell others how they’re doing it all wrong, no matter what it is, no matter how insignificant.

We keep doing the same thing that didn’t work before but expect it to work this time. Insanity. I am right there doing it myself, though I do realize there are as many ways to live a life as you can imagine, plus a million more. In trying to understand people, I’m trying to understand where I fit in, not that it’s a pressing issue, I just wonder.

So far, no idea.

But let’s end with this one thing: “From the get go” is a frequently used saying, and I think we all know what it means, but recently I saw where someone had written it as “from the gecko,” and at first I was completely confused. Gecko? What gecko? The insurance gecko? And then I realized the writer either had spell check on or had heard the phrase “from the get go” as “from the gecko,” which doesn’t make much sense, but so many things said these days don’t make sense. I just found this one particularly amusing.

 

 

Old is a State of Mind

It’s also a state of body. Let’s be honest, my body isn’t falling for the old “You’re only as old as you feel” crap, and if it were, it’s telling me I’m at least 97, which is about forty decades off.

But I lie. I have no idea what 97 would feel like because I’ve never been 97. I know what 58 feels like, but only what it feels like from my perspective because I’ve only experienced it as myself. I tried experimenting it as someone with loads of money, but the poor woman objected and demanded her money back.

Yesterday I read this: Why Women Over 50 Can’t Find Jobs

I was not surprised. I’ve known for a very long time that older women are not supported in the workplace. I used to work with older women in the workplace, and our usual attitude toward them was, “Well, they’ll get old and wander off eventually.” They weren’t given a great deal of respect, not unless they were at the top of the food chain. We were young and callous and it wasn’t going to happen to us.

My experience is, like everyone else’s, unique. I made a choice to leave the military after six years so I would not be separate from my husband, so that on future transfers of his I’d be able to go with him, and what this meant for me was a series of jobs in a series of places, none of which added up to a career. I finished my degree, I worked in accounting at several places, but after a few years we’d up and move again. I was building nothing for my future. I was young and stupid.

And then it got to a point where I needed to be away from my husband, and so badly did I need that, I told him he could have his full retirement, and I would ask for none of it. After 20 years I was entitled to half. So after 20 years I had nothing, except some debts. Moving every time he became dissatisfied was expensive.

So here I am now, 58, with a few thousand in a retirement account, enough to sustain me for a week or so, unable to get a job at my age, much less a job with retirement benefits, wondering what happens next. I don’t imagine I’m alone in this.

I am fortunate that several years ago I married a much younger man who has been contributing healthily to his company’s 401k, at my direction, and who says it’s all for us, and who promises to take care of me. But what if I didn’t have him? I have a business which supports me . . . as long as I keep working at it. What happens if I can’t work at it? Then I’m on my own.

Poor planning I would say, though it was more like no planning. I always thought I had more time to plan. Even now, I think I have more time to plan. It’s not over till it’s over. My business is healthy and strong and I have never lost a client because I’m old — at least that I know of.

So we age, all of us, and we all get here, if we’re lucky. And if you’re like me, always expecting the best and never planning for the worst because we don’t expect it, you may say, “What was I thinking?” You were thinking, “there’s still time.”

There’s always still time.

 

 

 

 

Intrusive Thoughts

Rocky road ice cream. How’s that for intrusive? And unwelcome. Totally welcome in that I’d love to have some, and totally unwelcome in that I really shouldn’t, and we don’t have any in the house anyway.

Thanksgiving. I love Thanksgiving. And Christmas. I love holidays in general. So when I’m working, which is rarely on a holiday, though I did put in quite a few hours on Veteran’s Day, I’m likely to think of Thanksgiving. Or Christmas. Or Arbor Day, which is a totally misunderstood holiday.

My dog. He’s sitting in my spot on the couch, sound asleep, all curled up. If I weren’t pretending to be working I’d be sitting next to him so he could sleep with his head on me. He likes that.

Snow. And how glad I am I’m not in it. I mean, it’s pretty, but it’s cold.

Biscuits. I’m not even sure where that came from.

I spend quite a bit of my time dealing with these sorts of intrusive thoughts, things that just pop in and out of my head no matter what I’m doing. Sometimes they won’t pop out again easily though, like the rocky road ice cream. That will stay with me until I beg my poor husband to go out and get me some. At least that’s been my experience. It’s like eating silk, especially that first right-off-the-top-almost-melting bite, and then the crunchy nuts, and the soft marshmallow.

My doctor would be displeased.

There’s an intrusive thought for you.

Sometimes I can keep all the intrusive thoughts out when I’m working on getting something done, and it’s challenging work, but if I’m on a deadline . . . that’s when the intrusive thoughts are worse, though one would hope they’d be less likely to cause problems. That’s not how they work though. They come along when they’re least wanted, but at least they’re pleasant enough.

Over the weekend I was supposed to be working, but instead I let the intrusive thoughts have the run of the place, thinking that if I let them out for a bit, they’d behave once the week started. I’m trying to fit five days of work into three, so a little space would be good. But it didn’t work.

My brain has a mind of its own.