I would like to invite any of you who live here locally, to my presentation at the La Veta Public Library this Thursday at 2PM. My theme is “What’s it like to move here?” We can discuss the ins and outs of moving to rural Colorado, how passive solar works, and anything else that comes up!
Lately I have been observing how generational our belief systems can be. For example, as a middle boomer, born in 1955, most of my life I have taken a narrow view of what a good work ethic looks like. Most of us were raised to believe that being busy each day and having something to show for your efforts, especially MONEY, is a job well-done.
This is what I learned from changing my perspective on the ways we choose to spend our time as we age:
Midlife and especially retirement is your time to learn something just because you have always wanted to. It’s time to follow your fantasies and dreams for once in your life, while releasing expectations and, of course, guilt.
Be grateful each day that you now have the time and money to do something completely different! How many individuals in the history of mankind have had this privilege? Very few. Most previous generations didn’t live past 60!
After taking my writer fantasy for a spin for ten years, we decided it was time for my husband Mike to experiment with one of his childhood fantasies. He had always wanted to construct a passive solar home positioned just right for fantastic views of the mountains. In the process of planning this new adventure, I found a great cartoon in New Yorker Magazine that shows a man visiting a guru at the top of the Himalayas.
After we created our new passive solar home, I was then able to construct another lifetime fantasy of mine, a foothills garden full of xeric plants that love this high, dry landscape as much as we do. As I wrote this, we got our first snow fall! Yippee!
Because of what I have learned about midlife and the amazing experiences we have had in the past 15 years, I can highly recommend that you ask yourself today:
What perhaps irresponsible, but joyful dream or activity have you been fantasizing about forever? Time’s a wasting! Do it TODAY!
What does following what may seem like one crazy dream, feel like?
As many of you know, I have been an avid student of dating, marriage and divorce trends in our culture for many decades. I was the one who waited until age 39 to marry the first time and I still got it wrong, divorcing at age 46. A few years later I started my own dating service. I saw it as a study of how Americans in midlife approached love and marriage. Turns out I met the man for me that way, and we have been living relatively happily ever after for the past fourteen years.
This is one of the reasons why I find the marriage behavior of millennials quite interesting:
Americans under the age of 45 have found a novel way to rebel against their elders: They’re staying married!
“New data show younger couples are approaching relationships very differently from baby boomers, who married young, divorced, remarried and so on. Generation X and especially millennials are being pickier about who they marry, tying the knot at older ages when education, careers and finances are on track. The result is a U.S. divorce rate that dropped 18 percent from 2008 to 2016, according to an analysis by University of Maryland sociology professor Philip Cohen.”
But with an interesting twist:
“Marriage is more and more an achievement of status, rather than something that people do regardless of how they’re doing.” — Researcher Philip Cohen
It seems that the younger generation now sees marriage as a bit of a status symbol and, “Many poorer and less educated Americans are opting not to get married at all. They’re living together, and often raising kids together, but deciding not to tie the knot.”
This I find especially interesting in that these poorer couples could find a number of financial benefits from legal marriage. For example, married couples pay less taxes and save on medical insurance as a couple. I never saw marriage as a status issue. At the time I needed health insurance and got it through marriage.
There is no more important and personal issue than who we marry and why. At least some millennials are realizing that. Divorce is always difficult emotionally and in some cases traumatic. Most Boomers know that now. I see us as the transitional generation, who often did what we were told and perhaps got married young when we became pregnant, etc. Unfortunately many of us had to learn the hard way that:
Late in 2007, I decided to start my first blog. This was an experiment for me, a way to see if I wrote about my true feelings as a 52 year-old female American, others might come and find ways to relate. I admit. I hadn’t the slightest idea what I was doing, but I still love my byline:Looking back I would say this experiment worked. Within a year or so I had thousands of followers, and eventually well over 500,000 were following the Midlife Crisis Queen. A number of books followed.
The point of all of this was for the benefit of others. I hoped to encourage those who felt lost in the debilitating fear and doubt that midlife can create, and to show how normal these feelings were. I thought perhaps by showing how I had overcome enough confusion and doubt to move forward into a new writing career, I could give others hope. This was in the midst of alarming suicide rates among our 50+ population, which still continue. I wanted to show how my own difficulties eventually led to new enjoyment of life itself for me, after suffering a devastating midlife crisis in my late 40s.
This quote from RuPaul describes my feelings well at this life juncture:
“I was always looking for some way to fit onto this planet…To be open enough to hear the Universe’s stage directions.”
Finally, at age 63, I feel like I have “heard the Universe’s stage direction.” I am pleased to announce, for the first time in my life I see myself as a visible positive spirit in the lives of others, and in my own life. My writing career has played an integral role in this transformation.
There is something about writing, especially for an audience, that causes the writer to finally see and hear themselves in new ways. I kept a journal for decades before my midlife crisis caused me to begin sharing my thoughts and feelings with others, but it was only through writing and relating to others that I discovered my deeper Self, the Self that finally wanted to be seen and acknowledged.
Almost everyone gets into published writing to reach others, and yet the real rewards come from truly hearing yourself for the first time.
Sometimes when I read something I wrote years ago I see the person who always felt inadequate or like she might never fit into this world, one who did not want to be seen by others. For example, these days when I communicate with some I went to high school with, they invariable don’t remember me. That was my unconscious goal back then. I did not know how to appreciate my unique qualities, let alone share them with others. I literally did not feel comfortable being myself.
“The hardest battle you will face in life is to be no one but yourself, in a world which is trying its hardest to make you like everybody else.” — From a high school graduation announcement
Today I regret that it has taken me this long to become my true Self and appreciate my best qualities. Why did this take me so long? But then I see that most of the human race historically had no chance of discovering their true Self or valuing this amazing resource. Most just did what they were told and then died.
I so clearly see now that I am not the person my parents tried to make me, or all those rotten bosses I had through the years. I am uniquely myself today and that feels like an amazing accomplishment.
If this topic interests you, perhaps you might enjoy my exploration of what midlife means to human beings on this planet today:
I’ve been enjoying a Louis L’Amour novel this fall, while also indulging myself in some amazing quaking aspens.
Up above Cuchara near Cordova Pass…
and up by Blanca Peak! Now is the BEST TIME to see these beauties!
Have you ever read the novel Conagher? A friend bought me a copy and said I had to read it, so I did. She said it reminded her of her dilemma since she moved here a few years ago. She loves the silence and isolation of her new life in the mountains, but sometimes craves companionship with someone special.
I thought Mr. L’Amour only wrote about the men of the West, but this novel is about a lonely female settler in rural New Mexico in the late 1800s who finds an ingenious way to connect with lonely cowboys. She even finally finds love way out in the middle of nowhere and just by chance. I love Mr. L’Amour’s descriptions of the beautiful but lonely West. Here’s a few lines from the main character Evie:
“She never tired of the morning and evenings here, the soft lights, the changing colors of sunlight and cloud upon the hills, the stirring of wind in the grass. Out here there was no escaping the sky or the plains, and Evie knew that until she came west she had never really known distance.”
I find it interesting how this character somehow captures my own feelings after just a year or so of living here, giving a marvelous explanation of how one adjusts to the silence and beauty of this powerful and yet desolate landscape:
“Evie Teale suddenly became aware of something else. For the first time she was at peace here, really at peace. She had believed the land was her enemy, and she had struggled against it, but you could not make war against a land any more than you could against the sea. One had to learn to live with it, to belong to it, to fit into its seasons and its ways…”
My introduction to marijuana was not early, and my experiences kept changing throughout my life. My first time was unfortunately at the top of a steep rock climb. I was probably around 18 years old. I enjoyed the relaxed feeling and the camaraderie it seemed to create in the group, but looking down from that height was not reassuring! I survived and in the process realized that the effects from THC can be subtle and friendly.
I’ve never really liked the effects of alcohol at all. Nope, I’m not looking to a depressant to cheer me up, plus it mostly just made me feel stupid and then very sleepy. Then there’s always the fact thatalcohol can cause cancer. I know! Why is a substance that is highly addictive, definitely causes cancer and kills thousands on the roads every year considered legal and OK in this country, while various forms of THC are considered so bad for you? THC has a number of proven medical uses, not true for alcohol. Alcohol is just very addictive and a liver killer.
In my experience, I rarely smoked marijuana in my adult life, only when someone around me had some. I never bought it because I didn’t know where one got it and I wasn’t all that crazy about it. I generally got a small high from smoking and I coughed too much.
I have NEVER gotten high in public places or while driving.
Then in 2000 Colorado started allowing the legal sale of marijuana for medical purposes. I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a marijuana dispensary in Fort Collins. I said, “Now I’ve seen EVERYTHING!” I started smoking a bit more after that, but still wasn’t convinced that it was a good thing for me. I hate smoking anything!
It was only recently, with my introduction to the highest quality of chocolate bars with THC, that I understood what all the excitement was about. Now I can eat the smallest piece of excellent chocolate and about an hour later feel WONDERFUL, in a very positive and thoughtful way. This high makes me happy, and my thought process goes wild with ideas I could have never thought of while normal. I have to write down these ideas to remember them for later. I have always believed that drugs accentuate your present state of mind. This one helps me see how happy I truly am, and how much I love my life. Lucky me!
I did have one BAD experience with lower quality edibles a few years ago, and that is why I caution everyone to start out with miniscule amounts at first. Too much can make you feel terrible and it goes on for hours! With high quality chocolate it takes about one hour to feel it, I feel great for a few hours and then I feel sleepy.
This works better than any other drug I have ever tried and no, the makers of Koala bars did not pay me to say this!
Looking back I would say this experiment worked. Within a year or so I had thousands of followers, and eventually well over 500,000 were following the Midlife Crisis Queen. A number of books followed.
Adventures of the NEW??? Old Farts 