Ways to soothe your busy mind

February 15, 2017February 19, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

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My winter worldview!

When I look out over this crazy world, something I try not to do very often anymore… I see a world full of “busy sickness.” Yes, I understand, the world is full of problems (Perhaps the understatement of the year!) It can be extremely demanding. That’s why it is even more important that you find ways to soothe your mind and soul as often as possible. I have taken it upon myself to find ways to soothe my mind for a number of reasons.

I had one of the busiest minds until a couple brain injuries helped to slow me down. Not to be recommended, but they definitely make you relax because you have to. My injuries also made me crave new ways to soothe my brain.

After our solar home was finally finished in 2015, I found more time to experiment with brain soothing methods. Finding the right music is the BEST! Staring out at the mountains while listening to soothing tunes is a great escape from too much busy mind. Try VeniceClassicRadio.eu sometime for hours of great classical music with Italiano mixed in occasionally!

Another great pastime is coloring. I got lost in coloring my first winter here. It almost became obsessive before I injured my right arm, so I had to cut way back. And what did I color? Mandalas of course!

Recently Mike showed me a new way to enjoy the wonder of mandalas. Did you know that they represent the universe in the Hindu and Buddhist worldview? How cool is that? In psychoanalysis they have become a symbol of the universal search for completeness and self-unity. Such amazing meditation focal points!

I love watching this video when I first wake up, and wonder if it wouldn’t be the perfect solution to our busy minds as we age. I can see it being quite popular in hospitals and nursing homes!

I’m a newcomer to this part of Colorado, so after two years I wrote a book about the ups and downs of moving here to build a passive solar home in the foothills. Please share this info. with your friends if they are considering similar challenges!

A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

Please feel free to contact me directly for your own signed copy: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com

The Lives of Frontier Women (and me)

February 11, 2017April 19, 2019 / Laura Lee Carter / 4 Comments

I’ve been thinking about a number of things lately. Confrontations with your own mortality can do that to a person. Questions arise like how proud am I of myself and my life thus far, regardless of what anyone else thinks? Yes, I know, I can be a bit cerebral at times.

Then I heard a truly thought-provoking quote that made me laugh out loud the other night. The story was about how so many Americans came out to the western frontier in the late 1800s either because they were “trying to lose themselves,” as in avoiding Civil War conscription, “or to find themselves.” This cracked me up! It hit the nail on the head in terms of why I moved out of the city and chose to retire in rural southern Colorado.

I should probably preface this with my eternal fascination with frontier life. For as far back as I can remember I played “pioneer woman” on the playgrounds of my elementary schools in Kansas. I loved watching TV shows like Wagon Train and Rawhide, or any movie about frontier life. I grew up on the books of Laura Ingalls Wilder, and when I got older I loved reading the journals of women who came out west in covered wagons.

When I started my writing career, I published a few magazine articles about how many came out West simply to escape tuberculosis in the cities back East. Most don’t know that TB was the leading cause of death in the world in the late 1800s and early 1900s, before penicillin was discovered in the late 1920s. Many came in hopes of a change in fortunes too, like discovering silver or gold and getting rich quick.

I realized just this morning I came to rural Colorado to both lose my old Self or identity, and find out all the other people I might be. I know now how influenced we are by others as children and young adults. It’s almost impossible not to be. But the re-birth which often happens later in life is the shedding of old personas, the letting go of all those voices inside that want to tell you who you really are.

This is the process of getting back to that vulnerable child you were when you were young and impressionable. It feels sometimes like getting back to your original soul and appreciating it for the first time, a spiritual downsizing from the burdens of our past…

What a glorious discovery this can be!

I’m a newcomer to rural southern Colorado. After two years I decided to compile a short journal about the ups and downs of moving from a good-sized city to rural America to build a passive solar retirement home in the foothills:

A Memoir of Retirement: From Suburbia to Solar in Southern Colorado

Please share this information with your friends if they are considering similar life changes. Feel free to contact me directly to discuss any of these challenges, and to order your own signed copies of any of my books! Cheers, Laura Lee (email me: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com)

Are blogs a new form of vanity press?

February 5, 2017May 27, 2021 / Laura Lee Carter / 11 Comments

You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take! — Wayne Gretsky

Come to find out I am not alone in observing that my pre-blog friends and family don’t read my blog posts much, but others whom I’m not even familiar with, find it interesting. Even people in over 75 other countries come here, I assume to check out rural living in the USA.

I suppose most people see blogs as a new kind of vanity press. I can see their point. Who cares about me and my life? But there are also over 18,000 visitors who have made over 40,000 views here. Who are they?

I’m sure some are simply nosy about the lives of others. Some may hope to leave city life behind and some day move to a rural area and build a solar home. I’d sure LOVE to hear from any of you!

The reason I started this blog three years ago, and the reason I put together my new book was to document our experience in leaving suburbia for a quieter, more economical, rural experience in sunny southern Colorado. I have always had very good reasons for writing my books. Of course I also just enjoy writing. I find it helps me with my recent brain injury.

My thought process and intent:

We are doing something very different for us. After living in or near cities all of our lives, we are going rural. I wonder if others are thinking about doing something similar? Perhaps they might enjoy reading about one couples’ authentic experience. Perhaps they would like to know more about designing a home around passive solar heating. Maybe they would like to know how well passive solar heating can work. Reading about the experience of another might encourage others or convince them not to take such risks so late in life. Either way they could benefit from our experience.

We are so glad we took on all the risk and uncertainty, however if you asked me three years ago I might not have agreed. But now I can highly recommend leaving city life behind for the quiet, wildlife watching and pure beauty of living close to nature.

If you never take a risk, you will never know for certain how well it can work out! That’s our best lesson from our own retirement experience…

P.S. For whatever reasons you find to come here and read, THANKS!

To purchase your own signed copies of any of my books, or if you have other questions, please e-mail me at: MidlifeCrisisQueen@gmail.com.

Please follow me on Twitter too!

What brings readers to your blog?

February 3, 2017February 3, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 16 Comments

Ever since I started writing on “Midlife Crisis Queen” back in 2007, I have wondered who comes to read my writing and why. My readers have certainly not been the people I expected. I originally expected a few family members and friends, but few of them ever came.

Instead I started making virtual friends all over the world. I got so close to one woman in Australia, I mailed her a copy of my new book free of charge! I met fellow blogger Barbara Weibel (left), who was just starting her travel blog. If you have any interest in world travel and incredible photography you should certainly check out: Hole in the Donut.

Most of all I connected with kindred spirits, those searching for something else after living a fairly conventional life up until age 40 or 50. All of my readers have been in search of adventure and transformation. All have enriched my life in some small way.

When I created this blog in October 2014, I expected to attract a very different crowd. I figured my midlife crisis days were behind me as Mike and I slowly settled into retirement in southern Colorado. And, sure enough, I have attracted some great virtual friends who can relate to these post-employment years, even if we are all still writing and publishing. One big surprise, how many readers from all over the world find moving to the Colorado outback country interesting!

What I have always found most astounding is how loyal certain virtual friends can be, and how hesitant my family and long-term friends have been to come here to read a blog post or two. I would think these folks would be most curious about my life, but apparently not. Certain virtual friends seem much more curious and loyal.

I have tried, but I cannot fathom why that is. Perhaps my family and old friends think they know me, but they don’t. We are all ever-changing beings, at least that is what I choose to believe!

Please follow me on Twitter: https://twitter.com/midlifequeen

Now for a discussion of mortality…

January 31, 2017January 31, 2017 / Laura Lee Carter / 12 Comments

When you suddenly stare the possibility of cancer squarely in the face, it changes you. No big surprise, everybody dies, but it may be you this time.

Everything looks different. Those commercials for losing weight or cures for what seem like silly, non-threatening illnesses are just plain ridiculous. The worries of just about anybody else in the world seem so trivial. The subjects others write about seem trite and silly.

I pride myself in being realistic about my own death. I know none of us get out of this alive, and I have tried to get more comfortable with that fact. But when it becomes more real. When you look down at your body and seriously think about from dust to dust. When you stare over the abyss of nothingness, that’s enough to make just about anyone uncomfortable.

“What things would I give away? Would I want an obituary in the newspaper? How would my husband and dog handle it? (I’m pretty sure my cat would barely notice…) Should I tell friends and family now or wait? Who should I tell? People from my past? Who even cares?

Yes, I have had a couple close calls with death in my 61 years, but at the time I was either unconscious (bike accident, traumatic brain injury) or had absolutely no control over the situation (plane malfunction). In the plane over Tokyo Bay, my life did flash before me, but I was only 20. I didn’t have a lot to flash. I remember looking around myself and thinking, “Gee, I’m going to die with all these people I don’t even know.”

In the week or so after my cat scan and before I heard my lung nodules are not too scary, my life also flashed before me, but in slow motion. My conclusion is that I have led a difficult life, partially because of the choices I have made. I chose not to marry and have kids. I’ve spent most of my life on my own terms. It took a midlife crisis (at 49) for me to decide to try something different, trusting others.

All of the best experiences in my life have flown from that change, marriage to a loyal, loving partner, more security than I’ve ever known, a great puppy and a new rural lifestyle in an amazing solar home. I want more of these experiences before I die..

My hat is off to all cancer survivors more so than ever before. To my Mom and Jan and all of you who have stared a bad diagnosis, surgery, and death in the face and survived the trauma of it all. This is something you never forget. This is life.

Boomers & the Reality of Mortality

January 27, 2017September 1, 2018 / Laura Lee Carter / 11 Comments

OK, for all of you young oldsters out there who have decided you will be living forever, this is fair warning.

I was recently diagnosed with COPD (Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease), and no, I never smoked cigarettes! This is probably the result of living in dirty city air for 60+ years, and having what seemed like constant bronchitis since age 25. I also just moved to a home at 7,000 feet elevation. All of these factors caused shortness of breath and a request for a chest x-ray. Possible lung nodules were found leading to a cat scan this past Monday. As a non-smoking 61 year-old, I did not expect any problem. Instead my cat scan found a number of “nodules” in my lungs.

Overall, the likelihood that a lung nodule is cancer is 40 percent, but the risk of a lung nodule being cancerous varies considerably depending on several things like the size of them, whether you smoke, your occupation, shape of nodules and their rate of growth. Lung nodules — small masses of tissue in the lung — are quite common. They appear as round, white shadows on a chest X-ray or computerized tomography (CT) scan, and are often caused by previous infections.

Think it can’t happen to you?

Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer deaths worldwide, with 1.8 million new cases diagnosed yearly. In the United States, lung cancer is the most fatal cancer in women, surpassing breast cancer in 1987 as the leading cause of cancer-related deaths. It is also the most fatal cancer in men, killing more men than prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, and colon cancer combined. Lung cancer in never-smokers is the sixth leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

Overall, 27 percent of cancer deaths in the U.S. are due to lung cancer.

Who Gets Lung Cancer?

The average age for lung cancer is 70, and 80 percent of people who develop lung cancer have smoked, but lung cancer occurs in women and lung cancer occurs in non-smokers. While lung cancer in men who have smoked is decreasing, lung cancer in non-smokers is increasing.

It’s estimated that 20 percent of women who develop lung cancer in the U.S. have never smoked, and that number increases to 50 percent worldwide. Lung cancer also occurs in young adults – It’s estimated that 13.4 percent of lung cancers occur in adults under the age of 40. While this number may seem small, when compared to the incidence of lung cancer overall, it is not.

In summary, if you haven’t had a lung x-ray in years, get one. My nodules are small and so we have decided to go with a wait and see plan, with cat scans every few months. It’s only a problem if they start to grow.

Now I live in a rural Colorado county with nice clean air, but all those years of living in cities must be catching up with me… How about you?