Limbo

Today I feel restless, like an autumn leaf, barely clinging to my tree in a chill breeze, waiting for the inevitable fall. I can't sit still, tied to what was, but I'm too uncertain about what will be to let go of my past completely just yet. So I keep moving, doing, being, but I'm making no concrete progress, as if I am living my life on the treadmill that is this limbo.

I feather my nest, trying to make this place so long shared with him comfortable for me alone. I clean, I move things around, I pack things away, I change the decor. Still, he haunts the forgotten corners of these rooms. The more I struggle to erase him, the more I merely create cracks in the facade of my strength and independence.

Yet I don't miss him now, at least not the way I did when he first left. Perhaps this is the most surprising thing, that I could learn to get used to his absence in such a short time after so many years of living with him. Still, at night, when my racing mind chases away much needed sleep, regardless of whether or not the thoughts are of him, I am aware of an empty place in my very soul. It is not so much missing him specifically, or even wanting another PERSON around at all, though loneliness is a part of it. It is like a hole, perhaps signifying the hopes and dreams of the past from which I am distancing myself, in need of filling with a new vision of a life apart from him.

I don't think I realized when I married that taking his name as part of my own would tie me to him far longer than the wedding band or vows would. Every time I sign a check or a charge slip, he is there. Every time I pay bills, he is there. Every time I check my email, he is there. Every time I see my paycheck, he is there. He is everywhere and nowhere at the same time, floating at the edges of my consciousness yet remaining out of reach.

I am certain that he has already made his decision. Perhaps he made it not that long ago, when he left; perhaps even before that. He simply lacks the courage to convey that decision to me and get on with the monotonous and unpleasant chore of legally dividing the life we shared for so long.

So I am waiting... waiting... waiting... But I find myself growing impatient to remove the rest of these shackles that bind me to him and find my new self; my new life. I'm growing ready to let go of this old branch; to let the old self die and be reborn to a self I can't yet envision but that I'm looking forward to getting to know.

7:37:34 PM    dish []  

girl power, for real

Yeah, so everyone and their mother will be writing about the last episode of Buffy, but I don't care; this time, I'll be part of the crowd.

Hardly "one of the crowd," Maureen's take on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" goes beyond the review of this infamous episode and evolves into a gut-wrenching discussion of domestic abuse. A well-written, heartfelt post that should not be missed!

10:25:15 PM    dish []  

Growing – it's not about "up" or "old"

Have you "found yourself" at this point in your life or are you still looking? Were you a late bloomer or did you come out of the gate early with your destiny all mapped out? Do you tend to reinvent yourself often of your own volition or only when other circumstances necessitate that change?

I'm curious about these things because I've always been a little bit fickle about my core interests, and I've changed my goals many times to accommodate that. If I have to point to a single purpose in my life, I'd certainly protest the "single" restriction and say "lifelong learning," maybe in part because it gives me an excuse to keep expanding in new directions and that's what I've found that I'm really all about.

Over the past year or so, I've been reading the evolution of Wil Wheaton via his blog. I found it from some link on another site I was reading at the time and checked it out because I'm a casual Trek fan. I stayed because, while his life events are not necessarily of keen interest to me, he has a wonderful way of expressing himself; there's a lot of his writing that is so poetic you feel like you are there. If I say I can really sink my teeth into his prose, I mean it almost literally – he's so descriptive that it feels like my senses are involved, not just my imagination. Here's an example:

...In the living room, the table where Aunt Val would put the artificial tree at Christmas is gone, though it's footprints still mark the carpet. In my mind, I put it back, fill the space beneath it with gifts, warm the air with the laughter and love of the entire family gathered around it, singing songs and sipping cider...

Sure, there's an "it's" where he means "its," but don't you just FEEL both what he imagines and the melancholoy in his experience of its absence?

So what does this have to do with "finding oneself," you ask? Yesterday, Wheaton described his realization that he had, indeed, found himself by writing and self-publishing his first book. And, as a reader of the blog for the past year, I suspect he's right on the money about what he's all about right now. No more looking back at what was, other than to marvel over how it contributed to getting him to now.

Wheaton is around thirty, I think. It was funny reading his adult thoughts because in my mind, he was perpetually adolescent thanks to his acting roles. When I discovered his writing, it was odd to realize that he was older than several of my coworkers because I thought of all of them as adults but thought of him as a "kid."

So what age is "grown-up?" At what age do you think you should be over trying to figure yourself out and on to actually producing whatever the product of your maturity is/will be?

I doubt that Wheaton will stop striving to become more himself; his writing just screams out that, while he's quite happy with who he is and what he has accomplished, he'd be bored with the idea of resting on his laurels. I have a sneaking suspicion that many bloggers, regardless of their age, are lifelong learners too; curious, seeking, exploring. Perhaps blogging is just one more way of looking at both oneself AND how one fits in this amazing world that we share.

When I was twenty, I tried to imagine what I'd be like at thirty or forty, but all I could know was myself at twenty. The person I was at twenty has not disappeared despite the fact that I've lived that many years since. Instead, she has grown, expanded, and become something MORE rather than simply something different. I can look at someone who's twenty and see that there is a lot of life and learning ahead for that person, but that doesn't mean someone who's twenty doesn't have something important to say and contribute NOW.

At twenty, I worried that I wouldn't be able to achieve; to measure up; to make a difference. At forty, I worry sometimes about becoming irrelevant; about closing my mind to the possibility that tomorrow could be different; about reaching a point where I will no longer seek out challenges that bring about new growth – and that I won't be able to make a difference.

My dreams have changed over the years; I've achieved some of them and discarded others. But the point is that I still have dreams, and those dreams are key to who I am as well as who I will be twenty years from now. Life continues to present endless possibilities, and I'm excited to have so many of them from which to choose. That may not make me "young," but perhaps it keeps me from growing "too old."

7:07:40 PM    dish []  

The word of the day....

...is PREVARICATE. Perhaps dictionary.com is just a tad slower to react to the news that politicians lie than Salon blog writers Rich Pure&Simple, kriselda jarnaxa, and Jan Haugland?
5:59:06 PM    dish []  

Just who is this Triple F?

How many email addresses do you have?

A day or two ago, several blogs that I read talked about an article in the New York Times titled "Dating a Blogger" (free registration required). Unfortunately, whether a symptom of age or of being otherwise submerged in administrativa these days, I didn't keep links to to share with you, and Google just wasn't forthcoming based on a search for the Times article's URL.

[Edit: In looking for another article I'd read on Secular Blasphemy, I found Jan's comments about "Dating a Blogger" for you. Penny at My so-called lesbian life said it reminded her of something her mom told her, And Fiona talked about the cost of NOT writing a personal blog anonymously. Knew I'd re-find some of these when I wasn't LOOKING for them!]

Perhaps it just took a couple of days to bubble up through the other detritus occupying my active consciousness or perhaps it just took that long to sink in, but the article explains a choice I made when I actually made the move from blog reader to blog writer: the choice to blog anonymously.

Now, chances are, you don't know me. I've been around on the Net or its predecessors (the old paid services) for more years than I like to admit (ok, since you know my age, I suppose saying since the late eighties won't really shock you). But like most of the world, I'm only known by even my most common handle or my regular email address to a small group of people. It's not like I'm some big celebrity here hiding behind the name on this blog.

I got to thinking about the ways that we "wear different hats" in the world, depending on our circumstances, and how nearly all of us who are active on the Net have email addresses to go along with each: work, friends/family, gaming or hobby circles... the list goes on and on. Perhaps at work I'm a version of my real name that fits with some formal email standard. To friends and family, I might be a familiar nickname at a large ISP. Maybe I've got a gaming handle somewhere. Maybe I post on tech boards with a gender-neutral name. Eventually, I'm going to add another email address when I return to school. So both online and offline, my self-presentation is, at least to some degree, tempered by situation. What do I want to say? And to whom will I be saying it?

None of that changes who I am, after all. It is certainly true that my friends recognize me in business attire and my coworkers would recognize me in a party dress. Those who know me well, particularly through correspondence, could associate my writing style here with an email address in their inbox, particularly if they correlate the style with some of the stories I will undoubtedly tell. I don't have anything to hide, as the airline passengers all say when interviewed on television about the latest airport security measures.

I chose to orient this blog about a particular cliché that I happen to fit, primarily to examine its meaning in my own life, but in a public way that would allow others to take what they wished from it and add to it what they would. In other words, it's a personal blog rather than one devoted primarily to news, politics, cooking, etc. I love all of those things; they are what got (and keep) me reading here in the Salon community, and I might even wander there in my own writing from time to time.

The thing about a personal blog, though, is that it always ends up being interpersonal. If I thought I would only represent myself or my own thoughts, I'd wear the same hat that I wear most of the places I go. Truth be told, I have a lot of email addresses due to associations (and fruitless attempts at spam avoidance), but I've really only got one handle on the Internet. I'm going to hide behind Triple F here, though, because I'm the only guilty party and there's no need to drag all the innocents around me into the muck of my personal midlife crisis, right? :)

So the last thing I mean to do is hide. I mean to tell you the good, the bad, and the ugly about being female, fat, and forty from my little point of view. That's my weird little contribution to the blogosphere. I hope that you won't be too put off by the fact that, in doing so, I prefer only to expose myself and not the people around me in such a public way. :)

11:14:21 PM    dish []  

"Militant feminists don't like Heidi Klum"

So many different levels of feminist thought/action these days, it's hard for me to keep track. Since Jan Haugland of Secular Blasphemy is generally accurate about setting off article quotes from his own commentary, I must assume that quotes like:

...nothing enrages militant marxist feminists more than a beautiful woman...

and:

Radical ...feminists get rid of some of the testosterone they obviously have in abundance.

are Jan's rather than quotes from the original article (I can't translate Norwegian, so I can't say for sure).

On first blush, it is easy to distance myself from the actions of these vandals, since I do not consider myself "militant," "marxist," or "radical." I do consider myself a feminist, but my concerns are more focused on things like "equal pay for equal work" than on "the 'commercialisation' of women's bodies." I mean, as long as we get to commercialize men's bodies, too, I'm game. ;-)

But I'm not surprised by the fact that the two phrases I called out above struck me personally despite the qualifications. I suspect that Jan won't be surprised by that either – ire is probably the single emotion most commonly ascribed to feminists.

I can't speak for Jan's political beliefs and experiences, so this is an examination of why his particular phraseology hit a nerve with ME, not a request for political correctness from HIM (anyone who wants to call me the P.C. police has never heard me speak!). My experiences come from the perspective of a woman living in the U.S. while Jan's come from the perspective of a man living in Norway, after all.

In this country, "feminist" has become more of an invective than even "liberal," even among many liberals. Oh, of course even we who define ourselves as liberal don't cluck our tongues at ALL feminists; only those with extra qualifications, like "militant, radical, marxist," maybe even "lesbian." The popular term on the right in the U.S. for this particular "brand" of feminism, supposing for a moment that it can be categorized in such a broad stroke, is the Limbaugh invention, "femiNazi."

Who is this creature? Why, she is the very embodiment of man-hating, unfeminine, bitter, unappeasable person of the female gender that harkens back to the first slams against women who refused to "keep their place." From the early suffragist movements, this uberfeminist has been set up as the "straw woman" to tear down for every anti-feminist argument that has ever come down the pike.  

If I identify too closely with phrases like "[over]abundance of testosterone" or envy of "beautiful women," it is because I have had similar dismissals applied to my own arguments, despite the fact that I am not radical, marxist, or militant. I don't even have any quarrel with the poster of Heidi Klum attached to the article!

And yet, I take issue with the way that the argument of the Norwegian feminists about the poster, whatever that argument may really be, is lost in the noise of the invective in the same way that all feminist arguments have been dismissed in so many circles since they were first posed. Sure, Jan's got as much right to his opinion as anyone, but it all sounds to me like a variation on the "she just really needs to get laid" theme. And I dismiss THAT as a valid argument. Hey, I may be FFF, but I am geting laid and I still have issues with the status quo. I suppose next I'd be told I'm not getting laid properly? B.S. :-)

4:47:35 PM    dish []  

Thinking about menopause...

I have been thinking about menopause lately. I have no family history on which to base my expectations since my mother had a hysterectomy and my grandmother would never have discussed such matters. And, let's face it, the literature is a little dry; it doesn't compare to having someone who's gone through it tell you about their own experience.

We don't have any children and were not planning to, so the timing of menopause doesn't really matter in terms of any last ditch fertility efforts for me. Still, it seems a momentous occasion and I'd love to know how near or far it is on my event horizon. 

Besides, while I'm not organized enough to be called a planner, I do prefer to be more prepared than not for things that are likely to happen in life, don't you? I want to incorporate this next stage of womanhood into the rest of my life as gracefully as possible. In order to do that, I'd like to have a better idea of what to expect.

I'll share any good net resources I find with you as I continue my search. I hope you'll feel free to share your thoughts and finds here, too. For now, I'm just reading through the North American Menopause Society (NAMS) literature and trying not to get too freaked out by some of the terms I'm encountering there.

3:47:17 PM    dish []  

I love a well turned phrase...

Jake Tapper writes:

But despite years of complaints about Democrats who throw around cash like Bill Bennett at the Bellagio, the Republican-controlled House, Senate and White House are now calmly writing check after check in red ink.

Mind you, that's not a complete summary of the article, but I just can't resist quoting such a well-turned phrase.

10:06:42 PM    dish []  

Why Fat?

Jan over at Secular Blasphemy has had two articles in recent days about "weighty matters." First, in what is no news to those of us who've tried just about all of 'em, a study was recently released that says diets don't work, and what's worse, many dieters actually end up putting on more weight. Today he found a study that says that men are as concerned about their weight as women are these days. I'll refrain from the witty bon mot of a response that Jan's close to the article cries out for in favor of exploiting his research as a jumping off point for a tangent of my own.

Why fat? Anyone who could answer that with any real authority could probably translate said answer into many millions of dollars, and believe me, there are a lot of scientists far more qualified than this computer jockey who have yet to discover the real "Ah hah!" at the root of the whole thing.

What I have to offer is this: my personal experience in the fat wars. It's more than one entry here and but one of the three F's I want to explore, but I'll give it my best shot. It's important to state up front that I offer no justifications or excuses. I can tell you some of the contributing factors to my weight, and I will be quite frank in doing so. But I can only attest to their truth in MY life, not anyone else's. I do not consider this fodder for judging others; like the rest of these ramblings, they are merely my thoughts and my ideas.

Today, I'll start with adolescence.

If I look at photographs of myself from my childhood, I do not appear terribly large. I think I had a slightly above average birthweight (above 8lbs) if that means anything. Still, I was convinced that I was obese from the time I was fairly young. I was taller than most of my classmates and I wore larger sizes. Even in shoes! I vividly remember matching my mother's shoe size by the time I was ten or so.

When I was in high school, I typically wore about a size 16. The time I looked best was shortly after college when I was a 14. I now wear an 18 (and I have been as large as 20). Not really all that much variation when I look at it, but of course gravity is redistributing some of that additional weight and so the 18 (and by all means the 20) is far more of a problem.

At size 16, I was convinced that I was enormous. I had one friend in high school who was a size 2! These statistics were important to me. I felt like a freak. I tried dieting. I was certainly active at that time. I mean, I was no athlete, but I walked a lot, rode my bicycle, danced, played a bit of tennis, soccer for a couple of years, and so on. None of this made a difference in my size. I just always thought of myself as a fat girl.

When I got to the size 14 I wasn't really doing anything special; I was just too poor to eat out a lot and I walked to work. I wasn't even as engaged in athletics as I had been earlier. I didn't stay size 14 for long though. By my mid twenties, I was back to a 16 and stayed there until about age 30 when I hit the 18 mark.

The point I want to make about all of those ups and downs is this: at some point before I'd hit size 18, I had determined that there was little I could do to change the fact that I was, at least in my mind, FAT, and so, at least for awhile, I just stopped trying. That combined with other life changes (driving more than walking, sedentary job, marriage, a couple of surgeries, etc.) certainly got me to the size I am now. And let me tell you, when I look at the photos of size 16 me – the me I just knew was so fat that I could never be attractive – I cringe at how wrong I was.

You see, it isn't about dress size. It's about body size and appropriate weight. I have a basic body build more typical of a man than a woman. Again, that's not a justification for where I am now; I am definitely overweight, and at my age it's more of a concern than it ever was due to the health risks. It's just a fact. If I'd recognized it when I was that size, I would never have gone into "who cares" mode.

In this day and age, there is a lot more data available to young women to define appropriate weight. Percentage of the fat component of body mass is available, for example. Yet among the younger women I meet, there is still an overwhelmingly common trend for them to think of themselves as overweight. I can't tell you how many beautiful young women with perfectly healthy, pleasing shapes tell me they MUST lose five or ten pounds (on my frame, that's 20 - 25lbs, but no matter). One rather athletic young woman I know is adamant about the fact that she has thighs that are far too huge to wear a bathing suit or shorts (she laments how pants fit, for that matter). She's a RUNNER for heaven's sake! Those are MUSCLES! Someone please explain to her that muscle tone is a positive thing?

I'm afraid I've gotten off on a rant here, but this is important. I don't want these beautiful young women to make my mistake. I don't want them to look like I do now when they hit forty. And I most certainly don't want them starving themselves to death now.

Body image is such a sensitive topic. I can't simply blame the media and be done with it when these young women armed with far more information than I ever had – women who must KNOW that "supermodel" is an ideal only achieved by either being a true freak of nature or by being a heroin addict – are still more convinced by the imperfections visible only to their own eyes than by any objective criteria. Certainly popular culture is a contributing factor, but that's not all there is to it.

Over time, I'll look at other reasons why I am overweight now, and I'll tell you ahead of time that 99% of them are habits or patterns for which I am completely responsible. Still, I've got to say, I honestly believe that a healthy body image earlier in life might well have made a difference. Is there a way to teach young women, and apparently now young men, to really see their bodies before they decide "why bother?"

9:22:50 PM    dish []  

Too Old/Jaded for the Ivy League?

I've been working in my field for about twenty years now, give or take some missteps on the way. I've worked for companies ranging in size from a local one with ten employees to a global conglomerate. I've worked in the commercial and non-profit sectors. And I've certainly been in school before.

Whether due to so-called "mid-life crisis" or changing conditions in my field, I've decided to pursue a graduate degree, and I was fortunate enough to be accepted into my first choice of programs – at an Ivy League institution no less; one with a fine reputation in the area that I'll be studying. This week, I had occasion to visit the school to get my bearings, fill out paperwork, and meet and greet.

I knew that I would be older than the majority of the student body, though not considerably since I'm far from alone in the ranks of those who return after work experience to pursue advanced degrees. Fortunately, I'm only older than one of my professors, so that's something. But as I wandered the campus and met with these tenured minds, the thought did cross my mind, "Am I ready for the Ivy League?"

Don't get me wrong. Despite the years of conditioning to write for business, I can still compose scholarly papers with impressively large words and volumes of citations in proper MLA or APA style. I haven't forgotten academia. But compared to daily life, it's like studying Latin or ancient Greek. People don't actually speak this way, do they? Some of them do, friends, some of them really do. One wonders how these people manage ordinary tasks, such as interactions with grocery store clerks and hair dressers; and this one certainly wonders if turning my mind over to their tutelage for two years will likewise render it unable to cope with life outside the ivory tower.

Probably not. It's not the top-ranked research institution these days, and it purports to focus on application of theory rather than just an examination of same. Certainly, many of its graduates go back to work outside of academia, though many do turn to the authoring of scholarly tomes and research for life.

I didn't want to get an MBA because I really didn't see myself as the B-school type and find the subject matter rather boring. But given how many of our famous and infamous CEOs are B-school grads these days, I'd love to go through the exercise of the application process to big name MBA programs just to see if their faculty tends toward the feet-never-touch-the-ground types as much as my discipline does. Perhaps it would explain a lot.

Cross your fingers for me, that I might succeed in this endeavor with a mind still capable of balance between the practical and the theoretical.

9:18:44 AM    dish []  

Last Chance to "Stick it to the Man?"

Say it ain't so. This is one of the writers around here who really inspires me. He makes me think and he makes me laugh. His turn of a phrase is unmatched. He will be sorely missed.

Here's hoping it's a brief respite from the fray and not a permanent retirement. There's truly nowhere else on the web that I've found that comes close to The Raven's artful use of the English language.

10:36:29 PM    dish []  

Younger men

Last year, there were at least three movies made around "mature" women having affairs with younger men (or, in the case of Tadpole, an adolescent). It's a theme that's certainly not new, but in "real life," it's something of a taboo in polite society, aside from the old cliché of the sexually inexperienced young man coming of age in the more skilled arms of an older woman (who can forget Stifler's mom?).

In many such films, the older woman character is sadder and lonlier than Stifler's mom, of course. If the movie is not of the sentimental romantic-comedy type, she often becomes something of a "Fatal Attraction" problem for the young man when either one or the other wishes to call it off (e.g. the already crazy Holden losing it entirely when Jennifer Aniston calls it quits in The Good Girl). If the central plot is the coming-of-age theme, the older woman simply fades into the background when the young hero decides to pursue more age-appropriate love interests.

Me? I'm married, to a man a few years older than I am, and not very likely to have a wild fling with anyone, let alone someone much younger. But I can feel the stereotypical itch sometimes that amounts to little more than a desire to confirm that I can still be attractive, and perhaps still unpredictable and untamed. There has always been a desire imbalance in my relationship, and, contrary to what culture usually portrays as the norm, it's not me who gets the headaches. It was actually when I was younger that I had the feeling I would have been more sexually satisfied with a younger man who would be more physically inclined to match my appetites.

I'm more likely to fantasize that I am younger (and of course considerably hotter) than that my partner is. That's not to say that I don't notice younger men. I work with many younger people nowadays, though by and large they are computer geeks as opposed to underwear models with washboard abs and pouts, so they don't turn my head as such. They tend to consider me "safe" rather than sexy, so it's an environment of "feeling at home" rather than one of unbridled sexual tension. This is actually fun because it gives me a bit of insight into their minds and even the occasional glimpse into their hearts. Were I more maternal, such perspectives would fill my own heart with sentimental goo. But it has allowed me to respect the ways that they are mature in their emotional lives and to appreciate the places where they are still "unformed."

So I'm attracted to the conquering mind of the younger man – the searching soul; the sense that there is so much more ahead than there is behind. If sex could tap into and borrow that the way that friendship has, I'd probably be a wanton woman in my midlife. Instead, the true gift that has come to me through the privilege of friendships with a few younger men is a dash of that courage in my own life, and a sense that there is much that I might yet accomplish before I toddle off to the old folks' home.

Would I sleep with a younger man? Well, I am monogamous and I don't intend to change that, so under current circumstances, no. If circumstances were different, I'd certainly consider the opportunity if it arose, but there would probably have to be some compromises. I can't see myself making love with godsmack playing in the background, but the younger men around me are teaching me never to say never.

6:18:54 PM    dish []  

Petra Pan

Some days I look in the mirror and wonder is this still enough to keep the effects of aging at bay, or do I need to resort to more drastic measures? Truth be told, the chin hair bothers me more than wrinkles and it's more of a pointless, losing battle.

People tell me I don't look forty, and I guess that makes me happy. But then who knows what forty is supposed to look like? Can you discern ages among a group of people who haven't told you how old they are? I find that I can't. Though perhaps it is simply a symptom of age; to me, people either look like kids or adults, and number of people who truly look old to me keeps diminishing. Remember when you were in elementary school and all adults looked so impossibly old that you couldn't imagine yourself even getting that far? I vividly recall the first time I encountered a teenager who thought I was a "grownup." It happened in my mid twenties, and I had a good, long laugh about it. Thing is, most days I still don't feel any more "grown up" than I did then.

When it comes to how I look, I continue to notice the changes that my face and my body are going through, but I can't imagine being one of those "Extreme Makeover" contestants. Egads! I do have my small vanities, of course, but my looks have never been my strong suit. Perhaps, consequently, I will be less traumatized by watching them go than women who enjoyed great beauty in their youth.

Perhaps. On the other hand, I got out of the shower one day this week and discovered a longish hair on my chest, and it was white!

Ah, the ravages of time. Some days, when I look at all of the plastic surgery victims that populate television and movies, I become more succeptible to the marketing ploys of all those potions and creams. Other days, I'm glad my face actually has some distinguishing features, even if they are wrinkles and a beard.

6:26:10 AM    dish []