Month: October 2019

Not giving as much of a fig what anyone else thinks.  Have you noticed that the older you get, the LESS you care about trivial things that would have mortified you in your youth?  Like someone opening the restroom stall on me, worrying how I’m going to look in that dress……eh I have no shame anymore…no need to conform to the popular crowd…no need to impress anyone…when I walk through the lobby of my office building & pass others, it’s a pleasant smile & maybe a ‘hello.’  No averting their eye out of shyness or sucking in my stomach to look more appealing…

It’s really too bad that we come to such conclusions later in life, rather than in our teens when it would come in handy.  I’m making up for time lost worrying about what everyone thinks…now that I’m approaching the scary age of … dare I say it … 54 … yikes!  I’m doing what I want to do, even if that’s nothing but sitting on my couch & binge watching my favorite show…it makes me happy & content and lets me decompress over a weekend after toiling away at work all week…

If we were magically able to talk to our younger selves now, we’d no doubt tell them to ‘feel free to be yourself,’  ‘stop trying to fit in, because the very things that set you apart from your classmates will be the same things that propel you ahead in life.’

It’s taking me a long time to ‘find myself,’ and it’s still a journey in progress…but I’ve come a long way from that insecure girl who walked with her head & eyes downcast, so painfully shy…now I will gladly chat with a cashier or smile at a fellow shopper…it opens my world a little bit more…if we come out of our tortoise shells, stick our neck out just a bit, we’ll see how much more is out there to explore and enjoy.

So yes… ‘with age comes wisdom.’  There’s a visceral truth in that statement…so much packed into a few tiny words, but oh so powerful.   As we age, we do grow wiser, and that’s not a bad thing, and it’s not a bad tradeoff in the end.

Have you ever looked at yourself from the side?  I avoid mirrors altogether, but that’s just me…rather than an hourglass, I’ve developed a really good rubix cube – ya know – boxy & square!

Gone are the days when my stomach was flat (age 10 maybe?) and my boobs were much bigger than my waist…now they’re just one mass of flesh.

I like to eat!  Sorry world – it’s the price I pay for enjoying a pound of pasta in one sitting  (hey I’m half Italian and make a mean homemade pasta sauce that my husband loves).   And I’m lazy…so there’s THAT!

I lost my dad this year, and he was active & healthy…until he got cancer…but he beat it…until he couldn’t…he never regained much-needed weight after his chemo & radiation, which played a part in his eventual death.   Another person, dear to my heart, also died this year, and he was active…so part of me feels that it doesn’t matter how you live (or eat) & why not enjoy life while you can?  Another part knows that I should at least get to a point where I can walk a flight of stairs without requiring the paramedics to come and bring me oxygen (joking…but you get the picture)……

There’s a happy medium waiting for me somewhere in the middle….just don’t meet me with a mirror

 

I’m a GREAT starter!  Finisher?  Not so much.  Is anyone else afflicted with this?  I can be gung-ho on something – put my energy & focus into it wholeheartedly – but if something else comes along to intrigue me, I’m off and running like a manic squirrel gathering nuts.

For example, I decided to work on my novel.  I’ve always been a writer by nature, so I put all my effort into finishing a book, even paying an editor $1200 to work on it with me.  When the changes proved too difficult, I decided to teach myself Spanish.  I absolutely loved it!  Night & day, I was studying, and it got to where I could understand it, write it, and speak it.

Then, my husband innocently told me about this word game he stumbled upon…well, that became a new obsession.  I found myself feverishly playing tournaments every weekend with the sole purpose of winning each one by a landslide.

You see, I have what they call an ‘addictive personality.’  I think I inherited this from my father.  He was an alcoholic.  But, the thing is, my dad had willpower.  He stopped drinking, and he later stopped smoking.  I didn’t inherit THAT part of the gene…there is no willpower in this girl!

The only hope I have of stopping my current ‘addiction’ is when I find some other obsession to replace it…so I’m like a frog – hopping from one lily pad to the next.  Suggestions?