MidLifeBloggers

by msmeta of Adventures at Midlife

The National Women’s Law Center just released the results of a poll indicating that “women are significantly more pessimistic than men in their attitudes about the status quo in America, both on a societal level and in terms of their own lives.”

“Women are more likely than men to feel that they are falling behind economically, and are more likely than men to be worried and concerned about their economic prospects,” the release reported. (In other words: Once again, women are MORE IN TOUCH WITH REALITY!)

The cure? “Regardless of age, income, and education, more than half of women (55%) feel that the government should do more to solve problems and help meet people’s needs.” The press release then goes on to outline an ambitious plan for closing the wage gap for women, reducing the number of uninsured women and children, expanding access to birth control, reducing the number of women at the poverty line and reforming the judiciary in favor of pro-women judges — all based on new or improved federal legislation.

Pardon me while I heave … a great sigh. Sorry, y’all, but that dog just don’t hunt no more. I’ve been waiting for more than 30 years for just the wage gap to close, and that issue has had legislation in place since 1963! I wasn’t even in the workplace then! (Corporate America has a large bag of tricks and excuses to help it slide around the issue, including making salary schedules a secret and being notoriously difficult to sue.)

I’m not against federal or state legislation on social issues, especially if the community need is dire, the status quo egregious, and the legislation well reasoned and full of teeth. It’s just that, at this stage in my life, looking down the short road at 60, I can’t wait for any government entity to make it all better.

I’m glad that my parents of The Greatest Generation have had access to Social Security and Medicare, and I have hopes of a more stable economic future for my children and grandchildren. But I think we of the gradually graying hair and creaking knees may be on our own, at least for now. Obama talks about exempting seniors from income tax if they make less than $50,000 (which wouldn’t help me), and McCain remains popular among seniors, who think he will be sympathetic to their needs. But I don’t expect either one to swoop in and rescue us. I think we’ll have to just rescue ourselves.

I’ve actually gotten pretty good at it over the years. Since starting out in the ’70s, I’ve had few mentors, and almost no women models for how I wanted to “do” my life. So I just did it. Between the demands and needs of a spouse, children, home, job, etc., I created a life. Sometimes it had baby spit, spilled Coke, tears or duct tape holding it all together, but it worked.

I expect the future to be the same. I see people who are several years ahead of me on the retirement scale making some interesting choices and adjustments. Several friends, despite protests from extended families, have sold off the old homestead in favor of smaller, more manageable digs. A neighbor couple who were having a hard time making ends meet on his government pension recently took in an elderly woman as a boarder, and it seems to be working out well for all three of them.

My husband’s colleague negotiated for a package that included several years of working part-time before retiring based on his full-time income. My elderly mother enjoyed a “senior companion” — paid for by a county agency — who would drop in a few times a week to play cards or run errands for her. We all know people who have turned hobbies into occupations, often making extensive use of the Web. Three generations of one family I’m acquainted with live in one house, taking care of each other, sharing everything and learning daily how to make it work.

These are the easier choices. Some choices are harder, such as divorcing a dear but severely disabled spouse in order for him or her to qualify for adequate insurance or Medicaid benefits, or finally cutting loose a loved one who is draining off personal and financial resources. It’s difficult, but it’s done.

I’m not certain what The Spouse and I will have to do when the time comes. I suspect making some sort of part-time income for a time will be part of the mix, as well as downsizing some plans and expectations. But I’m not looking for Uncle Sam to come rolling in on a tank anytime soon to solve my personal financial problems.

by K. Jayne Cockrill of The NanaDiaries

I turn fifty-f*cking-three in September. Thirty years ago, I looked at my current age as far off in the future, in a land far, far away where gravity was of infinitesimal consequence. Time was something alien and against my primal mantra of I am young, I am invincible, I am the girl with perky breasts. In fact, I thought getting this age only happened to other people, like my parents and ex-presidents and despicable bosses who deserved it. But not me.

No, this number does not fit me.

Of course, there are signs that things aren’t what they used to be. Where the firm muscles of my arms, torso, hips, and thighs used to broadcast my youthful vitality and catch-worthiness, I am now faced with the voice of Rod Serling, broadcasting that I have crossed over into . . . the Sag Zone. The fast-firing synapses of my brain, which once kept my cranial performance and databanks in peak condition, now function at three-quarter speed. I used to leap complex problems in a single bound and photographically recall who said what about whom and in what tone during a late-night drinking binge and still recall the details three months later. Youth had vaccinated me against making such statements as:

* It’s past my bedtime;
* Just one more and then cut me off; or
* But you don’t even know him!

These days as I prepare to speak, my measureless experiences crowd into my frontal lobe, jockeying for position to blast off my tongue first. Pick me, pick me, they clamor. And I reply tacitly “first come, first served” and spur them on. One thought breaks through the throng and lines up on the launching pad that is my tongue. It’s coming… it’s coming… Wait for it. It’s… it’s… gone. I am flustered and humbled by an insidious brain fart.

Who can explain such complex matters without leaning on the tiresome adage that I am indeed getting up there? Instead, I venture a theory: I am so inundated with broad-spectrum knowledge that my intellectual facilities are nearing capacity. Without a back door to push out the inconsequential and traumatic (which prevents us from witnessing excess brain seepage from our geriatrics’ ears), I am forced to Zip-drive the trivia into a warehouse somewhere around my hippocampus where its retrieval could take days—even weeks—much like rummaging through boxes in the attic for one’s first report card.

Now where was I? Oh yes. For me, it’s all about the number. When you say you’re over fifty, people regard you with a piteous gaze. They try to assuage your assumed bruised ego with commentary like: But you look so much younger!

Well, at least I can be thankful for good manners. If only this could be said of one’s family. When mine became aware of my fiftieth birthday, it was like I had a big, waxy Number Fifty birthday candle melting all over my head, flaming everyone with the inside information that I had reached a cultural milestone. At forty, I got those black Over the Hill balloons and greeting cards depicting my nipples dangling around my ankles. That was child’s play compared to the ridicule I endured my fiftieth year as the recipient of a wall-to-wall Grim Reaper banner.

I guess it might have been easier to accept my age gracefully if I hadn’t been throwing myself on the ground, wailing and kicking; but I had just realized I would now be required to check off the 50-65 age box on the forms in my doctor’s office—or worse, the 50+ box, a group encompassing me and all those on the cusp of fossilization.

Fifty is the new forty (or thirty!), some say. In fact, this decade is a huge disconnect between who I am, what I look like, and how I process fiber. I feel the same as I did at 29 (excluding my neck, knees, elbows, wrists, shoulders, and feet). The biggest difference is that I’m smarter. Yeppers, I can wax wisdom all over the place; I just have trouble remembering . . . uh, wait. What was I saying? Oh yes. My age cannot possibly reveal the person I am, inside or out. The numbers do sometimes lie, or at least mislead. I’m still fun and fabulous, vibrant and vital, sexy and sentient. After all, I’m only fifty-f*cking-two.

by Janis Smyth of Jan’s Sushi Bar

I got an email recently asking some basic questions about blogging, when the subject of copyrights came up. It occurred to me that while I have a very basic understanding of copyright laws, many people do not and it’s an issue almost every blogger will have to face eventually, not only to ensure our material remains out of the hands of those who would use it without our permission, but also to make sure we don’t infringe on the rights of others.

Please keep in mind that this article serves only as a guideline - I am not an attorney by any means. (If you think you need legal counsel, contact a lawyer.) What I am, however, is a dynamite researcher who isn’t afraid to call the United States Copyright Office and pester the bejebus out of one of their poor customer service “specialists.” And, as with just about anything, there is good news and there is not-so-good news.

Good News Item #1
Anything you write and any photo you take is automatically copyrighted under the current U.S. Copyright Act. You don’t even have to publish it. The minute you put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard), or take a picture with your digital camera and save that sucker, it becomes your intellectual property and no one else can use it without your express permission, if those are the terms you dictate. You don’t even have to register it - once it becomes a tangible thing, it’s yours. Toot finee. What’s more, you are not required to register your material with the U.S. Copyright Office in order to publish a copyright statement on your blog, although you may want to consult with someone of the legal persuasion as to the correct verbiage.

Not-So-Good News Item #1
While your material is automatically copyrighted, if you wish to seek monetary damage for copyright infringement, you will have to have registered your material with the U.S. Copyright Office before the offense occurs. If your work is not previously registered with the government, you can retroactively register or even just sue under the existing Copyright Act, but the most that is likely to happen is the offender will be ordered to cease and desist from using your material. It is highly unlikely that you will be awarded any damages, or even that the offender would be ordered to pay your legal fees.

Good News Item #2
It’s fairly easy to register your work with the United States Copyright Office. Registration can be completed online; in fact, it is encouraged and you will receive a reduced rate if you choose to register your work online. There is an excellent Power Point presentation available on the site that will walk you through the process, and there are several payment options available.

Not-So-Good News Item #2
You cannot register your blog as a single entity with the United States Copyright Office. Sad, but true. If you want to register your blog, you have to submit every published post and/or photograph at the time of registration. The good news is that because the posts in your blog are held in a database, the copyright will continue for three months, but at the end of that three months you must register all content published within that period.

That last bit of information hurts a little, doesn’t it? Especially since bloggers are the group on the internet most vulnerable to plagiarism and copyright infringement. There are literally millions of us out there publishing recipes, photographs, poetry, advice, humor and stories in vast, uncountable quantities. This is compounded by the fact that if you want to register everything you publish on your blog, it will cost you quite a bit, in terms of both time and money, and even then you can’t be certain your material won’t be used without your permission. And how many of us have the financial resources to sue everyone - or even anyone - who claims our work as their own?

Then there’s the matter of what is subject to copyright and what isn’t. While your photographs and written material are automatically copyrighted, did you know that your blog and domain names are not? Names cannot be copyrighted - they are subject to trademark laws and must be registered with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. Domains cannot be copyrighted simply due to their nature: no two domains can have the same name - each is unique (domains are controlled by the Internet Corporation of Assigned Names and Numbers, a non-profit organization that has assumed the responsibility for domain name system management, and administers the assignation of domain names through accredited registrars). While this is encouraging, it also means that even though you own www.thisismyblogandnotyours.com, someone else can own www.this-is-my-blog-and-not-yours.com or www.this_is_my_blog_and_not_yours.com (or variations thereof).

Well, what about public domain? Public domain is less common than you might think; generally speaking, public domain constitutes any federal government document, any materials produced or published before 1923, or any materials published or produced prior to 1977 without a copyright notice. So, basically the older the material, the less likely it is you or anyone else will infringe on someone else’s rights. This also means that graphics found via Google Images, for example, are NOT automatically public domain, and you will still have to ask the owner’s permission to use them.

Another thing to take into consideration is that the Copyright Act does not protect your work from what is termed “fair use.” Essentially, fair use constitutes short quotations for the purpose of criticism, commentary or news reporting - someone can quote you or you can quote someone else (and you should always link to and give credit to the author you are quoting if at all possible) without infringing on their rights, but only small portions of the work in question; replication of large parts of anything, even when credit is given, can be illegal.

Speaking of names, whenever using a term or name that has been trademarked, you must note in your writing that it is trademarked, i.e. Microsoft Word^TM. However, under the fair use laws, this does not mean that someone cannot use a trademarked name or phrase for their own purposes as long as they are not attempting to deceive their audience that they speak on behalf of the trademarked entity or are related to it in any way, i.e. www.microsoftsucksass.com.

This may all seem disheartening and depressing, but all is not lost. We do have resources and recourse, mostly in the form of Creative Commons Licenses - the best thing to happen to bloggers since affiliate ads, and something I’ll go into in my next article, along with how to best deal with someone who has plagiarized your copyrighted material.

And as always, feel free to ask any questions you have - if I don’t know the answers, I’ll find ‘em.

by Mary Wyatt of Unmitigated

The first time I ever had an office job I was 19 years old. The last time I ever had an office job, I was 26 years old. If I ever, EVER even consider another office job, please, somebody shoot me. It takes a special kind of person to handle office job interaction. That person is not me. For example, my greatest source of personal pride while holding said office job? Is that I was light-years younger than everyone else. Yes, I know light-years are a measure of distance. I am a science teacher. But I feel that the term amplifies the distance between me and your typical office worker (Save!). Plus, it sounds cool.

I was, I felt, the child prodigy of business employees. I was obviously insanely intelligent, yet full of the wisdom of maturity. One example of that wisdom might be when I chided a co-worker who refused to sign up for direct-deposit of her paycheck (I was the payroll department).

“But think of the time it will save,” I said.

“Why will it save time? I’ll still have to wait in line to withdraw my money,” she countered.

“You can just use the ATM! Why would you wait in line?” I asked. This was 1987. ATM’s were VERY new.

“Those things aren’t safe. It’s a security thing.”

“It’s an age thing,” I replied.

Zing! Did I mention this was my boss’s secretary? Woohoo! I was well-loved around there, let me tell you.

Once, at a co-worker’s retirement party, I sat a table with the only two other employees who were younger than thirty. One of them, Dave, said that people were looking at us funny. “They probably want to know who brought their kids,” he said. We thought it was hilarious. Even more so when we found out he was correct.

Now, I teach. This will be my sixth year in the classroom, which makes me the rookie teacher at school. I’m forty-five years old, so people assume it’s my sixth year at this school. “Where were you before this?” they’ll ask. Now, with a few years experience, I tell the truth–I was getting my teaching degree. When I first started teaching, I found it convenient to name the district where I did my student teaching (practice teaching, for you Canadians out there) when asked the same question. Parents assumed I had experience because of my age, and I did not disabuse them of that notion. Parents can smell rookies. They circle and attack like sharks.

The really odd part now is that though I am one of the newest teachers in the building, I am also nearly the oldest. The staff in the building I work in is mostly in their late 20’s to late 30’s with twice as much classroom experience as me. Gone are the days of child prodigy. Fortunately for me (and everyone else concerned) I now actually have some of the wisdom of maturity I previously faked so poorly.

Also strange? I am one of the most technically-inclined people in the building. Poor Help Desk. When I e-mail them an issue, they start with, “Did you try rebooting your computer?” because that’s the level of expertise they expect from most of us.

“Well, no, but I am trying to troubleshoot the video interface on my classroom television, and based on the broken pin I see on the video cable, rebooting probably isn’t going to cut it.”

“Oh, it’s you.”

Apparently, I crave the feeling of sticking out like a sore thumb. I kind of dug being the weird kid that nobody understood back in my office work days, and now I am totally into the whole not-what you-expect-me-to-be vibe. I think my next move is to try out for the Chinese women’s gymnastics team because where else would you not expect to find a five foot, seven inch, size 12, uncoordinated white woman?

by Celeste Lindell of Average Jane

Almost every day, my husband reminds me that I’m probably going to outlive him. He has reason to think so: he’s ten years older than I am, a diabetic with high blood pressure, and his family members have tended to die quite a bit younger than mine.

It used to really bother me that he talked about it so much. He’d show me one of his snare drums and say, “This is worth $700, so when I die, make sure you don’t get ripped off when you sell it.”

I used to think it sounded like a self-fulfilling prophecy that he was “dwelling” on death so much. However, it’s been difficult not to contemplate mortality lately. First one of my husband’s seemingly healthy friends died in his sleep at the age of 55. Then a co-worker’s husband was killed in a hiking accident at 31.

As I stood in the back of the chapel at the memorial service for the up-and-coming young chef whose fall on a mountain path ripped him from the lives of his wife and baby daughter, it occured to me that my husband isn’t being morbid, he’s just giving me important reminders to make the most of every day we have together.

It was with that in mind that I came across Banky’s post that said:

I’ve got good news for you . . . You are dying.

Knowing you are dying, that today could be, may be, will be the last day of your life is the GREATEST tool to living a healthy happy life ever conceived.

Read the rest to see just why that is.

On the way home from work the day of the memorial service, I stopped at the grocery store and saw beautiful bouquets of red roses right inside the doors. I picked one out, took it home and gave it to my husband.

He hugged me and said, “Is this because you’re afraid I’m going to die?”

“No,” I told him, “It’s just to let you know how much I appreciate you.”

by Jane Becker of The Dame Domain

When I was in college, way back in the late 1970’s, I took several courses on Marxism. One may have been enough for most people but not me—I was fascinated with Marx’ five year plans. As I remember it, his idea was to move Marxism forward in five year increments, so he would map out all these detailed five year strategies and then at the end of the five years he’d come up with another plan, a new direction.

For a 21 year old French major, this seemed like a logical approach. I liked maps, I liked the idea of a set time frame. I decided I, too, would travel through life based on Five Year Plans.

It took me a long time to realize that none of Marx’ Five Year schemes had panned out. By that point I had already wandered far and wide off the planned path myself—and Ronald Reagan had Alzheimer’s.

I thought a lot about my Five Year Plans this year. Specifically, I wondered what had happened to my original map and how the hell I was suddenly standing on the outskirts of some place called Fifty. I don’t think anyone ever deliberately plans on visiting Fifty. Paris, definitely. But Fifty? Not exactly on Travelocity’s Top Ten List. Standing on the edge of Fifty I felt a little lost, I felt a little weepy. I felt like I wanted to chuck everything I’d been doing and run away to San Francisco, like some 1970’s movie heroine.

George kept asking what I wanted to do for my fiftieth. I said, “Run away to San Francisco like some woman in a film from the 70’s” and his eyes lit up. He said, “You mean like Jill Clayburgh?” George has a sweet spot for brunettes. Don’t even get him started on Diane Lane. I said, “Yes, like Jill Clayburgh” and George volunteered to play Alan Bates.

Costume sex is always a tempting offer, but I declined. I was restless for something, I didn’t know what. An older, wiser friend (54) said my vague malaise was brought on by my approaching 50th birthday. She said, “You’ll feel much better the morning after your birthday. Trust me on this.” Maybe. But I couldn’t figure out why 50 was bugging me when 30 and 40 never had. I had looked forward to those milestones. On my 30th I had gone to a supper club in Manhattan and stayed out all night like Zelda Fitzgerald. On my 40th I had launched my own business. So I didn’t expect any problems on my 50th—and the fact that I was having one made me want to wrestle it to the ground and tame it.

One evening in the middle of this angst I was hanging out with Wally and the Snapper, bonding over some extremely trashy programming on VH1. Every family has a certain glue than binds them together; for my teenage sons and I, it’s extremely bad television shows. As I sat there watching “Rock of Love” with them I remembered how my parents used to take us to the drive-in movies and I wondered what my boys would do with their kids.

Then it struck me suddenly: fifty is the halfway point.

It’s halfway between backpacking around Europe at 25 and turning into your parents at 75. It’s halfway between being a young parent and a grandparent; mid-point between career goals and retirement.

At 50 I knew things I’d never known were important, let alone existed. At 25 I knew how to decline French verbs and smile my way past a bouncer. At 50 I knew how to sleep sitting up next to a child in a hospital bed and micromanage a grocery budget. At 25 I knew how to pick a baby up to stop his crying; at 50 I knew I could stop his crying but I couldn’t make the hurt go away. At 25, I had no past. At 50 I could see the past as clearly as if it were yesterday—and I’d been seeing my future ever since my AARP application arrived in the mail.

All that clarity paralyzed me.

I wondered, how do you make a decision about where to go next when your life choices are playing back to you on a panoramic screen? When you can only see what’s directly in front of you, it’s easier to decide because your options seem limited. When you have a 360 degree view the stakes—and mistakes—are higher.

In one of my favorite fairytales, a man goes through an enormous calamity. He survives and says to his wife, well, I really learned from that experience. A little while later he goes through another terrible ordeal. Luckily, he survives. And he says to his wife, well I really learned from that one. A bit further one, he encounters another catastrophe.

He dies.

The moral being that it’s great to learn lessons, but you have to actually apply them or it will kill you. Literally.

This thought also immobilized me. What if I made the wrong decision? How many more chances would I get at this age anyway? All the roads I’d traveled had led me here, to the outskirts of 50 and I needed to know which road would take me out of here and onto the next path. I envied Karl Marx. He managed to make those Five Year Plans work for him right up through his death. I envied those 1970’s heroines—San Francisco seemed like a pretty easy choice.

I chewed on this for months and came to no conclusion. Then one morning I ran into a former lover, a disreputable artist who had succored me through some of the rough nights early in my single parenting tenure. I had gone into a coffee shop, desperate for a shot of espresso and there he was.

I didn’t recognize him.

Though he had been younger than me when we were together, he no longer looked it. He was losing his hair and had developed a paunch. Well, haven’t we all. Anyway, we started talking and we talked about books and birthdays and I told him I was approaching 50. He laughed as if he couldn’t believe that he had actually slept with someone who was now almost 50. Then he offered me a birthday present, a paperback he had in his backpack. It was a book about Aboriginal mythology. I tucked it away, hugged him and left.

A couple of days later I found the book at the bottom of my purse and began to read. It turns out that in Aboriginal creation myths, the people did not come to earth after the Gods had already created it. In their myths, the people were here first and they walked along paths called song lines, and as they walked they sang their world into existence.

Imagine singing your world into existence. Not mapping it, not five year planning it, but singing it into existence. What a beautiful thought.

I decided that’s what I would do. I’d stop combing the maps for signposts and high speed routes. I would instead follow my own song lines, and sing the next phase of my life into being.

I climbed off the fence and walked happily into Fifty. I stopped worrying about how I should celebrate my birthday and just celebrated by surrounding myself with everyone I loved.

I had dinner with my best girlfriends and drank champagne.

I got a pedicure.

My sons got me two birthday cakes (I know one was on sale).

I had great birthday sex (George got a present, too).

And my friend was right. I did feel better the day after I turned 50.

In fact, I got up, singing.