Life is pretty lonely these days, for all of us. If you’ve taken a psych or soc or polysci course, you’ve heard the term anomie. Our society has fragmented and our connections have frayed over the past century or so, and we are each of us left alone with a very personal drive for meaning, for community. It’s a human urge to search out others of the same ilk, to be not-alone. Some wrap themselves in the vestments of their work or hobby. Others find it in their church or athletics or political causes. Bloggers, particularly those of us who write about our day-to-day lives, find it on-line.
Back in March, a new BlogHer member posed a question in her Introductory post: Where are all the midlife bloggers? The response was so strong and so positive—and I had been thinking the same thing myself for over a year—that I set up a barebones site, from which has evolved MidLifeBloggers. It is a gathering place for all of us who consider ourselves to be in the middle of our lives, and it has grown out of the same need that motivated the Mommybloggers to band together: the urge for a community that speaks to our particular interests and gives us a voice. That’s what blogging is about. It’s a community; it’s a conversation.
As part of creating this community, we’ve been doing the defining thing: what exactly is midlife? Am I in it? Am I past it? Can you give me some age parameters here, please?
No, we can’t. Midlife is not a function of years lived; it’s more of a mindset. We’re not collecting IDs, but I’d say our ages range from 40s to 60s. Some of us are perimenopausal; some of us are post; some of us are smack in the middle. Some of us work outside the home; some of us are stay-at-home-moms and, yes!, grandmothers raising grandchildren; some of us are looking at and for second or third careers. We are the fastest growing demographic in the US and yet, few people are talking to us or for us. We want to change that.
MidLifeBloggers is a place to hang out, to vent, to share, to laugh, to cry. It’s a place to experiment, to try out new ideas (and looks!) to get a Really Honest Opinion (yes, that one makes you look fat; no, the other doesn’t). Right now MidLifeBloggers is in its infancy, but that’s what makes it so exciting. Where it goes–and how–is totally dependent on its members. I edit the site, but the posts are written by the bloggers you see on our BlogRoll. They’ve debated the plastic surgery issue, bemoaned the onset of presbyopia., and weighed in on Sex and The City, The Movie. There’s a series going now on blogging and computers and another on the life of a midlife rock’n’roll chick. This weekend we’ll start a series on Life Coaching. We’ve got a Flickr stream that posts a rotation of our photos, and with every day bringing a new opportunity for social networking, who knows what will happen next. To that end, we’re one of the Birds of a Feather meetups at Blogher’08 where we’ll have a chance to see each other face-to-face and make plans for the future of MidLifeBloggers.
If you consider yourself in midlife, I invite you to join us—on line and at BlogHer’08. Email me at byjane73(at)gmail.com or go to the site and contact us in the Comments. To misquote everyone, it’s gonna be a wild ride in the years ahead, so fasten your seatbelts and grab the hand of the woman next to you.
Jane Gassner
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