I really need to spend more time at the BEACH!

In Defense of Nice

This was originally a guest post I did over @ my girl Melissa's blog http://www.myalienbody.com/

Hello, Melissa! Wasn't that BlogHer conference a blast?

All is well with me, my loves, I've been ... writing a book. Just typing that makes my head want to explode. More on the book (draft) later. 

In an effort to prove I am still here in the blogosphere, I'm borrowing this post to give me a jumpstart back into the blogging groove. Hope you enjoy.

What’s so bad about nice?

With so many corners of the world in turmoil, strife-- crushed under war, illness and sadness, is there a place for “nice”? Or should the word be abandoned as an archaic notion?

Attending college and getting exposed to a bunch of literary theorists beat the wordnice out of me. 

I was taught that the word was never to be used when describing literature, for instance. Calling Jane Austen, Emily Dickinson, or Henry David Thoreau nice in a college English class might get a student verbally stoned. 

Nice was a dirty word, showing the ignorance of the person who used it. Nice was uncool. I was already supremely uncool as a non-traditional student, typically the oldest person in any college class (often including the instructor).  I didn’t need to feel even more out of place because of a four-letter word.

So I turned away from nice as I would from a bad smell, holding my nose, coughing a little when someone else made the mistake of using nice during class. A professor told me that using nice was as bad, as damning, as a woman wearing the color pink. Nice showed a lack of commitment, of seriousness, of intellect.

I swallowed, hard, as I was wearing a pink cardigan that day, and wanted to crawl under the desk. I gave the cardigan to the Goodwill. No more pink, no more nice. I could sneer at nice with the best of them. 

But the sneer didn’t fit me well. Uneasy, I avoided the word nice, but for my own reasons, or so I told myself. Nice was vague, wishy-washy, a term used by default when an un-schooled individual was at a loss for words. Nice didn’t have cachet, joie de vivre, or prestige. Nice did not garner respect. I was too snobby, too smart to use nice.

My nice-avoidance lasted a good ten years. 

Over the past year or so, I’ve been having second thoughts about nice. Blogging has exposed me to a group of supportive people who’ve become my friends. Most, if not all, of the comments they make are kind. I like it that way. 

I didn’t begin blogging to find flagellation. I can flagellate myself just fine, thanks very much. Feel free to make nice comments, call me nice, and be nice to each other at my blog. Really.

Other bloggers may revel in abundant criticism, verbal sparring, and don’t mind mud-wrestling with readers. Kudos to them. I don’t have that kind of blog, not that there’s anything wrong with thoughtful disagreement.  

But if you want a spirited debate on every point I’ve made, you probably won’t read me more than once. That’s not my niche, if I have a niche. Or maybe I have a nice niche? Sorry, couldn’t resist that bit of alliteration.

While nice can and often is overused and abused, I hear it creeping back into my casual conversation and sometimes, my writing. In a worldwide cesspool of derision, intolerance, back-stabbing, and prejudice, perhaps it’s okay to be, and to use, nice.

CNN: Headline Epic Fail

 Today in Tech: Yahoo has a new CEO, and she's pregnant

http://tech.fortune.cnn.com/2012/07/17/yahoo-has-a-new-ceo-pregnant/

I read the headline above on CNN online yesterday.

Way to go, CNN. The article actually reported AS NEWS that it was okay for Marissa Mayer to be pregnant, since she plans to work through her maternity leave.

Say what?

Once I reattached my feminist head to my feminist body, I brainstormed ways to help you out, CNN.

Here are some other headlines you may consider. I used fictional names to protect the innocent. 

Election results: Mary-Mary Contrary new POTUS, has Excellent Lipid Panel

New Head at Pain Capital Has E. D., Plans to Work Through Treatment

German PM Reports No Cavities

Gray-Haired Grandfather, Still Continent, to Head Drug Giant Pillslinger

Brit M15 Top Agent has Exemplary Digestion, Credits Fiber

“My Small Pores Hereditary,” Claims Florida Governor

Chief of Canadian Mounted Police Lactose Intolerant, Gives up Cheddar

Each of these events seemed at least as newsworthy as CNN’s headline about Mayer’s pregnancy.  Come on, CNN. In what universe did a headline about a woman taking a CEO job of a major corporation need to include information about a baby in her uterus?

Age of Discrimination-- or We'll All Look Old on Facebook One Day

I used to love watching Ann Curry on the Today Show on the rare occasions I had to watch a little morning, mid-week TV. Smart, witty, self-deprecating, she has an unspoiled quality even after years in front of a camera. I grew to love her sincerity.

I even loved her perceived flaws-- she occasionally stutters, and since I do, too, I found that deviation from perfection endearing. She sometimes got emotional, but reporting on some of the horrendous stories that make up the news, her wet eyes and cracking voice seemed to me to show heart, not weakness. Ann is the opposite of a plastic, highlighted blonde, interchangeable news anchor.

I’m allowed to say that, because I’m blonde, by the way.

Now that Ann has been busted back to the infantry, or whatever you call her dismissal from the Today Show anchor position, I look at the younger women on the show with sadness and a bit of dread. Savannah Guthrie, Ann’s perky replacement, is 40 years old (she looks 30 to me!), to Ann’s 55. Savannah is smart, a lawyer, and looks great in the de rigueur sheath dress. Natalie Morales, 40, is the news reader, wearing her own sleek sheath. Ann can rock a sheath, too, no doubt. Looking great in a sheath is, after all, imperative—buckets of brains and charm are no substitute.

I have nothing against Savannah and Natalie, but they do seem a tad giddy that they are the heirs to Ann’s years of hard work.   

I don’t want to believe that Ann was fired because of her age. But I am beyond certain that this was the case. Even though Ann is a beautiful woman, she is in mid-life, in an industry where mid-life women are few and far between. Of the very few mid-life female news anchors, the vast majority conform to America’s skewed ideas of beauty. Most look like they spend countless hours in the gym, and eat only arugula. Gray hair is practically unheard of for on-camera female reporters.

Matt Lauer, at 54, is allowed to age. He is balding, and his hair is naturally salt and pepper gray. He does stay in shape, but that may be more to keep up with his wife, a former model, than to retain his job. Al Roker also is permitted to show his age, 57, has had very public battles with his weight, but his position seems secure.

Most of us will never be in contention for a job on the Today Show. So we can relax about age or other hiring biases, right? Not exactly.

Consider the influence social media is beginning to have on the way we, the masses, get our next gigs.

The Brave New World of social media is about to bite us where it hurts.

Apparently, paper resumes are on the way out. Employers will soon use social media to peruse prospective employees. While I use and abuse social media daily, I was appalled to realize that an employer would see what I look like before reading my <cough> outstanding resume credentials.

Anyone looking at my photo will see not only am I middle-aged, but my BMI is on the high side. They’ll see my race, my hairstyle, my lack of fashion sense, or that I remind them of their mother-in-law, and can then discriminate against me for any or all of those reasons.

My friend Melissa argued, well, discrimination can happen at any point in the hiring process—that even if an employer calls me in not knowing my age, once I’m interviewed the hiring manager can at that point discriminate against me. Melissa has a valid point, but my meager hope was at least some employers may show a measure of caution at repeatedly discriminating against prospective employees who’ve made it to the interview process-- if only for fear of a lawsuit. That was my tiny shred of optimism to cling to, and it admittedly isn’t much. Now that employers can plainly see that I’ve had one Krispy Kreme too many, what is left?

Perhaps you, like me, have friends over 45 who are job hunting, and hunting. The employment search once the chill winds of mid-life begin to blow can seem like pushing a boulder over Pike’s Peak in winter. If I were to lose my job, I shudder to think how hard finding another in my field would be.

Ann Curry still has a job. They left her with a few crumbs. She will be a roving reporter on “special assignments.” By chance, I saw her last day on the job. Why is Ann crying, I wondered, listening to her say goodbye. She apologized to her fans for not being able to “go the distance.” Don’t apologize, Ann. Some events are worth crying about. I would have cried too. 

Through Menopausal Eyes: Lessons from the Wizard of Oz

How does The Wizard of Oz remind me of menopause?

Watching the 1939 film with 16 year-old Judy Garland through menopausal eyes—the only way I see these days—I reflect on the alien world Dorothy finds herself in.

She’s not in Kansas anymore, and neither am I.  Someone has died, in Dorothy’s case the Wicked Witch of the West, flattened under a farmhouse.

Some days I feel as though my old self has died, the weight of a house collapsing on my head. Some days I feel like I’M the wicked witch, times 10.

Dorothy is growing and changing. She will never be the same after Oz, and I am going through my own emotional evolution/revolution, one that I didn’t surely didn’t anticipate. No way will I be quite the same after weathering this twister.

Watching TWOO this time, I focus on Dorothy’s bravery. Plunked down in a land where she knows no one, told to walk to a faraway wizard for help, she doesn’t hesitate. She starts down the yellow-brick road, all alone, with only Toto for company.  How very strong is that? I want to emulate her fearlessness.

She meets those wonderful friends along the way: the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, the Lion. They are seekers, like her, and I’ve met friends on my meno journey without whom I’d have little hope of making it to the other side of this emotional storm. Friends are a main ingredient in the prescription for menopause survival.

Dorothy already has the brain, heart, and courage that her friends seek. I have these too, although many days they seem to have shrunk to the size of the grains of sand in the witch’s hourglass.

What about that hourglass? Dorothy watches the grains trickle down what she believes may be the last minutes of her life. This passage of life and my upcoming 55^th birthday reminds me of my mortality, prodding me to set priorities with a sense of urgency I may have lacked previously.

It’s time for me to pay attention—to do what I have been putting off—to take risks. To write the book I’ve been mulling over for years, for Pete’s sake. To save up for the trip to Italy, a dollar at a time if that’s the only way.

I can’t wait around for the Good Witch Glenda in a sparkly gown and magic wand to point me in a new direction. 

I’ve got to get going, on my way, to the new land. Whether the road is through Oz or Kansas, I don’t know.

But here goes.

Not a Mama at Menopause

Apparently I have some “inner work” to do. Lately my brain is whirling like an Oklahoma twister. Lots of debris swirling around, transforming, shifting the old ideas about who I am.

Scary stuff, sometimes, but apparently necessary. A new phase of life has been forced upon me, whether I like it or not.

Now that I have officially passed the ability to have children without having any children, I am second guessing my childfree life.

I did not see this little “gift” of the Big M. coming, but here I am, feeling a bit bereft.

For the most part, I am content that birthing and rearing a child has not been part of my life. Of all the many reasons, (some under my control and some not) why I am not a mother, perhaps the strongest reason is that I don’t have much of a mother-instinct.

Not every woman has a strong mother-instinct. To put it mildly, this isn’t a popular sentiment to voice. I like babies and children; I never had a strong urge to have one of my own. This may seem bizarre and unnatural, but I always kind of smugly congratulated myself for realizing this lack of motherly feelings and then not fighting against these feelings and having kids anyway.

There were sweet moments when I enjoyed cuddling other people’s babies, truly marveling at the mysteries of birth. But when I handed the babies back, I was fairly happy to do so. Some women have an almost unbearable urge to have children, and motherhood is the fulfillment of a dream for them. They are meant to mother.

I respect that mothering need enormously, even if my childlessness has made me an outsider to a lot of what is central to most women’s lives. Childlessness makes me a bit defensive, too, as if I need to justify why I’m childless, or explain that I’m not evil, or emotionless because I’m not a mother.

For instance, I feel obliged to note that by teaching college students, I have had a turn at being a mother figure. Our student population here is a vulnerable one that often needs a shoulder to cry on, parental advice and motherly encouragement. There’s more than the typical amount of tears, tragedy, and trauma on this campus in a military community.

Maybe this is the mothering I was meant to do? Maybe if I had children of my own, I wouldn’t have as much energy to give to these students who do really need me, although I know plenty of teaching mothers who also boundlessly love their students.

I have had a fulfilling ten years giving myself to my students, and they have given back to me, too. Maybe I can be okay, knowing that I have loved these students, some who did not have loving biological parents to sustain them.

This does not change the revelation that I do have some grieving to get through, now that the door to motherhood is closed.

Even though I am still mostly content with an official end to my fertility, I have some truly unexpected, startling, sadness. I felt confident that I had already worked through my feelings about not being a mother prior to the final knell menopause brought to my fertility.

In reading about menopause, especially Magnolia Miller’s wonderful The Perimenopause Blog, I’ve found that grieving associated with this time of life is not unusual, whether one is a mother or not. Magnolia says we must acknowledge we are “mourning a loss" and "coming to terms with a new life on the other side of that loss.”

But the feeling of permanent loss, of no chance of a do-over, of not ever having the photogenic kind of family life that dominates social media, tv, and magazines does sting. Facebook, in particular, is soul-sucking for the childless woman. Some non-moms have deleted their Facebook accounts after it became too painful to look at other people's babies and children.

Even when we are savvy enough to realize that Facebook is mostly how people want to present their lives under best case scenario conditions, we still tend to buy into the seeming perfection. How can my childless life measure up?  Because that photo-shopped gourmet meal at the rustic table with the clean, smiling children, Dad carving the turkey, that's what family life is really like, right? At least some of the time.

I do grieve what I have missed and will never have, and I need others to understand that they can make me feel like an alien

Unfortunately, my grieving won’t be rushed, no matter how much I want to shake it off and move on to this new life ahead of me.

We're Going Indie-- This Includes You!

Something creative is in the wind with my indie family and friends. Something freeing, liberating.

I must pause and think about it, since I’m swept up in it, too.

My brother John is making an independent horror movie, F.U.B.A.R., in Michigan.

My nephew Will, in San Antonio, is making an independent kids movie, Fields Afire.

My friend R.K. Ryals is pumping out indie novels faster than I can edit them.

A little over a year ago, I leaped out in to the great independent blogging universe, where I’ve made friends with an incredibly inspired, intelligent, and literally award-winning group of bloggers. They’ve rocked my world.

We’re independent.  Hey, yo.

We’re taking it to the streets!

We’re not waiting for the man with the checkbook to tell us it’s okay to make movies, to write books, to blog our thoughts out to the great universe. 

We’re not waiting for the agent to call. We’re not waiting to be discovered. 

We’re discovering ourselves.

Exciting? Hell, yes.

New frontier. We’re at the beginning of a revolution in creativity and its distribution.

Where is it all leading? Who the heck knows?

Listen up y’all. It’ll be the ride of our lives.

This is getting good. Really, really good.

Polish up your crystal ball and tell me what you see coming.