Beautiful Olive

Tag: midlife

  • Do You Know What a Loser Is?

    This past Friday, I was prepared to shut down the blog. The internet was full of sadness over the passing of The Queen of Mommy Blogging, The OG Mom Blogger, Dooce. I pored over the tributes and read some of her best posts. I loved her take and will miss her beautiful words. As I took in the commentary from around the planet, I thought “It sounds like blogging is mostly dead. I think there are other platforms like Tik Tok and Instagram and a whole host of others that I know nothing about that must be the platforms of today. I missed the boat and have nothing new to add to these new-fangled ways of communicating. People don’t want to read blogs. They want visual content and it needs to be in 1-2 minute increments.”

    So I decided I would bury Beautiful Olive. Why pay for the website hosting, the Constant Contact subscription, and the domain name rights when it was just sitting out in the internet world languishing with no new content? When blogging was old-school and a thing of yesterday?

    Have you ever tried to cancel an auto-renew subscription? Well, the business-savvy peeps of the world are business-savvy for a reason. And they have figured out that if they make it really hard to cancel an auto-renew subscription, 92% of people won’t cancel it. You can buy almost anything online, without talking to a single person, with a single mouse click. But if you want to cancel something, you have to CALL someone and TALK to someone first. No amount of mouse clicks will get you there. This is why, two days later, I have not yet canceled Beautiful Olive or any of the internet extras that accompany her. I would have to make phone calls and talk to people and I am an introvert. We don’t play that way. We do not like to talk to strangers whose goals are exactly opposite ours.

    So, the blog is still here because it was too much of a pain to cancel it. And, then I woke up today and I decided to write. So, there you go.

    “Do you know what a loser is? A real loser is somebody who is so afraid of not winning they don’t even try.”

    Grandpa, “Little Miss Sunshine”

    It’s Mother’s Day and my typical MO celebration has been to do whatever I want with wild abandon. Mimosas and blueberry muffins for breakfast. Naps. Reading. A dinner fit for a queen, complete with dessert. And wine. Plenty of wine. Sometime after becoming a mom, I declared it the day of indulgence and I always indulged.

    But, some things happened to me over this past week (which I will tell you about in a minute) and all week when my husband or sons would ask what I wanted to do for Mother’s Day this year, I would answer “I don’t know. Not much. I know what I don’t want. I don’t want to have mimosas or blueberry muffins or a bottle of wine or naps. I know that’s what I don’t want. I’ll get back to you…”

    I’ve been on a collision course for the past year with my bad choices and habits. I weigh more than I should or ever have, I drink entirely too much alcohol, I don’t get the exercise I need and my ability to deal with life’s stressors is out of whack. The real struggle is in the knowledge of these things on the one hand and doing nothing about them on the other hand. The cognitive dissonance takes our anxiety to an even higher level and then we are even more unhappy with ourselves. It’s a vicious cycle. Because we are thoughtful, intelligent beings, we really should be able to figure this out. But, we can’t. So, we are losers.

    I’ve had the “Why do I KNOW what I need to do, but do the opposite?” conversation with myself so many times over the past year I’ve lost count. And every time I have had that conversation, I would follow up with “And, are you ready to do something about it?” And every time, the answer was a resounding “Nope. Tomorrow. Come back tomorrow and ask again. Maybe the answer will be different.” And I would stroll off with my glass of wine.

    About a week ago, I had the same conversation, but the answer was different. You can tell when it’s different. It feels like it rises up from your core and is straight-up bellicose. Everything starts to align and suddenly you’re just ready. You holler back at the old self who answered “Nope” every time. “Hey. Old Self. New Me is taking over. We don’t need your help anymore. We got this. Bye-bye.”

    I don’t know what flipped the switch. All I know is that I’ve been praying for it to flip for the past year and I knew I would know when it did. I was glad it flipped on Sunday because I had an appointment for a routine physical on Tuesday. “Whew!” I thought. “This is great! I dodged that bullet! Thanks, Me!” But, apparently, two days of changed habits is not enough lead time for your lab values to be whipped into shape and my doctor called me on Wednesday to tell me that I might need to go on some medication to combat some concerning findings. 😲

    Truth be told, my inactivity, my diet, my relationship with alcohol (that is a really dumb term) was really getting wildly out of control. I think it was pretty dark at times. And when it’s dark, we peer out of the hole and look around at everybody else to see how they’re doing. And when everybody else seems to be doing just fine, we clamp the shell down even tighter, don’t we? But the inner turmoil is still there beneath the surface. Somehow, we can’t figure out how to just do what we know we need to do. We are losers.

    Well, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. The switch will flip. The inner turmoil will work its way to the surface and demand a decision about who wins. I woke up this Mother’s Day and I RODE A BIKE for 30 minutes. I drank water and fasted until 2 p.m. I’m writing, not napping. At dinner, I’m going with CAULIFLOWER MASH instead of POTATO MASH. I e-mailed my physician and asked for a 6-month reprieve, medication-free, to get my sh*t in order. And I’ll gladly pay out of pocket to get new labs drawn in 6 months so I can prove that my switch has indeed flipped.

    Will I feel as sure tomorrow or the next day or the next as I do today? I don’t know. This isn’t my first rodeo. We are all a work in progress, all of the time. Today, I woke up and I felt like writing. I felt like riding a bike instead of drinking a mimosa. I felt like eating an orange instead of a blueberry muffin. And I felt like being a better mom to my boys, which means some of my dark, crap habits have to take a back seat. So many of us are fighting crazy fierce battles. We get really good at hiding them from the world. Keep the conversation going with yourself. Let her answer “Nope” as long as she needs to. When the timing is right, she will suddenly answer “Yes” and you will know. And you will always be a winner in my book.

    Happy Mother’s Day, my beautiful friends. You are nothing short of fabulous today and every day.

  • Mid-Life Crisis: The Kayak Project

    I’ve been struggling lately. Have you? Struggling. Isn’t that the phrase du jour? Covid. Wild Fires. Floods. Climate Change. Murderous Insects. Something called an Army Ant that literally took my friend’s yard from lush green grass to dead, dead, dead in just 3 short days. Yep. I’ve been struggling.

    As I am firmly planted in middle age, I feel like I am watching my life from outside my body. And it’s full of judgment:

    • I thought I would be further along by this point in my life (insert retirement savings, college savings, savings in general, health and wellness, travel, business, friendships, spirituality, enlightenment)
    • I thought “this…” was what I wanted (insert clothes, shoes, house, car, massage, bike, fancy makeup brushes), so why am I still dissatisfied?
    • I thought I would “be…” by now (insert “here, there, anywhere”)

    I believe the mid-life crisis for women is slow and drawn-out. It’s a gradual feeling of unease that creeps in around the edges and blurs our sense of self. In our twenties, we take risks. We are full of confidence. Our bodies will still do exactly what we ask of them and our brains are whip-sharp. We just go and do and drive that bus wherever we need it to go. Life is so full of potential and the horizon is barely visible.

    In our thirties, we are so busy. Our careers are solidly moving forward. Our kids are young – they make us smile and laugh and give hugs and sloppy kisses freely. Our bodies still do what we ask of them because what choice does it have? We are BUSY. But, it’s a GOOD busy. The horizon is beautiful, but still so far away.

    In our forties, our kids have grown older and more independent. We are glad to do all of that taxi-driving because we are spending precious time with them. We are still BUSY, so we barely notice that the body is getting a little more defiant about things we ask it to do. We start to hold our book or our phone or our mail an inch farther away from our eyes. And then another inch and another inch still. Finally, we are holding all required reading at arms-length before we trudge into Costco to buy the 6 pack of readers. The horizon is not so far away now, but we are busy with teens and careers and everyone knows “We are in our PRIME because we can go to dinner or a movie or even a night away because our kids are old enough to be home alone for more than 30 seconds” so who cares about a horizon??? And we don’t mind the readers, they come in tons of fashionable styles!”

    I’m on the precipice of turning fifty. I can’t yet write about what the fifties will be like because I’m not there. But, the latter part of the forties has been admittedly uncomfortable. They’ve made me question everything I’ve done up to this point and everything I’ll do in the latter half of my life. This is why it’s a Mid-Life Crisis. MID-LIFE. See? You look behind and you look ahead and you tell yourself all sorts of ridiculous stories about how your life is turning out now that you’re in the middle of it (see above “I thought by now…..). And I hate to generalize, but I will anyway. I believe that for men in Mid-Life Crisis, the realization that they are within it comes fast and furious. And then the decision about what to do about it also comes fast and furious. They buy the sports car. They jump careers or jump out of an airplane or put in a pool and a backyard kitchen. They turn 180 degrees and everyone nods and says “Mm-hmm. See? Mid-Life Crisis.”

    This is not the case for women. Remember, it’s a gradual unease. We start to question ourselves and our station, but it’s so subtle. We are a little heavier than we were in our twenties and thirties and early forties. We are noticing our skin is more wrinkly and worn and tired. Our bodies are getting more belligerent when asked to do certain things. Our kids are growing into adulthood and we are seeing that we most definitely made some mistakes in parenting. Ouch. That’s a blow to the mom-ego.

    The Merriam-Webster definition of a crisis: An unstable or crucial time or state of affairs in which a decisive change is impending. This is where I am. It is an unstable and crucial time. I can’t, nor do I want to, live in this state of unease indefinitely. And I think I’ve been here for several years. It’s making me tired and scared and despondent. I want out of the Mid-Life Crisis. Because when we live in this state too long, it causes us to withhold all of our gifts and talents and goodness from the world around us. The world needs each of us as we are, not as we think we should be.

    So, how to climb out? We are told by all of the professionals to take baby steps. Incorporate small changes daily. Walk twice a week for just twenty minutes. Add one piece of fruit a day. Wake up ten minutes earlier. Get your coffee at home, save $$$. Drink one more glass of water a day. Start small and the change will become a habit. Right? Here’s the thing. We think too small. The reason we are uneasy at this stage in our life is that the world NEEDS us to be our big, beautiful selves and instead we are over here in the corner being small. That’s why we are STRUGGLING. We are grappling with a horizon that is now clearly approaching and we gave up our coffee and drank more water and ate the banana and NOTHING HAPPENED. We still feel uneasy and restless and inadequate.

    The Mid-Life Crisis requires a bold response. The other day I came across this in Jen Sincero’s book “You Are a Badass at Making Money”:

    If you want to change your life, change your life.

    Well, there you go. That’s really all there is to it. But, instead, we women are over here overanalyzing, overthinking, overstressing. If we want to change our lives, let’s change our lives!

    There is a saying “Spend twenty minutes a day in nature unless you are too busy, then spend an hour.” I am one of those “too busy” people. I multi-task and juggle 18 things at once. I am a “doer”. And I am pretty sure I wear it as a badge of honor. But, I’ve always been intrigued by this saying because it is the antithesis of the way I live my life. I don’t know how to “not” do. As I pondered the Mid-Life Crisis and how to get out of it, I realized that what we all need to do is something dramatically different, completely out of our comfort zones. Something that will make us terribly uncomfortable for a little bit.

    Enter The Kayak Project. To begin emerging from my Mid-Life Crisis I plan to get a kayak, take it to the lake several evenings a week and float around in nature for an hour all by myself. I’m not going to be on my phone or talk to people or read or listen to podcasts. I’m just going to be in that kayak all by myself for an hour. I am going to do this MOST ESPECIALLY when I don’t have the time. As a Type-A person who really doesn’t know how not to be busy, this is going to be HARD for me. I don’t yet know how to be alone, skimming around aimlessly in nature when there are so many things that need to get done on the homefront. It gives me anxiety just considering it. I don’t even own a kayak! I have only actually been in a kayak one time in my 48 years of life! But, all of this is solvable and I am going to solve it. I realize many of you already kayak and go do all kinds of things on weekday evenings and stay up late all the time, opposite of me. That’s not the point. The point is, I DO NOT. But, now I am going to. So, yes, your Kayak Project will probably look different than mine – just make sure it’s out of your comfort zone and makes you nervous and makes your heart skip a bit. Go take a class, open a business, write a book, bake a souffle, climb a mountain, take a solo trip. Just get it going.

    Eckhart Tolle says “You cannot find yourself by going into the past. You find yourself by coming into the present.” We need to think bigger, ladies. We are restless and uneasy and watching our life from outside of ourselves because we are not being bold enough. Pick something that scares you and gives you some anxiety and do that. Just one thing. If it just so happens that eating another piece of fruit every day or drinking that extra glass of water is what it takes to make your heart skip a beat and scare you, then maybe that’s your thing. But, I’ll venture a guess that it’s not. We can take a lesson from how men deal with the Mid-Life Crisis and think BIGGER. Small thinking is holding us back. Grab your readers, it’s time to go! Xoxo