Aging Gracefully, Feistily, and…

I’ve been on the planet for 48 years. My hair is going grey. My face and other parts are sagging. Wrinkles appear with zits on top of them. My hip doesn’t work right.  My feet hurt.  My fingers are stiff.  A while back I had been feeling all of this keenly and knew that I had to change the internalized images I held about aging. Somehow, the sexist, ageist culture had seeped into my deepest sense of what aging means. I was feeling washed up, used up, old, dry, grey.

Of course I know that all of this is an illusion. That it doesn’t matter. That life is impermanent. But I also live in the real world and in the cyber world. The world of lovely young airbrushed images.

In this cyber-real world, what did I do to cheer myself up, to change those internal pictures? Therapy?  Church? Support groups? No, I created a Pinterest page called “Aging Gracefully Feistily and….” Now when I feel that anti-aging voice of internalized oppression creeping into my thoughts, I turn to the internet. Check out my lovely board of feisty, fun, life-loving over 40 women…. They are an inspiration.

 

Weekly Photo Recap

My online photo class is over and I thought I’d put up the weekly photo recap today to celebrate! It has been a challenge to keep up with Nablopomo and Photo101 this month, and I feel proud and a little fatigued.  And strangely, a little bored.

I’m curious about the relationship between fatigue, boredom, and the ending of a chapter in one’s work life. I feel it with this month’s ending, a sense of relaxation and relief, mixed with a “what now” feeling.  It’s a microcosm of the ending of my teaching career. For the last year or so, I’ve been working at not working, and strange as it sounds, it’s not easy. I have to learn to be free.

What if there is no “they” out there telling me what to do? Telling me the “shoulds” and “have tos” of life?  Sometimes, it’s easy as pie.  Relax, do some crafts, read, watch tv, go for a walk, visit with friends, do chores. But sometimes, it’s hard, like, “how do I do nothing?” “Am I allowed to do nothing?” “What do I want to do?” How to we get so accustomed to just following directions, coloring within the lines, buying our lives off the shelf?

Pupper and the Blanket

As I’ve said before, Pupper (aka Ajax Pupperknuckles) loves crochet blankets. This is true even if they are still in the process of being made.

I was just chillin’ on the couch, trying to add some rows to my mixed-stitch-stripey-blanket, when up comes Pupper, wanting to play “scary monster under the blanket.” Okay, okay. So I switched my creative juices over from crochet to photography. Here’s what happened: