About a week and a half ago I wrote a blog post in which I pretty much laid myself bare. I was brutally honest about several things–some pertaining to me and some that speak more to the experience of being a middle-aged woman.
The response to that post was amazing. I linked to it on Facebook, and the comments were affirming and heartwarming. At least a half-dozen people privately messaged me to share their own thoughts and experiences. One person messaged me to ask if he could share the post with his wife, who teaches a Women’s Studies course (I said yes.) Although some of my family members did not react completely positively to the post, and it was scary as hell for me to be that honest, all in all it was a positive experience. It really caused me to turn a corner I’d been needing to turn.
I’d certainly peeked around the corner several times, but had never fully stepped out. That post was my stepping out. That post was the moment I really embraced the label writer and decided I was going to stop being so afraid to fail at the writing thing.* Although the post was about other things as well (finding myself without paid work, being middle-aged and overweight and knowing how society views that), at a deep, personal level I shifted. I shifted from hoping I could be a writer to deciding I would be one.
It feels good.
As a result of that post, another amazing thing happened. I was offered an editing gig. It’s part-time for now, and I’m technically a contractor (which is how I’ve been employed for my last several jobs anyway, minus the Barnes & Noble stint.) But I’ve been wanting to do real editing work for many years, and I love the idea of helping other authors achieve their dreams. I’m really excited about this! It will also inform my own writing, and show me more of the publishing cycle.
I’ll be editing for Tulip Romance, currently a small start up. The owner previously owned another press, however, so she knows her stuff!
I hope you’ll visit occasionally to see where this road takes me 🙂
* I will also be blogging more frequently. Some of it will be the keeping-it-real type stuff like last time, and some will be humorous. I’ll post periodic updates on my own writing as well.
The fact is, you are forty-eight years old and you are unemployed. You have lived long enough that you have begun to see ageism work against you. Who wants to hire someone who is forty-eight when they can hire someone in their twenties or thirties? The kind of person who runs marathons (even half-marathons) and looks like it? The kind of person who knows what is in style, and wears it well. And there’s that, of course…
You are overweight. You have lived long enough to see what people think of those who are not thin. They are lazy. They are slovenly. They don’t care about themselves. The overweight person is not the person you want to hire. Why would you, when you can hire the marathon runner? That person has energy. That person is driven. And then there’s your gender…
No one wants to hire a middle-aged, overweight woman. A man can get away with it. His grey hair is distinguished, his paunch means he is out drinking with friends and work associates. It’s okay, on him. He is living his life. You are unsuccessful.
Being unemployed means you have to cut down on the things other ageing women around you do. You stretch out time between hair appointments. You are miserly with getting your nails done. You have to be, because the family needs stuff and you are not contributing.
And then…
And then you feel awful and guilty because you actually have a good life. You are blessed, and you know it. You are middle-aged and overweight and unemployed, but you know women of color have it harder than you do. You know that it’s difficult to be living in poverty. You know life is harder if you’re homosexual, or trans-gendered, or from a non-English speaking culture, or not able-bodied. So you should just be grateful for what you have. And you are. You are educated, and you are married to your best friend, and have kids who are good people. So what if you’re doing nothing with that Master’s degree?
You never really had a career. People have careers. You could have had one. You could have had several. But you made other choices. And now you are forty-eight, and unemployed.
You could have stayed in Chicago and stayed in the Ph.D. program. You could be teaching now, and doing research, and you’d have a career.
Or, you could have stayed in the workforce five years ago and not given up your job because your kids needed a parent at home. You’d still be there, maybe. You’d have an office and an income and go on business trips. You’d mentor junior staff, you’d have a say. You’d make decisions, and ask questions other than: Do you want me to make you lunch or do you want to buy today? and Do you need help with your homework tonight? and What snacks do you want from the supermarket? Because the fact is, you are lucky…
You are lucky that you can go to a supermarket and buy food. You are lucky that you have kids that can do things and can respond to your questions. What’s that in the face of being forty-eight, overweight, and unemployed?
You’ve lived long enough to know living means acquiring scars. The kinds that hide inside, simmering below the surface. The kinds that make you the kind of person who doesn’t run marathons or simultaneously work full-time while going back to school for an MBA. You’ve had clinical depression, you’ve had post-partum depression. You’ve been unable to work for small chunks of time. You’ve been unable to feel fully alive for chunks of time.
The writing has always been there, of course. Even though you’ve now lived almost half a century, the writing has been there for as long as you can remember. But you’ve never figured out how to be successful, while all of your writing friends manage to Figure It Out and do it and you have no idea what the magic sauce is. You have your suspicions…
Many of them don’t have kids. Most of them don’t. Or they have spouses who do the family stuff. Or they only need four hours’ sleep a night. Or they write. Every day, or most days, and you don’t. So they get it done, and you don’t.
You also see, in many of them, that they ARE NOT AFRAID. They speak their truths. THEY LIVE OUT LOUD. You are not this unafraid. You never have been, and you want to be, because you suspect this is part of the magic. Even now, as you write this, you are thinking: What will my mother say?What will people think?You didn’t type above that you have fibromyalgia, because what if a prospective employer reads this and doesn’t hire you? Afraid, always afraid. You want to be fearless, and a lot of people–most people–think you are fearless. Because you got a nostril piercing when you were in your late thirties. Because that’s when you got a tattoo. Because you dye your hair various shades of red, or purple, or something in between.
People think you are fearless, because of some of the choices you’ve made. You’re not conventional. You never really have been. And people think that’s brave. But it’s just self-preservation. Because if you didn’t live your life being you to at least that extent, you’d shrivel up inside. So you do just enough. You toe the line between conforming and living.
And here you are, forty-eight (although you feel younger), overweight (although you haven’t always been) and unemployed. And the guilt and the shame weigh you down, zap your energy, and make you less likely to do all the things you should be doing to feel better and to really be you. The excuses and the realities get all mixed up, tangled together, obscuring how you view and judge everything with a gauzy web of confusion.
You are forty-eight, and want to be the kind of person who will post this. But you probably won’t.
This is a science fiction short story, still in progress.
On March 11, at 1:18 pm EST, ghostly apparitions of humans appeared at power plants, transformer stations, and random substations all over the planet. CNN was the first major news outlet to report the occurrences, although people took to Facebook, twitter, Friendster, Orkut, and Renren to report the sightings about thirteen minutes earlier than CNN.
People quickly discovered that photos didn’t capture the spectral bodies, so Instagram was largely useless in spreading the news.
Monica was sitting in her home office in Boston, fighting with a new WordPress template for a client’s blog when her cell phone buzzed. Caller ID indicated it was ex-boyfriend-turned-best-friend, Li Qiang, who preferred to go by the name “Lee.” They’d met in Boston five years ago when she was at Emerson studying journalism and he MIT. He’d moved to California about two years ago, but they remained close.
“Monica! Did you hear? Isn’t this amazing? Me and the guys, er—and gals, are having quite a party here, trying to figure out what’s going on. Wanna watch? Open a page to our webcam.”
“Of course I know! You know me… always connected to the Internet.” Monica struggled to keep her phone from slipping out between her head and shoulder. Why hadn’t she just put Lee on speakerphone? Her fingers danced across her keyboard as she retweeted several tweets, then opened up yet another browser window and clicked the bookmarked URL to Lee’s webcam at Caltech, where he worked in the Physics department as an experimental physicist. “Gottcha,” she said as the page opened and she picked up the live view of one of Lee’s colleagues talking about the multiverse.
“So, what’s the ‘net saying?” Lee asked. We’re pretty focused on a scientific explanation here.”
“So far we have astral projection, ghosts, and aliens.”
“The expected fare… well listen, I have to run, but you know I’ll keep you posted.”
“And me you,” Monica said as a tweet caught her attention, “talk to you soon.”
This is a horror/scifi novel novel in progress. The content below is cut from a previous version, when it was going to be novelette length.
Christa pinches the blanket more tightly at her throat and shivers against the cold March wind, silently cursing the Lieutenant and the NuNature agribusiness representative atop the Barrier. The NuNature rep is particularly harsh, staring down at her with calculating, unsympathetic eyes.
“It is imperative that you all remain isolated, Christa,” she says. “We’re working in concert with other leading agribusiness companies to find a cure. Until then, we can’t be certain all of you won’t infect the rest of us.”
What bullshit! Christa thinks.
The Lieutenant follows up. “I’m afraid that your request for additional provisions has been denied. You can come back in two weeks, for your regular monthly allocation.” He shrugs and looks away, and a flicker of remorse may have crossed his face.
“But, our numbers are growing!”
“The Federal Government decided several weeks ago to shift resources, devote more to finding a cure. I’d think you would have heard that.” The NuNature Rep again, condescension dripping from her words and cutting Christa like small knives.
“Uh huh.” Christa says. “Let me guess—this decision came about during a cozy meeting between the Feds and the Agribusiness reps in the swank NuNature headquarters. Or, maybe you flew everyone to Hawaii for a nice retreat?”
The NuNature Rep smiles down at Christa, showing her perfect white teeth. She wears an impeccably tailored dark blue trench coat lined with fur. Christa could feed her encampment for the month with what that coat cost.
“Your attitude does not help your case any,” the Lieutenant says with a voice somewhat softer than usual. He glances at the Rep, then down at his highly polished black combat boots. Christa’s telepathy senses something like regret coming from him, but he is a bit too far away for her to be certain.
I’m thrilled to have been selected as a panelist at Arisia (scifi conference, happening in Boston) once again this year! The conference takes place over Martin Luther King Jr. Weekend every year. This year’s dates are January 15-18.
Come see me at my panels, or at the Broad Universe table in the Dealer’s Room, where I’ll have some of my books for sale.
My panel schedule is:
The Walking Dead: Now With Twice As Many Undead Sat 5:30 PM
Broad Universe Rapid-Fire Reading Sun 10:00 AM (I’ll be reading from something I’ve written, not sure what yet.)
Worldbuilding with the Soft Sciences Sun 5:30 PM
The End of All Things: Sociology and Eschatology Mon 1:00 (I’ll be moderating this one.)
