What's My Age Again?

I'm having some issues about my age. You know what it is, because you can see my profile - I'm 44 years old, turning 45 in June, which is not that long from now.

In Sydney I could pass for much younger, early 30's easy. The move, though, has aged me, I think, and now I don't know what I pass for because I haven't asked anyone. But looking around work and gradually finding out how old everyone else is, I'm as old as the ones who look old. But I come across, I think (although maybe I'm kidding myself) as the same as the young recent MBAs and folks who've been there ten years because they started straight out of college and now have little kids, the people on the first step of their major career path.

Career path-wise I did get behind because I stayed in college until I was 28, I remember feeling that when I was 37 I only had about 5-6 years of real work experience. Actually, that's true if you count academia as the sheltered workshop it is, or a continuation of the post-grad non-"real world" experience. On those rules, I have - how many now - ten years of experience, which in fact puts me at par with the people in their early-30's. So, I'm at that kind of level, and I still have that kind of look, but I'm much older in fact.

The signs of aging that have shown up recently and are freaking me out:

- my bathroom light hits the top of my head just so and highlights all the grey hairs near the part. I couldn't even get distinguished, interesting grey hairs at the temples, they're just shot through the top visible layer and makes the whole look dull and a bit dirty.

- I have to hold the fine print a bit farther away to read it - maps, CD covers, telephone book, menus. This really did just happen, and my traditional problem is that I can't see in the distance, so my first pair of glasses (not first, but first that I actually wear) are going to be bi-focals.

- I have recurring problems with my neck because of all the computer use, and in order to see someone about it here I had to have a neck X-ray, and the report back was "a bit of degenerative joint disease, so that's a bit of arthritis, nothing to worry about". Degenerative joint disease, according to WebMD, is normal wear and tear that happens over time. It's nothing to worry about, but it's worrying me.

- And then, as a secondary effect of this latest neck episode, I'm having trouble with the joints in the little and ring fingers on my left hand. When I lay down, when I sleep, the joints go all clicky and my hand won't work properly. This is really putting a crimp in my plan to have knitting, or rather "knitting with excellence", as my main self-defining activity outside of work. Rheumatoid arthritis (the one you really do have to worry about) runs in my family, along the same genetic line as a digestive issue I had when I was in my 20's, and so I know I'm doomed, I know I'll get it. That's the version that makes old ladies' joints swell up into balls and hands stiffen into unusable claws. All the Art Gallery ladies in Sydney had at least one joint that had swollen up into a ball and didn't work well any more. Many of the patrons who handed me cash to come see the shows at the Art Gallery had hands like that, hands that couldn't grip the change. That's gonna be me, I know it. It has started. So how can I at this stage take up knitting as a passion and mode of excellence? Much less start my electric guitar playing. Is it too late for me, those kind of opportunities? Probably not, people overcome arthritis, but I feel like I need someone to manage it for me.

- I don't have the stamina that I used to. I can't push through and work late, I can't manage the late nights that well. This decreases linearly, I think, I remember noticing it before.

Why do I have such issues with being 44? Why do I want no one to find out? When they do find out, I think I'll get credit for looking great for my age, but do I also miss out on a bit of gravitas, the type the ladies of Senior Management have?

And I know that I have issues with myself as a desirable partner for some guy. I want to get out there and play amongst it like I was 25 or 30 again. But I get none of that kind of attention, and if I did I would feel like I'd have to give full disclosure - "No, buddy, I know you're thinking of me as a potential girlfriend, but I have to tell you, there's no way in the world I could ever get pregnant, my doctor has reminded me of that every visit lately, so if you're thinking of the kid thing you'll have to pick someone else. And I don't have the stamina I used to, and my hands are freezing up into claw-like balls so I won't be able to play in your band, and the hair, the skin, the eyes, they're all starting to betray me, I'm soon going to look like the lady in knitting class last night who announced her age and described her issues with getting trifocals. And I will betray myself with talk of music, and college radio, and technology - what I used to write papers on in college (typewriter), what I was doing when I bought my first CD player (29 years old and moving to Australia for my first teaching job), how old I was when MTV launched (it was the year I graduated from high school) - and also with talk of politics, who was president when, and with my general life knowledge, because you don't get this old without figuring a few things out, and you probably haven't gone through certain of those stages yet."

I want to pretend to be 33 to be attractive and for it to be appropriate to hang out with the 25 year olds as a peer and not a member of the older generation, and also I should pretend to be 33 so that my level of career advancement doesn't seem retarded, but I actually am 44 and it comes out, and also I suppose I do want to claim the advantages of gravitas and knowledge and life experience that it does bring.

I wish I had someone here I could ask about these things - how old are you, how old do I seem, how am I supposed to act at this age. Oh, yes, and I'm single, with no prospects, and no kids, and I don't know what that script is like - what am I supposed to be doing? I still really am without a narrative, without specific goals, without an idea of a future. The now is cool, but how to go forward, and how much to flash my ID while I do it?

Some Comparisons

prologue: Phone conversation between myself and my aunt who lives in Denver

me: "Today my inside temperature is the same as my outside temperature."

her: "Why? Is there something wrong with your furnace?"

Earlier today the temperature inside my house was 67.3F and the temperature outside was 65.5F. This is a new record for outside temperature for me.

Right now in Appleton it's 18C and in Sydney it's 13C. Remember a few months ago when it was 14F below here, 24 below Celcius, and so we were the same amount below 0C as Sydney was above? This is the first time it's actually been warmer here than there.

The world tips and turns....

Ripples on lake

There's still a little bit of ice on the lake.

I took a walk around it because it is so warm. The wind was blowing northerly, and two ducks, a mallard pair, were swimming southerly. The way the ripples on the water were formed by the wind, the way the ducks were swimming and their bodies were going up and down on the waves, making slow progress, it brought back a memory of Horseshoe Lake, childhood vacations. If you change the ducks to gulls, it was a memory of all the beaches I've lived near.

Spring in the Midwest

I can't even describe the song that's in my heart.

Today was the second day over 50. My heart and mind are still bursting from the very inspiring work thing I went to on Tuesday and Wednesday. I had my first session with my trainer this morning and although I nearly passed out, I am on my way to being a stronger, fitter me. Everyone at work was still abuzz from the conference too, and meetings including light, cheery discussions of fun, completely non-work-related things.

I had my perfect Friday evening, plus. I went to Barnes & Noble (hardly anyone there when I got there, then the intellectuals and goth teenagers starting filling in). Had a tall soy chai latte and a bag of (really nasty but trans-fat-free) potato chips while reading the New Yorker. Made some progress on The Project (more on that later). Noticed that it was bright, bright sun at 6:20. Wrote some stuff for the blog (see next post). Wafted out as the shadows lengthened, listened to my new CD of The Shins, Oh, Inverted World. Drove up College Ave with everyone else in town.

Then drove by City Park, which was right where I thought it would be. I'd see photos of it in Appleton web sites before I moved here, and once while driving with Mom and Dad over Thanksgiving weekend when they were here I saw it fleetingly from a car window, with a glorious blue Christmas tree in the middle. But had never got out and walked around in it. I did, I parked and walked a block and walked to the Christmas tree and around the statue of the kids and the back. Saw two houses with For Sale signs (one "reduced") that have open houses on Sunday. Hm.

This town is full of people out doing Midwestern outdoor springtime warm-weather things, all just today. It's a Friday night and it's been above 50 degrees for two days in a row. Here are some things I saw:

- Kids riding home from school on bikes with t-shirts and cut off jeans
- Kids sitting on a park bench patting a little Husky puppy
- Three guys playing baseball in the road, and stopping when a car came by
- Couples walking in the park
- "I love Larissa" written on the concrete surround of the big tree in the park
- A big flock of crows in a tree, squawking
- Back yards without fences
- Kids playing on a swing set while the parents leaned against a bench and visited
- Couples and families walking dogs around my lake
- A robin singing away and bobbling along the ground
- A pink sunset

I went to get the mail and didn't even recognize the mailboxes or the houses over that way because last time I went to get my mail there was a 5-foot bank of snow beside the boxes. The landscape looks all different with different proportions now. The grass is greening up a bit.

This really is a different place. All summer I bet I will be walking around transported to scenes from my childhood - playing in the street, the sound of grown-ups talking, the light fading when it's time to come in from playing but still a warm glow in the concrete and on your skin. Ah, the Midwest.

___

The place I moved to was a bleak, frozen, dark, silent place with no people moving around in it. But that was what I needed, right then. That was all I could handle.

The Project, the conference, the furniture, the new sense of direction, the grounded feeling, the swelling song in my heart - it is Spring. It really is.

Friday night miscellany

Bright, bright sunshine outside at 20 past 6. It does change quickly. This is a freaky place. Second day above 50 deg.
___

B&N has a call button that sounds ljust like the "Fasten Seat Belts" sound on a plane, and inspired in me a little sting of the memory of fear and discomfort and love that you feel on a very long plane trip.
___

The first guy I kissed now works in R&D at Google. The second guy I kissed showed up on Facebook and seems to have had a long career in IT as well.

Actually those were the first guys who kissed me. The first guy I kissed I was about 5 years old and accosted him - he lived up the street. There were five of them, I think - Catholic. Last I heard he was living in a town in the middle of Nebraska and had a gajillion kids of his own.
____

When I was about 12 I made a big list of guys I had crushes on. Eventually it split into real people and celebrities. I keep adding to the list over time. The strangest addition was a guy who worked at a Volkswagen dealership. My parents were having something done to the car and we had to wait in the showroom for ages and ages. He had dark hair, dark eyes (don't they all? I think everyone on the list had roughly the same look - variations on Davy Jones/Paul McCartney). I remember the feeling that the looking at him inspired. It was like a drug. I maneuvered outside the field of his attention, tried to stay an anonymous spy, but looked as much as possible because of that woozy, overwhelming feeling, the feeling that made guys make the list. Looking back this seems really creepy and weird to me, I suppose it was just 12 year old hormones running amok. Stopped keeping a list years ago. But I suppose one still craves the feeling. And one never really learns that the feeling is created by something inside oneself and has little or nothing to do with the poor guy who is it's object, who inspires it.

On to something

prologue: When I refer to "the project", I'm talking about a plan I'm hatching that incorporates a study of narrative as the thing that gives meaning to human life, a study of the metaphysics of narrative, a study of the aesthetics of narrative (Aristotle's Poetics and that book by the Story guy), fictional narrative, autobiography, blogging, and a certain element of performance art I expect. I thought of it a few weeks ago when I decided to stop thinking about boys, and I'm making tiny steps of progress, mostly on Friday nights at Barnes & Noble which is where I wrote the entry below.

I must be on to something. Half of the "how to write" books seem to be "how to write your life as a story" books. I wonder how you could find out how many more of those there are now than there used to be a few years ago (one of those stats like they have in the New Yorker).

It's great to be doing a meta-project instead of feeling like I should write a novel. I picked up "How to write a book in a month" (which I must get) and it was great to be a theoretical bird flying above it and thinking about its metaphysics and its place in the culture rather than feeling guilty because I'm not working on a book in a month.

And it's not a book I want, it's all about the project, the journey.

I am a process knitter* of philosophy.

* Debbie Stoller, Stich 'n Bitch, p. 122

50+

We've finally had some days above 50F degrees, although I wasn't around for any big fanfare because I've been in Kohler for two days for a work thing.

The geese are back. They're desperate to swim, but it's tricky. The ice on the lake out front has melted only in one small strip around the edges that is exactly one goose wide. They're going up and down it in a line, along with a pair of Mallard ducks.