Goodbye, The End, Finis

Today, December 13, 2009, is the fifth anniversary of ByJane. And today is also it’s swan song. Those of you who check in from time to time know that I’ve only been posting from time to time. And when I do, I generally cross-post to MidLifeBloggers--which seems like a waste of, well not paper, but bytes...or something.

And too, the kind of posts I did for ByJane seemed a bit too casual for MidLifeBloggers. With ByJane, I just wrote--whatever. Sometimes I would start in one place and end up in a totally different direction. But that was the fun of it. That is, actually, what blogging is about, at least to my mind. That’s not what MidLifeBloggers is about. When I choose posts to put up, I’m looking for what are basically non-fiction essays. They have a beginning, a middle and an end. They make a point, and they use some or all of the tools of literary writing to do so.

Still I miss writing those casual, personal posts, but all of my energies these days are going into MidLifeBloggers. That’s where I’m doing the social media dance that one does to build an audience. It’s where I’ve got plans and intentions and goals and dreams and--well, you know. So I’m saying goodbye to ByJane as the blog exists in this incarnation. This will be my last post at this url. But because I miss blogging and because I still want to do that meandering personal kind of writing, I’m officially folding ByJane in to MidLifeBloggers. There’s a sweet spot on the sidebar where you can read ByJane; you’ll just have to go to MidLifeBloggers to do it.

Goals, Fantasies and Reality

For some reason this post wants to call itself, Be Careful What You Wish For. I don't know why, since I'm talking about happy things and good times. Success, baby, success.

A long, long, long time ago, I decided to be a magazine journalist. Just like that--pouf! Without any training or background or much more than a love of magazines behind me. My mother had brought me up that way, to believe that if I wanted something, I just had to work hard and I would get it. And my father's mantra to me was: "You can do anything; you can be a doctor." Of course now, with the wisdom of age, I know that neither of these was true, but at the time--and for a long time--I believed it and acted accordingly. I gave myself a deadline then: in five years one of the womens magazines would be asking me to write for them. It happened in two.

Last year when I started MidLifeBloggers, a small lust lodged in my brain. More magazine would come calling. They'd see the perfect symmetry between us and offer me untold wealth to sell them the site. I believe this fantasy included a home in the South of France--and the body to go with it.

Funny thing: More did come calling. Not with the South of France offer, but with a request that I post original pieces for them on their new website. Close enough, I figured, close enough.

Today the site goes live in Beta. And here's the link to my piece. It's a rant about who gets to give midlifers advice. Go look. Cheer me on! Wish me well--and who knows, Cannes might not be so far away after all.

MidLifeBloggers.com: Want to Write For Us????

It's finally up, the never-definitive, ever-almost ready guide to

Writing for MidLifeBloggers.com: A How-to, Why, & When, etc. etc.

If you're a midlifeblogger and you want to write for us, this is what you need to do....Go look!

New Post Up at http://midlifebloggers.com

Check it out, as Randy would say. MidLifeBloggers is gonna be at BlogHer'08.
You can be too. Go to MidLifeBloggers and learn what you have to do to get some BlogHer'08 bling for yourself!

MidLifeBloggers on Flickr

Yes, indeedy, we now have our very own Flickr group where we can post our very own photos from midlife and before. I've put two of mine up: one is a very soulful photo in which I am trying to look like a BEAUTIFUL THING THAT SEVENTEEN MAGAZINE WOULD WANT TO PUT ON THEIR COVER. Obviously, I was not successful. The other is a photo of my left foot, which is much the better of my two feet in that it has aged well. My right foot, unfortunately, is not now and never will be ready for a closeup.

So--if you're a MidLifeBlogger and are on Flickr, go and join the group and upload your photos. When we have more than my two, I'll put a widgety thing on MidLifeBloggers, that will give a rotating show of all our pix. If you're not on Flickr, join. It's free.

Why I'm Wired in a Wireless World

I am writing this so delicately, my fingers barely tap tap tapping on the keys. I don't want to disrupt the incredibly tenuous, don't breathe on it connection between my laptop and the world. It is, right now, jerryrigged more or less. I am hooked into the modem for my wireless service. Which means that I'm not wireless anymore. It also means that logistics being what they are, I am playing Mother May I with the cord every time I want to leave the room.

Oh woe.

Yesterday late morning my wireless went kapuey. I spent many hours on the phone with the Comcast techs in Canada (yeah for speaking English!) and the Toshiba techs in whatever offshore third world country they're in (boo for mangling English). The problem seems to be within my little laptop. It doesn't want to maintain the wireless connection. I enable and enable and enable and--pfffft! it disables. To figure it out and hopefully maybe please God fix it, I have to run all sorts of Restore shit. And of course, you know what I have never done on this laptop: begins with a B and ends with a P.

I must have known this was coming because for the past couple of weeks, I've been feeling Backup urges. But I ignored them, of course. So much else to do: websites to create; blogposts to write.

First order of the day this AM was to transfer some of my files onto CDs. But whatever ails my wireless adapter seems also to be ailing my D drive. And then, I remembered. One of our MidLifeBloggers, Carolyn Bahm, has an ad or something way down at the bottom of her blog. I went, I got the url, and I am now, even as I write having all of my hard drive sucked up into Carbonite where, for a mere $49.95 a year it will reside along with regular, I-don't-have-to-think-about-it Backups.

And tomorrow, after I am well and truly BACKEDUP, I can figure out what the flippin' deal is with this computer.

My Saturday, An Essay - by Jane

My Saturday contained all the excitement and romance that one could possibly want.

First, there has been the on-going debate over at BlogHer about some guy's book suggesting that the answer to the problems in the Middle East was to ship all the Jews somewhere else . Said "conversation" (ahem!) actually started last night and of course I was in the middle of it from time to time which not only put me to bed all roiled up, but rooted me out earlier than usual this morning. And that, in turn, required that I put myself back to bed for another hour or so after I had checked to make sure that the world was still turning.

Said nap resulted in my being eh eh eh, so I hied myself to the darkened living room to watch a movie IN THE AFTERNOON !! There was a time when I would cheerily spend my Saturdays cleaning and tidying my little abode. That time seems to be over. But the romance, oh yes, the romance was: I watched Message in A Bottle. That is the name of the film with Kevin Costner and Paul Newman playing father and son to Robin Wright Penn's good gal, Teresa. I had not read the book because you know, la de dah, I have all that education in literature and so I only like romances written by dead white women. I suspected it was a tear jerker--all that soft focus is a dead giveaway--and I figured I might as well go for it. The love story didn't really get me going because--well, it just didn't. I got all weepy at the end, but then my life in the current and not so current moment lends itself to that. Still, I made myself feel better by imagining that Robin and Paul consoled each other over Kevin's death. Certainly I would rather have the former than the latter. But that's just me.

Must I go on? Must I tell you that I did a quick turn into the drive-through at Jack in the Box. And then I hied to the drug store where I entertained myself by browsing in the cosmetics department. Okay, MIDLIFEBLOGGER ALERT: I got something called Bio-Oil, a South African product which contains the "breakthrough ingredient PurCellin Oil" and promises to "help smooth and tone aging, sagging and wrinkled skin on both the face and the body." All these breakthroughs and promises I could definitely use, and I'll report back as soon as I have something to say.

And then, and then, and then!! I watched reruns of Law & Order SVU and began the long process of filing and clipping that will culminate tomorrow in a painting of the toenails. O joyous Sunday--one can hardly wait.

MidLifeBloggers.com - how's it gonna work?

Here's one explanation, long-winded probably, but jeeze, folks, I thinking out loud here. I mean, isn't the normal thing for a web site to be presented, all pretty in beta, with the major issues worked out? Am I capable of doing the normal thing? NO.

So look at it this way: you are being treated to an insiders look at the creation of a website...by someone who knows nothing about creating websites. This is flying by the seat of my pants, people, which is how I've always done it. Problem is, you're all on the plane with me. However, I promise that we will not crash and burn. Equally, expect a bumpy ride from time to time.

Here's what I'm imagining: The main blog posts of the site will be written by all who have and will join the group. We'll take turns. At least in the beginning, I'll serve as the editor. So say you've written a post on your blog that you think would be perfect for MidLifeBloggers.com. Write me an email, send me the link, or just copy it into the email. I, in turn, will post it on MidLifeBloggers.com.

My vision for this whole project is a place for all of us. I can see other avenues within the site that would work for less formal dialogue. I'm hoping that the category Conversations will work in a quasi-interactive way. Ask a question; get a bunch of answers. Okay, that's vague, but maybe by tomorrow, I'll have sharpened it up. Or maybe you'll join me in brainstorming this thing. How 'bout that...huh? huh?

Love,
Jane

Themes and Content at MidLifeBloggers.com

I've now looked at countless Wordpress themes and actually uploaded four. Of those, the two I like the best are not widget-friendly. One has to do some manipulating to widgitize them, and I'm thinking I'm so over the manipulation bit. But maybe not. Maybe now is when the tough get going, etcetcetcetc.

This is the one I'm liking now:


But then, I'm drawn to this one too:

Clearly I'm a fan of the rounded corners, odd-ball designs.

And I liked the one I posted yesterday as well, but I'm afraid all those separate windows would end up confusing me, if not the rest of you. I think I'll just pin the tail on the template and go for whichever.

Initially, there will be two places that need your thoughts and words. The main page will feature a different blog post by you at least three times a week. Right now, I'm going to function as the editor of the site, so you'll submit your post to me and I'll put it up on the site. This will, of course, be cross-posted from your blog, unless you'd rather not (and I know some of you would rather not!). The other arena which will depend on you will be what I'm calling, for want of something snazzier (!) "Conversations." Basically, it will be a comment page on a specific topic. Anyone gets to start the topic: again, tell me what it is and I'll put it up there.

There--that's the beginning. Whaddaya think?

Almost...almost...almost there!

Eureka! I have finally conquered Wordpress 101. I'm thinking that the site will be up tomorrow. That's what I'm thinking...and hoping...but not promising. What I can promise is that MidLifeBloggers will evolve over time as WE create it.
In the spirit of that, what do you think of this look? It's not typical...but then, neither are we!

Two More MidLifeBloggers

Eyes right, please, and check these out:

Twentyfour At Heart

Oneida in the Ozarks

That is absolutely all I have to say. I'm wiped......

The Petard Upon Which I Am Hoisted

I wrote this post last year, September 10, 2007 to be exact, when I was feeling like the loneliest voice in the blogosphere talking about issues of aging. And in fact, there were no comments, nary a response to what I wrote. Rereading it now, and knowing that there's actually a dialogue going on, I'm going to republish it.

The original title was: Today's Blog Is Brought to You By......What I Read In Bed At Night. It was a rather lackadasical title, truthful but not especially meaningful, or appealing. Some titles are like that for me, but others come out of some hidden place and insist on being, despite seeming nutty, wild gibberish. Then after a time, I'll suddenly see how absolutely perfect the gibberish was, how it so summed up things I felt but couldn't articulate. The one for this post today is that kind of a title, and after you read this post, see if you can tell me what that petard is.


Last night, and the night before actually, [I was reading in bed] Living in the Light of Death and The Northern California & Nevada TourBook. The second was a function of the first and, obviously, they have very different authors and completely different subjects. The former (the first, that is) is a book by Larry Rosenberg on breath awareness meditation or, as the subtitle says, "On the Art of Being Truly Alive." This is so what I'm needing to foster in my life: breathing, being alive, and a knack for taking the piss out of topics that I really do believe in. Ooops. Can I suck that last sentence back? Or at least the final clause--or is it really a phrase with an adverbial in it?

But I digress. The TourBook is the AAA's tome on where and what to visit in--hey!--Northern California and Nevada. If you belong to the AAA, you can go to one of their offices and slide your card in the appropriate slot, punch the appropriate buttons and--woila!--maps and tourbooks come falling out. Sort of like the candy machine at a Motel Six (not that I'd know what that's like, since I foreswore motels with numerals in their names about a decade ago).

I got the TourBook (I hope you're noting the unique capitalization) several weeks ago when I was looking for a likely spot for Molly and I to visit. I found one, but we didn't go; we knitted instead. That is, I knitted at Knitique, my LYS, and Molly veered between greeting the customers and sweeping the floor searching for and finding all manner of crumbs, a task which leaves the floor cleaner and a black low water mark on her chin or beard or muzzle or whatever you want to call that curly white hair that grows on her face.

But again! I digress. I had the TourBook in bed with me because there are three practice centers for Insight Meditation in California, and I wanted to see which was near me. Instead, I got caught up the first chapter of Rosenberg's book: "Aging Is Unavoidable." That's a contemplation, and Rosenberg says it's one people want to avoid. They accept it intellectually--oh, sure, big deal--but to actually take in the real fact of it, of the eventual disintegration of the body--? Nope, that's for someone else. Part of it is a question of self-image, he says, and that, that point is where I got nailed to the wall.

"Self-images are a problem. They are designed to help us feel adequate and secure but also often cause a great deal of suffering. We all have them, and most of us aren't aware we do. We spend enormous time and energy and even money creating and protecting them, trying to keep them intact while our daily experience is chipping away at them. Then when someone sees us in a different way, we are shattered. They mention a senior-citizen discount, and suddenly we see ourselves in Bermuda shorts and canvas shoes, wearing a funny little straw hat. That isn't the image we want to present at all. The pictures we have in our own head are way out of date."

I've been thinking on that. It's a gendered description, so I'm not caught by the Bermuda shorts and funny straw hat. Except--except, the image in my head of a senior citizen is my mother. Short little Libby, who loathed being called cute. Who wore Bermuda shorts and Keds in matching colors. And berets--she was famous for her berets (in fact she was buried in one). There is a whole world of negative images that I have attached to aging, not only clothing, but behaviors and attitudes and ways and means of being that come from watching my mother age. Things I vowed I would not do or feel or say. Except...except...well, you know what I'm going to say, don't you.

It's All Relative, Mr. Einstein

Age is, that is; relative, I mean.

Since we started the midlifebloggers conversation, a number of people have been weighing in about whether they are or are not midlife bloggers. In a post the other day, Catherine from [The Seventh Notebook] queried whether at 38, she qualifies to join the group. No, she decided; she's not midlife yet, even though she likes hanging out with us and she's doing that whole growing-out-my-gray number that we all think about from time to time. To me, both those facts point to her definite place as a midlifer. Others have gone through complicated mathematical equations, trying to determine if and when they'll be midlife. I hate to break it to you, but if you fall off a bridge tomorrow, then you were midlife in your teens. See, it's all relative. Which means that it's all in our heads.

As I'm working on the MidLifeBloggers website these days and thinking about who we are and what we want and/or need, the one thing I know we don't want--and I've said this before--is to put an age limit on us. You right there, you're just 37, so, nope, off you go for another couple of years. And you over there in the corner, you're 70--too old, too old. The world is already too full of people telling us why we're not right for one reason or another. The blogosphere is just another world and it, too, can operate on the exclusion clause. In fact, that's probably why it sometimes can seem just like highschool.

I'm envisioning MidLifeBloggers.com as a place where we gather to hang out and laugh or cry, to debate and console and teach and learn from each other all about The Great What's Next. We're peers, you know, some of us junior and some of us senior, but we're still all part of the conversation. I know for a fact that the ages of the women on the midlifeblogger blogroll hit every decade from the thirties to the forties to the fifties to the sixties. We all belong here; that's what MidLifeBloggers is about.

Tell me how you're envisioning MidLifeBloggers.com. What do you want it to be? What will make it yours?

I Need A Wife--or a Keeper...

I wasn't going to blog tonight. What follows is my desk area. Not bad, eh? Not great, but do-able. Scroll down a bit.....

This is the view of my desk from the door to my office. Disordered, yes. In the midst of a massive rearrange and cleanup, which SEEMS TO BE GOING ON FOREVER! Moreover (I love that word), moreover, scroll down a little further.


This is what I see when I'm sitting at my desk. Utter chaos. Not at all the thing for the sort of rumination that produces read-worthy blog posts. Thus and therefore, I was
not going to blog tonight because I can't think in all this chaos. And the chaos won't be resolved until I resolve it. No brownie is going to come in while I sleep and clean this mess up. Neither will a mother arrive to tidy it all. There's no one but me to do the job and this, I do believe, is what it really means to be a grownup!

How Old Are You?

I just did a brief drive by of all my unpublished posts, hoping that one would suddenly leap out and say, "Finish me, you twit! I'm so worth it." Alas, alack, and rue the day, none did.

I spent the better part of today trying to Get Things Done and being thwarted at every turn by, I dunno, the gods? First there were my taxes. I am now up to 2007, thank you very much, a year in which I was gainfully unemployed for most of the time. Thus, one would think my taxes would be a breeze to do. Wouldn't one? No W2s to mess about with. No, but there was that pesky little 1099B that somehow made it into my stack of documents. I'd never seen one of those before. I hadn't a clue what it could be for, and it seemed to be saying I had received a check, which I swear to god never made it to me--or had it?

I have a nasty habit (and you should know this in advance) of not opening my mail. It makes me nervous to open my mail. People want things from me, like money for goods exchanged. And while I may have enjoyed the goods initially, I'm so over them now and why are you bothering me! Did I not open the mail in which this check was sent? It's perfectly possible. I have a rather lax attitude toward money. It makes me nervous. Thus, I'd rather just not think about it. Maybe tomorrow, at Tara.

Yes, I know this is incredibly immature for one who is at--oh my god--midlife. But that's the way it is. Years of living have nothing at all to do with maturity, and all you babybloggers better get used to it. Some of the oldest people I have known have been years younger than I.

So now that we've settled that there's a strong streak of willful immaturity running through me--here's a question that I started asking people when I turned 40:

• How old are you?
• No, how old are you?

The answer to the first is rarely the same as the answer to the second, and it seems that the older one gets, the wider the gap. So--how old are you? No, how old are you?

Blogging for Dollars

There's nothing like a little writing to make the insecurity meter start rising. And if it ain't about one thing, then it's about another. The NY Times helped the blogosphere out the other day by publishing an article that said basically, blog and you'll die. In Web World of 24/7 Stress, Writers Blog Till They Drop - New York Times

God knows how many other bloggers picked up on it, but two of our midlifeblogger crew were hit: Merlot Mom and Ms Meta of Metafootnotes both wrote posts quoting the Times article. Their takes were somewhat different, but for both women, blogging is, along with the good, producing some, shall we call it, quiet anxiety. I can relate.

Why do we do what we do? Why blog? There's a huge conversation going on, some of which seems to be arriving as Tweets from Twitterers I follow, that seems to focus on the commercial promise of blogging and whether, in fact, that is its sole purpose.

I'm not immune to that argument, but I have found over the years that I've been doing this, that blogging for money is the road to ruin for me. When I have set out to make money with my blog, I have (a) failed miserably, and (b) felt, therefore, like a prize chump for even assuming I could succeed. When I keep my eye focused on communicating what I want to when I want to, then I feel good about myself and my work.

I have a blogging friend who supports his family by blogging. He's one of the guys that the NY Times article was talking about. He writes for umpteen commercial blogs. He's a stay-at-home dad and blogs about that, and he does some of those gossip blogs as well. But then there's his own blog and from time to time on that, his writer self just soars. Would that he had the luxury to let it fly all the time, but he doesn't. He has to earn a living.

I don't have to earn a living from my blog and that gives me a measure of freedom, yes. But the other thing that I don't have to earn from my blog is my sense of myself or my reputation as a writer. That's been well-established over the years and that, too, gives me a measure of freedom. It is, I guess, one of the perks of being a midlifeblogger.

I think that maybe all the talk of branding your blog or monetizing it--for a lot of people, it's just another way of saying, I matter. And for you???

I'm An Adult, Now What?

That's a subhead on an article in the Washington Post that Catherine Thatch over at [The Seventh Notebook] sent me the link to today. I won't give you the title, because Catherine and I agreed it was rather on the lame side (I think it may have been written by a junior intern), but I will, of course, link to it. It was written by Douglas LaBier, who identifies himself, thusly: "As a psychotherapist and a member of the booming midlife generation, I've heard many expressions of midlife distress...." His thesis is that midlife is what happens when you finally grow up. It hits some people hard; others barely at all.

"Psychologically, midlife is the portal into full adulthood. Successfully crossing that portal involves addressing the question that lies at the source of most adult emotional conflicts: 'What's the purpose of my life?'"

But exacerbating that search for meaning is the fact, LaBier says, the our forties are when the emotional defenses that we successfully used in the past to shore us up are now, much like our bodies, starting to sag. It's this collision of the Search and the Sagging, as it were, that result in the midlife crisis. Some people start over and wrestle their way to new meaning in their lives. Others, says LaBier, more or less accept their situation and try, usually unsuccessfully, to define it as happiness.

Which are you doing? Me? I'm definitely one who starts over. I'm on my third or fourth career: journalist, English prof/grad student, therapist--and now I guess I'm back to journalism, of sorts. But what about you? Are you looking for a second or third act? And this time--whaddya want to be when you grow up?

April the First, A Day of Foolishness

...none of which you'll find here, except if you find the rambling postyfoolishness to your taste. To wit (and not), I did nothing today to mark it as April Fools Day. Nor, you will note, did I do anything to change the banner, which still reads February. Hey, what happened to March? Well you might ask. And I wouldn't know what to tell you. Nor can I promise to have the April banner up soon. Just deal with it, okay?

What I did today was a lot of this and a lot of that. This was BS stuff that added up to little. That was making the beginning of something of this MidLifeBloggers thing. It is a thing, which is more than just a blogroll, because I bought the domain name, midlifebloggers.com. I have a burbling idea (that means one that is frothing up from the depths) of having a site where we can post and talk and find each other for any and all sorts of reasons.

Anyone wanna come along for the ride?????

MidlifeBloggers: The Blog Roll

So--my taxes did not get worked on today, because I've been reading and writing about this Midlifebloggers topic. It seems to be taking on a life of its own. Which is a good thing, because I don't hold out a lot of hope for our seeing anything soon on BlogHer. So I decided to start a BlogRoll here. And maybe down the line we can have something more.

If you want me to add your blog to the blogroll, just send me the url. I don't think we have any requirements. It seems to me that if one considers oneself a MidlifeBlogger, no matter your age, that's enough to be included in the group.

And keep talking...at least you know that we're listening.