by So, I think the hardest thing about starting this simple blog will be, for me, keeping it simple. Which is odd, because so much of the reason I’m writing is to find simple truths in what I find to be the mishmash of midlife. I’ve already found myself spending way too much time thinking about color scheme and fonts. Jeez, will I never learn? As a wise friend once said to me, “Just do the thing.” Meaning, get over yourself. Stop second-guessing. Stop changing course so much that you swirl and twirl in a single location, never moving forward. At a certain point, action, any action, is better than wallowing in obsession over what action to take. So, I’m trying to fight the tendency to do it perfect in favor of just doing it now. This blog. This is the thing. I’m trying to just do the thing and not care who reads it, or if anyone reads it. I’m telling myself that even if this is just between me and God, that’s okay. There’s value in that. Who knows? Maybe that’s all this is supposed to be, just a conversation between me and God, with the ability for anyone who wants to listen in to do so.
If you are listening in, I warn you, this could get messy. I don’t think I’ve ever known life any other way. My life’s always been a messy, haphazard garden of some work, some play, some helping, some selfishness, some big goals, some small actions, ups and downs and lots of sideways, friends, family and work all covered in a pile of papers and the stuff that needs to go to Goodwill dusted with, well, dust, more good intentions than great outcomes. No HGTV or hospital corners in sight. Mess and mishmash everywhere. So be it. I’m now wise enough to know that despite my best efforts, my life doesn’t fit into tidy compartments. It oozes out of every opening in all directions at once like overproofed bread or the part of my body where my waist used to be.
This thing, this blog, is a toast to the mishmash of midlife, cuz I’m pretty sure this is how it’s gonna be, all tossed in together in bits and portions with minds of their own.
Fellow midlife travelers, don’t you find yourself a bit mishmashed these days? Flip-flopping between faith and doubt? Finding a new calm and confidence in your 40s, 50s, 60s where all the dumb stuff doesn’t matter anymore, but still struggling now and again with that ever-familiar nagging “what will they think of me” feeling, before you beat it back into submission yet again? Teetering between the supposed freedom of empty-nesting and the periodic return of children and all the chaos they bring home, the tug of soaking up quality time and the push of them back out the door, so that you can get your house back? Anyone else feel squished between making yourself useful to others and thinking maybe, just maybe, this is the time when you ought to carve out time for somthing that’s truly yours? But what would that be exactly? What was it that you really enjoyed doing again?? Am I the only one who finds herself with a bit more time than a few years back, while feeling panicked that time’s running out? And I straddle the wisdom of realizing that none of it matters except the people and relationships, the one-by-one cups of coffee and conversations and those glorious moments when the junk all gets stripped away and you can just BE and SERVE and CONNECT. And on the other side of the straddling is the compulsion to do SOMETHING. be SOMETHING. Achieve SOMETHING. That’s the ego. And that’s what I’m trying to cure. I am an ever-swirling whirling dirvish of epiphany and psychosis, but I’m making progress toward serenity and spending less time in self.
Smashed between the search for significance and the ability to live in this moment, nestled between work and play, between family and solititude, between faith and doubt, between body image woes and throwing caution and body shapers to the wind is the middle. And I, for one, want to embrace it.
So here I am, talking to myself and talking to God, here for you if you’re listening in and can be helped by any of this. Welcome to the middle. Welcome to Midlife Mishmash.