Friday, November 20, 2009
Milestones
Well, I've reached a milestone in my life that is not so pleasant, not like getting your driver's license or first job or getting married. No, my milestone is that I realized I'm officially middle-aged YUCK! How did this happen? It's my parents that are middle-aged, at least in my feeble mind. Actually, that's completely unrealistic because if my parents are middle-aged that means their lifespan would be 130 years. Oh my! It hit me this past week when I started waking up at 7 am without an alarm clock - that's old! I used to sleep in 'til 2 or so when I was teenager. The best thing about having a day off was not having to set the alarm and sleeping the morning (and sometimes day) away. Another sign, according to my daughter, is that I like thousand island dressing and blue cheese on my salads. She says all the old people she waits on like thousand island and blue cheese. Of course, I'm also a grandmother even though my daughter was only 20 when she had Daisy. Finally, and this one is really God's joke on me, is I think I need reading glasses. That is just gross! I've been wearing glasses since I was 8 years old, starting wear contacts (hard) at 14, and am blind as a bat. It's not a question of being near- or far- sighted; something has to be on my nose before I can see it. Without corrective lenses, the world is blur of foggy colors. AND NOW, with my contacts, I need reading glasses! Not too much I can do about all this. I am 45, going on 46, so technically I am middle-aged, but now my body is forcing me to accept it even though I sometimes feel like the awkward, insecure teenager from high school. I guess this is also troubling because professionally, I've not finished my education or settled into my chosen career. Darn it! I just don't feel "middle-aged." It sounds so drab, boring, and settled - like there's nothing else left to do in my life.
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I am 22 years old and I occasionally feel old, when I think of all the inventions that have developed in my lifetime. I remember when web pages took 15 minutes to load, when listening to music meant putting a CD in the computer, and when broadcast television was analog (I know that was this year, but I still wonder how "quaint" that will seem to my children).
ReplyDeleteI know I said this in my essay, but I feel like I've lived a lot of my life on the Internet, and being so immersed makes me feel both modern and middle-aged. Maybe the technology has isolated me somewhat (I'm sure it has, but I'm trying to make up for lost time), but I also feel like I've "grown up" more with the Internet than other people have. I've been making web pages since 1998 or 1999, and seen how so much has changed. Also, I spent a lot of my growing years surfing on the "non-flashy" (or Flash-y, for that matter) Internet.
"Kids today" have iPhones, which I don't have and don't want, but "kids today" may also be more aware of how it makes them "lazy" or "anti-social" it makes them. I guess I'm an introvert, so for the second one, my mental "knee-jerk" reaction is to say, "I avoid people, which leads me to the computer," rather than "computers make you avoid people" (though I just admitted as such above; it goes both ways).
Okay, I don't really know what I was trying to say here. I'm going to write in my blog today, but I wanted to get my comment done first.
Your blog shows an interesting side of you; you are so calm and controlled in class. (But you don't have to say "darn it" just to keep it clean for us.) :) And anyway, if you haven't finished your education, you're still learning, which means you're still young. :)
Maybe it will make you feel better that my mother is 61 years old, and still doesn't feel like she belongs with the "seniors." Age is a number, but "old" is a feeling. I'm glad you don't want to be "old" yet; neither does my mother.
ReplyDeleteAlso, her prescription is probably 20/200, but her bones are as good as a 15-year-olds (really, she had that checked), so not everything "goes south," physically.
Ugh, sorry for giving you this "heart-to-heart" here; I guess I was just on a role with typing.