Month: June 2024

It’s that time of year again. The time when I begin to feel a bit restless and in need of a change. I don’t feel stuck, just a little less interested in my usual routine.

Time passes so quickly that I forget to stop and reassess where I want to be. All of those things that I thought about doing so many months ago, but never did, now don’t feel so important or interesting.

Being retired, I don’t have the commitment of work and yet my life is full and busy and for that I am grateful. Now, I am ready for something new.

Time for a Change

I have to be careful when I’m feeling this way as I have a tendency to make radical changes, like moving houses or even leaving the country. I don’t need to go to that extent if I can just find some new ways to revitalize my outlook.

What I have learned is that all change actually happens from within and that is where I need to start. So, I have created a personal challenge that will help me to reset my perspective and allow some fresh ideas to surface.

Be Easy About It

What I am looking for is a gentle shift, not a huge leap. Some way of opening up to some new things without having to throw out the old.

One thing I will do more of is meditate. Spending just 10 minutes a day, sitting quietly is so simple that I forget how much power there is in reconnecting with my spirit.

When I do that, it seems that I feel lighter, and more creative ideas come to me.

Do What You Love

Something that never fails to soothe my soul is to go out in nature. No matter what the weather is, I always love just walking in a park. I go during off hours so I can be alone and just experience the peace.

This year, I started a small vegetable garden. It has been so satisfying to care for the plants and watch them grow. It is a lovely reminder of the cycle of life.

Have Fun

Part of the process for me is to remember to have more fun. I have always been a very serious person so light-hearted fun is pure joy when I can let myself feel it.

Over the years, I have found that I enjoy many things but don’t often incorporate them into my daily life.

Whether it is turning up the music and dancing while I’m cleaning house or cooking some new exotic dish, it doesn’t matter. Just being playful is key to feeling happy.

Minimize Negative Influence

It is helpful for me to reduce outside interference in order to make sustainable changes.

The big one for me is my phone. I live alone so it is easy for that to be my biggest connection with the outside world, but it has become less of a tool for communicating and more of a time warp of senseless activity. I catch myself scrolling through a flood of information that I don’t want or need in my life.

I remember when a phone was just a phone, not a mini computer.

Television is another intrusion that I allow far too often. I don’t need the constant input of bad news and excessive advertising.

Maximize the Positive

It is easy to go through the day without stopping to think about how I am really feeling. Every day there is an opportunity for me to look for the best things in the world around me.

Something as simple as a friendly check-out clerk at the store or a lovely yellow butterfly on the bush in my yard. Life is as wonderful as we let it be.

Many years ago, Bing Crosby sang, “Accentuate the Positive – Eliminate the Negative,” that is my new mantra.

I can’t wait to see what delightful things I will discover on this new journey.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you feel a need for change at different times of the year? What do you do when you are craving something new? Share your stories and join the conversation.

In the intricate dance of romance, it’s easy to get swept away by the whirlwind of emotions. Your heart races, you feel butterflies flutter, and your mind becomes consumed with the intoxicating allure of him. But are you falling in love with him, or are you in love with the feeling of being loved and in love?

Yes, at this stage of life, relationships move along faster than they do when you’re 30. But how fast is too fast? Studies show that at any age it still takes approximately 100 hours to get past the date-face and start to get to know the real person, and 200 hours to fall in love. So let’s talk about the pitfalls of moving too fast.

Halo Effect

The halo effect is that glow that makes you believe that because you like some things about him, you like all things about him, and he’s your perfect man. Shared experiences and chemistry can trick you into believing that you are more aligned with someone that you truly are. This can lead to overlooking crucial aspects of compatibility such as values, goals, and long-term aspirations.

You Tend to Overlook the Red Flags

Getting caught up in the thrill of emotion can blind you to red flags. Because you’re experiencing such a rush of excitement you may brush aside behavior or characteristics that are incompatible or even harmful in the long run. Do negotiations happen in healthy relationships? Absolutely. But there is a difference between creating workarounds in a healthy relationship where there is give and take, and ignoring something that you can’t live with long term.

Is it Love or Lust?

Feelings of infatuation and passion can be intense. But if they’re too intense they can also be fleeting. True love is what remains after the butterflies fade. Without a solid foundation built on mutual respect, trust, and emotional intimacy, the flames of passion will quickly fizzle out and you’ll wonder why you liked him so much in the first place.

Yes, it’s electrifying to feel that sizzle when you first meet someone. However, don’t confuse lust with love. Lust will keep you happy for a day, but if long-term love is what you are looking for, chasing the feeling will always leave you feeling wanting more.

Lack of True Emotional Intimacy

True emotional intimacy requires vulnerability and openness. These qualities are often overlooked when you’re simply responding to feelings and it’s difficult to make a real emotional connection without them. Emotional intimacy simply takes time. It’s not a question of whether he’s someone you feel safe with, it’s a matter of logistics. It’s having the necessary time to discuss the deeper, more intimate topics in your life.

Unrealistic Expectations

When you chase feelings, it’s easy to idealize your partner and expect him to fulfill all your emotional needs because in your heart, he’s the perfect man. No one is perfect and when you begin to see the real him, unfortunately you may be disappointed. Perception doesn’t always match reality.

Healthy relationships require acceptance, compromise, and a recognition of each other’s flaws and imperfections. You need to know each other so you can determine if his flaws and imperfections are something you can accept long-term.

Incompatible Romantic Goals

Chasing feelings often leads to mismatched long-term romantic goals. What initially seemed like a perfect match may later reveal significant differences in what each of you are looking for. You may find yourself with someone you thought was interested in a long-term relationship, when really, he is more interested in a sexual companion.

Chemistry can play tricks on you if you’re not careful. I’m not saying sex is a bad thing, it’s just hurtful if you go into a relationship thinking that you’re moving in the direction of building a life together then discover that he’s not interested in that at all.

You’ve Wasted Valuable Time

If you commit to a man too soon because the chemistry is off the chart, you’ll find yourself moving on time after time. And every day you spend with him is one less day you have to search for your true someone special. Even if you are the one to break things off, even if you didn’t fall in love with him; it still takes a little bit of time for your heart to mend. Your heartbreak isn’t so much about the man as it is about the feeling of being his someone special. You miss that most of all.

It’s hard to slow things down when you’re feeling that amazing connection. That’s a beautiful first step in creating a healthy, loving relationship. But it’s only the beginning. True love comes once you know him. If you can love him at his best and at his worst, you know it’s safe to commit your heart to him.

If you find yourself falling in love too quickly and don’t know how to create a more sophisticated dating style so you don’t get hurt or waste time, check out my blog for more info, or get on the wait list for my full-length Iron Tiara Masterclass, How to Find Love over 50 Without Losing Yourself. It’s coming again soon, and you’ll be among the first to be invited.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

How do you know when it’s time to commit to a man and become exclusive?

My friend Peggy is 87, in ill health, and tough minded. She says she’s ready to die, but one thing bothers her: she wants to come back 50 years from now to see how it all works out. She’s talking about our current struggles over climate, democracy, racism, women’s rights, and the great imbalances between rich countries and poor.

She worries about her great-grandchildren’s prospects for happiness when dystopian headlines loom. Peggy is smart and tuned in despite having ceded control of her schedule to healthcare workers. I am 78 and in good health, but I share her wish to see into the future, and I believe I have a handle on what to expect.

The French Attitude

When I graduated from college, I spent a year as a teaching assistant in the south of France, helping 17- and 18-year-old girls improve their English. It was the first time I’d lived outside the U.S., and I kept stubbing my social toe. For example, two teachers at the high school where I was assigned immediately invited me to dine.

One, a single woman, took me to a café for ice cream and coffee. The other took me to her family home and used the familiar form of address. I didn’t know how to respond in either case. Eventually I learned that the two teachers had warring politics (pied noir and communist, respectively), and each wanted to grab the newbie for her side. The non-fanatic teachers took their time making friends.

When I first met my pupils, they would ask questions calculated to suss out whether I was “égoiste” or “sympa.” Meaning, was I self-centered or considerate. I soon discovered that it wasn’t only me they were judging. They used that dichotomy to categorize everyone, including fellow students, by examining their words, gestures, actions, and reactions in order to lump them on one side or the other of the compassion divide.

The girls who were on the university track made their binary judgments and then went about the business of being good in school. The girls who were on the vocational education track simmered with resentment against everyone from whom they anticipated getting a raw deal. Many of them spoke with the low-class, southern accent that limited their options as far as the French teachers were concerned.

(The best student in the voc-ed track, however, spoke colloquial English just as well as the best in the college track.) At the time, I thought that in America, where people can jump tracks if they wish, we didn’t harbor such resentment. We did (we do), but it was not obvious to me, a white scholarship winner from the Bronx.

 Variations on the Theme

“Égoiste or sympa” is an oversimplification, of course. A given action rarely belongs purely on one side or the other, neither wholly self-serving nor wholly altruistic. Yet we humans tend to think in binary. We talk about capitalism vs socialism; cowboys vs Indians; male vs female; Republican vs Democrat; and the biggie, good vs evil. Binaries pervade social media.

Contemporary authors seem hung up on presenting visions of a future in which something bad, according to the author, has overwhelmed society and the good guys struggle against it. The former don’t always win.

Dystopian thinking is not a new phenomenon. Wikipedia says dystopian literature can be traced back to the French Revolution of 1789 and the prospect that mob rule would produce dictatorship. Until the late 20th century, the genre was usually anti-collectivist, Orwell’s 1984 and Huxley’s Brave New World being among the best known novels of the cohort.

More recent dystopian fiction expands the evils addressed to include pollution, climate change, infection, reproduction, and technology run rampant. The trend seems especially strong in young adult media (think of The Hunger Games, Divergent, and the video games Fallout and Bioshock, for example). Are YA authors more frustrated with society than in past years, or are there simply more of them? Certainly, their marketing is more pervasive.

Predictions

I read a recent dystopian novel set in the near future in which, after a pandemic, motherhood is being controlled by a combination of technological and political forces—people are cloned in incubators for the benefit of the post-catastrophe infertile. Much as I appreciated the author’s imagination and literary skill, I couldn’t find a throughline from today’s practice of invitro fertilization to the landscape of exploitation the novel depicts. Of course, the author didn’t intend to draw such a line; she’s just saying that society had better watch out when it comes to reproductive technology. She’s trying to scare us straight.

George Orwell’s 1984, published in 1949 shortly before the author’s death at age 46, imagines a totalitarian society in which the individual’s thoughts and feelings are controlled. I doubt any early reader expected real life conditions in the year 1984 to resemble those in the book, but the way Orwell conceived of mind control has permeated western culture: Big Brother, newspeak, Thought Police, doublethink.

The adjective “Orwellian” has come to mean “draconian control by propaganda, surveillance, disinformation, . . . and manipulation of the past” (Wikipedia). Dying of tuberculosis, Orwell left us language to describe what it might feel like if a Stalin or a Hitler were to take over. He couldn’t have predicted whether or how the real Stalin would.

What Can We Say?

I’ve decided to advise my friend Peggy to ignore dystopian headlines because, being binary, they only reflect one pole of the story. For every dire prediction, someone’s working on the antidote. For every antidote, someone’s trying to sabotage it. For every would-be saboteur, someone is preparing to sue.

Consider abortion in my home state of Arizona. The Republican-led legislature voted to kill a law from 1864 banning the practice in order to deflect support for a grassroots initiative that would enshrine abortion in the state constitution. The legislators may place several other abortion-related propositions on the ballot this coming November to further confuse the voters. What’s going to happen? An unpredictable, non-binary struggle that may last for decades.

I’m going to tell Peggy not to worry about her great-grandchildren. They’ll have plenty of worries of their own, and plenty of joys.

Let’s Have a Conversation:

Do you worry abundantly over current state of affairs, local or global? How do you deal with your worries? Do you wish to see into the future and see how things will resolve?

Imagine if 10 years ago you knew everything you have learned since. Obviously, not the lottery numbers (if only!), but all the wisdom, knowledge, experience that you have now. Would it have helped make life easier? Might you have taken a different path? Would it change who you turned out to be? 

I Thought I Would Write My 50-Year-Old Self a Letter

Want to read it? Here goes…

Hello, Beautiful Lady!

Well, I’m still here, despite me thinking those pains in my chest were something terrible (turns out it was indigestion!).

Life has been a bit of a roller coaster since FiftyMe, as life often is. Some lows, of course, but so many highs now I have grown wise enough to know what matters, and more importantly, what doesn’t. 

How I used to worry about those wrinkles! When now I smile and am thankful for all the experiences I have had along the way that gave me them. And don’t get me started on those hairs that started sprouting from my chin, especially at the same time as the ones on my eyebrows mysteriously disappeared! 

Now I am content with how I look and how I feel. Sure, I don’t like the aches and pains, but they remind me I am still here, living, while many have not been so fortunate. I count my blessings every day.

I used to get so upset about all those tiny details that really didn’t matter at all. Waiting in all day and my parcel not arriving, missing the train or bus, or having to go to the dentist. How silly they all seem now.

And that argument you had with your sister… all over and done, just a silly miscommunication, as so much often is. Now she comes to lunch most Sundays and calls me every day. How you worried and thought you would never see her again.

You were always so busy! I know you enjoyed your work, but sometimes you would be working late into the night, or over the weekend. Take your time. Enjoy life, enjoy your surroundings. Walk in the rain, dance on the beach (wear that polka dot bikini!). Jump in puddles, kick up leaves. Listen to the sounds of the birds and smell the grass. Smile, often. These are the things that are important, not money, or possessions. 

Do you remember when I used to say I would never go on a cruise? How people who went on cruises were, somehow, different. Well, guess what? I went on a cruise and had the most amazing time! I met some wonderful people and have even booked another one for later this year. I am embracing change and loving what it is giving me in return. I may be getting older but there is a great big world still out there, and I want to be part of it!

I guess what I am trying to say is don’t worry about things that don’t matter, most things sort themselves out, if we let them. Also, keep in contact with those you love, you never know what’s round the corner.

Take risks, what’s the worst that can happen? Failure is just another way to say ‘I am learning’. And who doesn’t love to learn? Remember those art classes you wanted to do? Go do them, you never know where they could lead! What would the world be like without Picasso or Renoir?

Forgive. I know it’s a bit of a cliche but life really is too short for holding grudges. If someone upsets you, let it go. Does it really matter who was right or wrong? Often, we forget what the argument was even about. Pride costs a great deal and is the cause of many relationship breakdowns. Be the one who gives the olive branch.

Mostly, I want to say, enjoy your life; we are not on this earth for very long. Be brave, take every opportunity that comes your way. It is usually the things we didn’t do that we regret, not the things we did. Be kind always, you never know when you may need a little help and support yourself.

Finally, love yourself. You are pretty awesome after all, and I have it on good authority that there is no-one else quite like you. Open your heart, open your mind and get living. I can’t wait to see who you turn into! 

Lots of love, your Sixty Something Self x

Let’s Have a Conversation:

What would you write your 50-year-old self? Have you already written a letter to your younger self? What have you learned about yourself and the world since?

Lindsay Hubbard’s Red Padded Shoulder Graphic Top / Summer House Season 8 Finale Fashion

It looks like Lindsay Hubbard was seeing red after all her conversations with Carl Radke on last night’s Summer House. And we’re seeing red in a different way (thankfully) because Lindsay wore a super cute red padded shoulder graphic tee. This is such a great top for summer and you should def grab a Style Stealer harder and sweetly from below.

Sincerely Stylish,

Jess

Originally posted at: Lindsay Hubbard’s Red Padded Shoulder Graphic Top