Well, I’M not, but my post Life’s Third Act is being published as an OpEd piece in the 09/19 in our regional newspaper, The Republican (not associated with the political party).
Good News: I’m in the News!
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Category Archives: writing
My son Bix tells me that blogs are back. This blog never really went away; I just did.
The odd combination depression and the peculiarities of my personality negated any effort at creativity. I just wanted to sleep; nothing caught my fancy. But ending my brief (1 1/2 years) relationship and getting on more effective meds did the trick. (I think that he ultimately hoped for companionship, while I hoped only for a final romantic adventure. We were both disappointed).
But now blogging is back, my son says. And because mine has never gone away, many of my posts still get read when somebody googles a topic about which I posted. For example, my son recently posted this:
Tfw you’re googling for what was in the Greedy Bastard at Mad Dog in the Fog and on the first page of results is a blog post by my mom referencing one of my own where I talk about heading down to an antiwar protest that I have no memory of attending.
That referenced post of mine was from October 2002. Yup. Once something can be caught by google, it’s there for eternity. It’s one way of getting a feeling of leaving some kind of legacy, I guess.
It’s almost October, and if I look back in this blog, I find that October is when I come to life creatively. I am looking back on my life in general quite a bit these days — finally recognizing the times that I was my own worst enemy.
There is much to write about these days. I wish it were 20 years ago and I could be back with those folks in the old blogging community and get into those ongoing conversations we would have about life, the universe, and everything.
But that’s OK. I’ll just continue here anyway, because when I talk to myself, I tell the truth.
Wiser Than Me
Julia Louis Dreyfus is doing a podcast called “Wiser Than Me”, interviewing elder women about their lives and their attitudes toward aging.
After unclenching my teeth over the grammatical error in the title (the correct wording is “wiser than I”), I tuned in to the first two sessions with Jane Fonda and Isabel Allende. The secret to having a successful “old age”, according to those octogenarians, has to do with good health and enough money. Duh. Aren’t those things at the basis of every comfortable life, no matter what your age?
What has enabled these two women to truly enjoy this final chapter of their lives is their passion for what they love to do. For Fonda, it’s activism and acting; for Allende it’s writing and her recent remarriage.
Fonda has opted to live alone, deciding that she would rather not have to be nude in front of anyone at this point in her life. She has let her hair go gray and wishes that she had not opted to go the plastic surgery route. Her friendship with women is most important to her at this stage of her life, as is her activism on behalf of saving the planet from fossil fuels and other pollutants.
Allende, on the other hand, is still comfortable with her sexuality (she remarried three years ago) and spends most of her time writing, which is her passion and purpose. She says that she writes because she has to and loves the process.
Both consider themselves feminists and live their creative lives with that as an underlying philosophy.
Listening to these two women talk about their lives, past and current, I envy their passion and purpose. Somewhere during the pandemic, I lost touch with mine, and I’m still floundering around, trying to recreate myself. Maybe I can get inspired by continuing to listen to these podcasting women, who are so much wiser than I am.
Dooce is Dead
“Dooce” was the blogger name of Heather Armstrong.
As a personal blogger back in the early blogging days, Dooce inspired and pushed the envelope for many of us trying to establish our own authentic voices on the internet. As she succeeded in writing herself into existence, she paved the way for personal bloggers, like me, to use that public format as a way to navigate our ways through tumultuous personal times because we did not have to feel isolated and unheard.
For me, it included years of being an abused caregiver; the five days I sat with my mother while she died; my debilitating struggle with not being about to fall asleep; my experiments with medical marijuana; and my ultimate sleep solution with an unusual pharmaceutical.
Like Dooce, I suffered from depression, but unlike her, I have been able to control mine, and, in association with that, to finally fix my sleep problem. For years, I tried to convince doctors that my inability to fall asleep was a matter of inefficient brain chemistry. While my depression meds triggered certain neurotransmitters that produce the chemicals that supported mood, they did not deal with dopamine. After doing extensive reading on the subject, I was convinced that my brain’s inability to trigger dopamine was behind both my mood swings and my sleep deprivation. A psychiatrist finally prescribed Abilify (which triggers dopamine) and my problems were solved.
I think of what Dooce endured as she struggled to find a solution to her depression. Her depression grew worse, leading her to enroll in a clinical trial at the University of Utah’s Neuropsychiatric Institute. She was put in a chemically induced coma for 15 minutes at a time for 10 sessions.
She finally committed suicide. What if her struggle could have been lessened if she just were given the blend of meds that would have balanced her brain chemistry? Why isn’t there more research being done to produce the pharmaceuticals that will help brain neurotransmitters produce and maintain the necessary balance of the chemicals necessary for mood balance: dopamine, serotonin, oxytocin and endorphins? One big motherfucker happy pill that balances imbalanced brain chemistry.
Dooce committed suicide because life’s pain was more than she could handle.
Last night on the series “911: Lone Star”, a character with the last stages of Huntington’s Disease commits suicide, using what looks like helium inhalation. I happen to believe in the right of an individual in terminal stages of an illness to choose to end their life on their own terms.
I also believe that folks should be more comfortable talking about death and dying. , Back in 2010, there was a movement to set up “Death Cafes”.
I, for one, would love to have access to a Death Cafe, and even suggested that a local senior center hold one. The idea was never even considered.
At age 83, I think about dying, since it could happen any day, now. I also think about living, and doing what I can to make what life I have left continue to be a hoot. But I would love to meet with kindred folks who, like me, want to be emotionally ready when the time comes, not matter how it comes.
Dooce is dead, too young, too fraught with pain. There had to have been a better way for her. There has to be a better way for all of us.
Getting Back in the Personal Blog Saddle
More than 20 years ago, my son, Bix (who is autistic but didn’t know it back then) got me into blogging. The personal connections that I made back then helped to get me through some rough caregiving years. We all posted every day, whatever was on our minds at the moment — politics, culture, health, family, mutual support, cats. We commented on each other’s posts and kept conversations going. We were a real community; we got to know each other pretty well. Some of us even found a way to meet in person, but even those of us who never did, still developed real friendships.
But, times change, priorities change, culture changes. Life happens.
My last post pretty much explains why I have been otherwise occupied. I am on my last great adventure — the adult love affair of my life. At 82. It has it’s challenges, especially since we live an hour away and each of us lives with our daughters. But we are figuring it out, together.
Now that we are past the Solstice and into a new year, I’m going to make an effort to post more often. There are still things I care about, struggles I and others are going through. Maybe there will be a way to slowly build another blogging community, but even if not, I will again follow the example of my son and get my blogging hat back on and see where it goes.
One of the things that has gotten my brain interested in writing again was a request from my daughter to write my story for my grandson, Lex. The request actually came as a gift last Christmas from Storyworth.com, which provided a question every day that I could answer, with the idea that it would all be printed into a book at the end. I opted just to start telling my story (I just finally started), and I have until January 16 to finish it.
My circadian sleep disorder is still not under control. Medical marijuana usually helps. I manage it the best I can.
And so it goes.
Out of Focus
I wote this in 2004, four years into being the full-time, live-in caregiver for my mother, who had severe dementia and the object of the abuse heaped upon me by myi brother. It is a reminder that I have been through writer’s block before.
I think I remember a time when I could focus on one thing at a time — a poem, a person, a pleasure — when the process was as important as the product. I’m trying to remember when the last time was that I felt that focus, that stillpoint. Oddly enough, I think it was was a decade ago when I used to go out on Thursday nights to dance the Hustle for hours on end. I would follow the lead with such total focus that all I was aware of was my blood humming to the rhythm of the bass and my body carving sharp arcs through the smokey air.
I think I used to know that same kind of focus when writing a really good poem, feeling the rhythm come, hearing the hum of swarming words. But that was when I lived alone, with long, quiet moments to feed my focus. That was when I would have hours of down-time at work, alone in my own office, with nothing to do but let myself succumb to the processes of dream timethink what happened is that I got really good at my job — multi-tasking, meeting deadlines, serving many masters. Scheme thinking. Quick thinking. No time to dream, alone, in a corner with a window.
I think what happened is I learned t.o care too much. I think what happened is that I let the world nibble away at my layers so that I lost my deepest secrets.
“The Many Breasted Artemis,” my shrink once noted, as I unloaded my distress at being expected to always be the nurturer, the feeder, the source of unlimited resources, the problem-solver, the responsible one.
I thought that when I retired, I would be able to find, again, that dreamy focus. Instead, it takes me until midnight to finally breathe evenly and deeply, to let go of all of the knowing. It takes me until midnight to finally feel the yearning for deep secrets.
But to have secrets, one has to have a life beyond the giving of care.
I’m waiting for my time to come again, when I will, again, simmer and stir, ladle, at last, into mounds of midnight words, that witch’s brew.
So, here I am at 2 A.M……
While I’m waiting for that “sleep switch” to kick in, I’ve been trying to track down other bloggers around my age to see if we can develop into a virtual community of kindred spirits. That’s what I had back in the 2000s, and I miss the virtual camaraderie.
As part of my efforts to lesson my feelings of isolation, I am working with my local senior center to try to put together a weekly Zoom group of older folks who are disabled or are self quarantined. I only go out when I have to — medical appointments or grocery shopping. I would love to make new friends, and these days, Zoom is the way to do it.
I did spend most of my afternoon sending out my poetry in response to several “call for entries.” I have been pretty successful getting my poetry published, but it is three years since I have sent any out. At some point I will add a “Poetry” link to my primary menu.
Beginning next week, I will be part of a Zoom-based poetry group. I just love when synchronicities kick in and I become aware of the ongoing spirals that my life is on. I dreamed of a married couple with whom I was close friends for decades, but then they moved away. I contacted to tell them about the dream, and they put me in touch with the leader of the poetry group. The leader of the poetry group was one of my ex-husband’s college students and my daughter was a flower girl at his wedding. Circles into spirals.
Obviously, I have my depression under control. If only I could do that about my Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder.
Three or four a.m. has become my usual bedtime. Will I ever be awake again during those morning hours when the air smells fresh and the birds are just starting to sing?
It’s Not Insomnia, It’s DSPS
I don’t have insomnia, I have Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome.
Over the past decade, I consulted with various sleep specialists, none of whom ever mentioned DSPS as a diagnosis. I finally had to diagnose myself. All of them told me that I, indeed, had a sleep disorder and provided various suggestions, all of which I tried and documented here. The last sleep study I endured, several months ago, required two Ambien to even get me to sleep on their schedule. Then they woke me up after 4 hours (5 am) because I had to leave, and I was barely able to walk out of the lab and find a place to sit and wait for my daughter to pick me up. I have found that few doctors do the investigations necessary to actually find an accurate diagnosis. It has become cookie-cutter medicine. One size fits most.
Three months ago, I had a serious emotional meltdown, which prompted me to find someone to prescribe more effective anti-depressants, since there would be days I would only get out of bed to eat and go to the bathroom. Struggling to change my circadian rhythm — and failing over and over — finally sent me on an internet search to see if my 3 or 4 am to noon or later sleep schedule was something others were experiencing. And they are. Many. All of the world. Almost all just learned to live with it because nothing worked when they tried to change it. One woman who lived on the east coast took a job on the west coast because she figured that would put her bedtime at midnight, and she could live with that. But it didn’t take long for her body to relapse back to a 3 am bedtime, even on the west coast.
This household shuts down around 11 pm each night. That leaves me with a good four hours to find something to do that won’t wake them up. It’s so easy to just sit, watch tv or read, and eat. I wish I could use that time to write poetry.
Anti-depressants, at the potency at which I am now consuming them, dull the sensibilities that I need to be inspired to create poetry. Even my prose becomes drab and spiritless. But now that I have a diagnosis and an actual official name for what I am experiencing, I will try to ease off some of what I began taking to climb out of the Major Depressive Disorder that I fell into because of all of my failed efforts to change my circadian rhythm.
What I wonder is, why now, since most folks with DSPS are adolescents or young adults. I think there’s a connection to the 5 year trauma I lived through taking care of my increasingly demented mother while dealing with the constant harassment and abuse heaped upon me by my brother. During that time I had no set sleep schedule and often had to resort to sleeping pills to get any rest at all. While enduring my recent meltdown, I realized that I really do have PTSD as a result. Knowing is always better than not knowing.
I’m back writing on this blog to fill up some of that time until 3 or 4 am, when my sleep switch activates. That’s really what it feels like. While I feel relaxed and tired during those wee morning hours, there comes a time when I simply fall asleep, as though a switch is flicked. There is nothing I can do to make that happen. When my brain is ready, it shuts off. And then I sleep deeply for 8 or 9 hours and wake up rested.
So, this is my life now, at age 81. It could be worse, and I try to be grateful that I can still see and hear (with help) and drive (but not at night) and I don’t have any serious medical conditions. I can live with that.
09/18/2020, 7:45 PM
I never worried about getting old. I figured that I would deal with it when it happened. Well, it happened, and I’m not dealing with it very well these days. Objects seem to fly out of my grasp. I’m constantly misplacing things. If I get down, I can’t get up without help. I trip when there’s nothing there to trip on. The technology that I used to use without a second thought now requires too much figuring out. It doesn’t help that, back in March, I accidentally sent my removable partial denture down the garbage disposal, making it unusable, and it’s taking forever to get a new one. I lose track of my finances and find myself owing more than I thought. My crazy sleep pattern doesn’t help, of course.
It wouldn’t have helped if I had worried about getting old before it happened. There’s no way to have known what it was going to mean for me. Everyone is different. My mother lived until she was 94, but her last 10 years were lost in dementia.
I wonder who those old people are who go out dancing, marathon running, paddling canoes. Of course, I’m assuming the Pandemic has put the kibosh on all of that now — unless they are the deniers. Good luck to them, I say.
I finally let my hair go gray more than a decade ago, and I was very happy with it. Only now, my hair is thinning. Not so happy, now.
The other day I took a magnifying mirror outside so I could see my eyebrows, which are also thinning – except for the long wiry white ones, which I plucked out. I suppose I could get one of those eyebrow stencils, that so many of the folks on tv seems to be using, but I think they look horrible. Not many choices here for me.
Over on Ronni Bennett’s blog, she has been chronicling what it’s like to get older. Exactly my age, she is now chronicling how she is dealing with the pancreatic cancer that is literally killing her. She is heroic in dealing with her situation. I wonder how I would handle it.
Don’t get me wrong. I am grateful that I can still drive, blog, see the tv, chat on the phone with the one close friend I’ve been able to make in the ten years since I’ve moved here (more on that another time). Grateful for the support of my family, especially during this time of quarantine.
The one thing I certainly never expected to happen when I got old is the Great Orange Turd, who has made all of our lives a nightmare. And I just heard that Ruth Bader Ginsberg has died. Fuck it all.
Dear Diary: Late, Again
Here I am, already having missed a day venting my madness. This being late seems to be a trait I developed in my very late years. I used to arrive at my destinations at least 10 minutes early. None of that matters much any more anyway — and not because of the Coronovirus Pandemic, which has caused a lock-down and which gives folks too much time on their hands.
Today I’m mad about “Time.” It really seem to go faster as you get older. It takes me longer to do everything, including figuring out new things on this blog platform. You might have to bear with me for a while as I continue to climb the learning curve.
When I moved in here with my family, my grandson was 5 years old. Now, at age 17, he has completed his high school education as a home schooler. Twelve years, in the blink of an eye.
Today, I’m mad at Time, which can take me at any time. And I can’t turn it back to fix what I screwed up.
I will try to be on time tomorrow.