Is it just me? Or is anyone else feeling a bit... unsettled lately? Indecisive? Overthinky? Alternating between lethargic paralysis and impulsive action, quickly followed by regret, and then further paralysis, ad infinitum?
Do you have any important life decisions you just can't seem to make?
Or maybe it is just me.
Case in point: this blog. I started it up again on a whim. You may notice I went ahead and changed the scope and the title, so I can post about whatever the hell I want, not just health and fitness. Chatty, my Cheerfully Incompetent Research Assistant, helped me construct a new header. Which, after many iterations, still came out looking super crappy. Too small and cramped and blurry. Oh well.
Will I perservere and fix it? Or maybe change the title again? Stop blogging? Write more fiction? Stop writing entirely and focus on trying and failing to learn Spanish?
Oh, and speaking of Spanish: Will we move to Spain full time? Maybe to San Diego? Or keep going back and forth between two lives in two different countries indefinitely?
I can't seem to make up my mind about anything.
Actually, that's not quite accurate: I make up my mind all the time. Then change it. Then change it again and again.
So what's going on? I don't know for sure, but I do have a few theories.
Theory #1: My Developmental Stage
We tend to think of developmental stages as phases that children go through. Remember when you first heard of Freud's creepy Oral/Anal/Phallic/Latency/Genital stages? Eww, right? (I think they're bullshit, but that's a rant for a different time).
But adults go through various stages too, as you can appreciate by comparing your average 20 year old with your average 80 year old. Are they really beings from the same species?
So I'm 65, and recently retired, and I'm lucky as hell to have so many cool options as to what to do with my time. And yet with freedom and lack of outside structure comes... a lot of decisions! When your ability to eat and pay rent depends on you doing whatever you signed up for, work-wise, you may resent it but you're not faced with the daily question of what you should prioritize. It's a wonderful problem to have, truly, but it's a little sobering to discover what a flittery flighty flip-flopper I can be with no-one telling me what I have to focus on.
Theory #2: Sustained Efforts Yielding Annoyingly Shitty Results
So here's an ugly truth I'm starting to face: I'm not as good at stuff as I hoped I might be. When you're looking forward to the freedom of retirement, and activities you'd like dedicate time to, it's easy to imagine that putting in a fair amount of effort will get you some really rewarding results. Whether it be golf or gardening, cooking or crafting... you put in the hours, you get better and better and start to feel a little proud of yourself, right?
Well, let's pretend I'd been dedicating my time to gardening instead of writing fiction and trying to learn Spanish. How long does it make sense to keep digging up the earth, sowing seeds, watering, weeding, and pruning if all you end up with every season is weeds?
Okay, so it's not quite that bad. I've enjoyed the learning process. But writers of novels need to find readers of novels, and speakers of Spanish need to be able to understand actual Spaniards when they spew garbled sounds at you at lightning speeds, and without achieving either of those benchmarks I do wonder if it's worth it. Should I ditch those pursuits and spend time on volunteer work instead? Or learning to be really bad at some entirely new endeavor? Pottery? Photography? Singing in a choir? Cooking? Napping?
Theory #3: These Are Extraordinary Times
So yeah, the world, and our country in particular, really sucks right now. I won't go into my usual rant, but you know exactly what I mean. (If you're into political rants, join Threads! Over there I'm Jantankerous). Not only does it complicate our life-planning and decision-making, it breeds a depressing sense of impotence and doom that can seep into all areas of life, even if it's hard to make a logical connection between a totalitarian takeover, and whether or not you should change up your exercise routine or try to figure out what the hell a Substack is.
Is anyone still out there reading? Are you feeling at all unsettled lately or is this just a me thing? BTW, I can't tell you how grateful I am to the few who brave the comment section, you folks absolutely rock.
Do not speak to me of Substack. There’s some good stuff over there but I hated the app so much I just quit to save my temper.
ReplyDeleteUnsettled, I don’t know. I’ve never been much for plans. I took a job working with dogs by sheer chance and here I am 32 years later.
I like your approach to life planning Mary Anne! Actually, it might be kinda nice to be a dog... just go from moment to moment appreciating everything without thinking it to death. But I'm not sure that's a workable goal for me at this point without some really advanced body-switching technology, which they haven't invented yet. And thanks for the tip about substack! I keep feeling like I should investigate...
DeleteIt's a scary world out there, I think it always has been, we just get a front row seat now because of the immediacy of news media being so available.
ReplyDeleteI don't have wise life advice as right now the only thing we're trying to do is keep our heads above water.
Good point Messymimi, we're so overinformed these days about every horrible thing that happens everywhere, it gets overwhelming. But it's not like the world hasn't always been pretty awful for most of its inhabitants. It was just easier to pretend the ugliness wasn't there when we didn't have to look at it all the time.
DeleteIt is not just you. We see or hear how other 'boomers' are handling their retirement years and compare our lives to those perceived ideals. Trouble is, we only hear part of how retirement is. For some, it's just barely surviving on SS. Some are lucky enough to have a lot of savings to fall back on. Enter the new government and we don't even know if we'll be allowed to HAVE medical benefits, much less afford them, or even be able to keep our savings, whether they be meager or abundant.
ReplyDeleteThere is just no stability offered these days, so the normal aging and going into retirement years is even more difficult to deal with.
The 'normal' part of aging is knowing so much more than we knew or paid attention to when we were younger. The older I get, the more I understand why many older folks are crabby. We deal with daily aches and pains that are part of aging. We have very few clues to know how much longer we have on earth, much less how the end will be. And it's scary because we can't control most of it!
No wonder so many of us deal with anxiety and depression.
I could write so much more, but my thoughts are jumbled all over the place right now. Maybe I will get back to blogging, even with limited photos! I DO know, I am glad to be able to read your blogs. Keep Crabbing along my friend! :)
I hear you Walker Lady! And I realize that most people in retirement have far more to complain about than I do. I mean, here I am griping about having too many options for my free time and not enough talent to take advantage of them properly. Or, gosh, which country to live in? As opposed to having to figure out how to put food on the table, and pay medical bills and rent. My angst is purely self-inflicted.
DeleteI DO hope you go back to blogging, and I totally love it when you come here and share things in the comments, they're always so thoughtful. Now that we don't have the old bloggy crowd around anymore, it feels a little like talking into a void, and I do miss that sense of community we had. Thanks again!