Years ago I read a report claiming women experienced their greatest happiness after turning sixty. I didn’t buy it. Nothing about aging appealed to my forty-something self. Now that I am well past sixty, I get it. I’m more at ease with myself, less exasperated by my mistakes and inadequacies, clearer about what does and doesn’t matter. I recognize this new perspective as a kind of happiness and one for which I’m grateful.
I certainly don’t want to dial back the clock. For the four decades that followed my eighteenth birthday, life was a marathon of checking off the boxes. Get an education, start a career, gain a partner, create a family, acquire a home, fill the home with stuff (the right stuff), contribute to the social good. All that checking of the boxes seemed necessary to prove I was an adult, a capable adult who always got the school forms turned in on time and the kids signed up for the right soccer and ski programs. If I could only host dinner parties with the right china and silver in a home with an esthetic and vibe that put guests at ease, never mind serve a perfect gourmet meal and entertain with a subtle grace that left each guest feeling admired and valued, I might earn my bona fides. My loving friends and family will tell you, I fall short of those self-defined expectations. (I do own a Gourmet cookbook. It terrifies me.)
Suddenly, in what feels a snap of the fingers, that time of aspiration and striving is over and the shedding has begun. My life phase now requires sorting and labeling the basement boxes full of photos and videos, discarding the bags of size 6 and 8 clothing that will never fit again (I’m still holding onto the size 10s just in case), donating boxes and boxes of books (though not yet the Gourmet cookbook), shredding documents, labeling family heirlooms, documenting the family history. All those years, all that effort to acquire, and now empty shelves in the basement give me joy and entertaining means dining out.
It’s not all a backward glance. I am also writing more. This past year, thanks in part to the pandemic, I have conversed regularly with another writer/friend about the writing process. Reflection and self-assessment are proving a key part of my current life phase. Our discussions inevitably reveal gaps in my writing knowledge, but I’m discovering I know more about writing than I thought I did—certainly more than when I wrote my first poems 40 years ago.
Fresh out of grad school and teaching speech-communication classes, I shared office space—a cubicle formed by bookcases—with the English faculty at Windward Community College in Kaneohe, Hawaii. When my officemates formed a poetry writing group, they invited me to join, and I began my first serious attempt at writing. My first publication of a poem followed as did the discovery that writing is my bliss (and my bane), but that is a topic for another post.
In the decades since, I’ve focused on writing poetry and fiction. (There was that year I spent writing for a U.S. Senator, a kind of writing that falls into its own category, but that’s definitely a story for another post.) I’ve taught nonfiction writing, specifically essay-writing for high schoolers, but personal essays and blogs have never been my mediums. Writing a blog isn’t even a box I aimed to check, but here I am at 67, thinking it could be fun.
Despite my age and my decades of effort, I am and always will be an aspiring writer, practicing a craft I love. I may be shedding other expectations in my life, but I still have boxes to check and lessons to learn when it comes to writing. I hope this forum will be a means to articulate and share what I know as well as what I hope to learn, and that it will also serve other writers, especially those who have not yet found a community of writers.