Not Looking

When I began this blog over a year ago, I said I didn’t consider myself retired; I considered myself unemployed. My usual habit was to work hard, unemploy myself, take a break, explore some things, and find the next exciting job to occupy me. This was only my latest break.

In my mind, I wasn’t “retired” because I don’t have a pension. And I expected I’d get a job because that’s what I usually did. I liked having a regular place to go, helping something grow, being part of a long-term mission. I liked the identity that came with being part of an organization.

But the things that captured my imagination weren’t coming in the form of jobs. No, what was really interesting me was art, travel, community efforts. New Things.

But then – as readers of this blog know – after a while I just felt adrift and untethered. No structure imposed by work hours, no purpose other than what I could impose on myself. I was doing contracts – and I like them a lot – but they aren’t regular and don’t come attached to a workplace, co-workers, and an occupational identity. My existential crises ran amok. I was lonely. A job seemed a solution.

So now, here we are at today. A job prospect came my way that’s actually intriguing. I think it would involve working with interesting people, would involve some travel, would even include writing. Of course, it would ease financial pressure.

But if I took that job, what would happen to my month in London (the newest iteration of my month in Manhattan)? What about the prospects for an artist-in-residency at Hagley in Wilmington? What about all the things that I do between 9 and 5 each day? How will all my volunteering fit in? What about all the things that don’t get done even with all the time I have now?

How can I possibly squeeze myself back into the box that a regular job requires? 

See where I am? I think this is called a crossroads. Or just Identity Crisis #402. I really am on a different road, a road that for the time being does not involve a job. But because I can over-think anything to death, I have a whole bunch of questions for myself:

• I have LOTS of years left in my Third Third. Have I opted for the pleasure route too early? When I decide I want something different, will employment opportunities have passed?


• If not-employed is now my decided route – not just a de-facto-it-happened route – what does that mean? Do I get more serious about what I’m doing? What does that mean, to “get more serious”?


• How many of my decisions are just laziness decisions, evidence of some responsibility fatigue?


• How much of this is just incredibly selfish in not taking financial pressure off my husband (even though he denies feeling the pressure)?

In the end, none of these questions matter. I can’t do it. I just can’t take a regular job right now, can’t put myself in that box. I couldn’t sign on a dotted line, set an alarm clock every morning, sit at a desk in an office. It feels absolutely impossible. Every fiber of my being rebels. Why?

Because I like my days.

(Eye-opening wow.)

It took me a while to get to this point, but it’s true. I’m in my Third Third, I’m in charge of my days, and I like them!

A Good Question

This is very short, but one of those quick jolts to the brain.

I was giving a workshop for teachers on resilience. We were looking at how we could reframe events, incidents, obstacles so we could better deal with them. One woman said she’d been frustrated over where she was in her career, but the change she wanted to make would mean going back to school for a degree.

“If I go back to school now, I won’t have my degree till I’m 55!”

Her husband: “How old will you be if you don’t go back to school?”

I’ll let that sink in.

I will make a will!

Here I am, looking for purpose, meaning, and simplicity in my Third Third. Fretting over it, writing about it, thinking it to death. Making plans, researching options, supposedly leaving no stone unturned.

But now I am embarrassed to admit – yes, even more embarrassed than being caught peeing by the side of the road:

I do not have a will.

Didn’t hear that? Let me try again: I do not have a will.

The universe screams in outrage: How did you get to be this old without a will?!? And with a daughter?!? How could you have left her care so unprotected?!? What were you thinking???

I didn’t get around to it.

Mostly, I just kept putting it on the back burner. Procrastinating. Tim and I did visit a lawyer and start the whole process, but it kind of derailed over the choice of guardian. I kept observing the changing life situations of assorted family members and I just couldn’t be sure. They kept moving in and out of most favored guardian status. Observing this, Tim went ahead and made an interim will, but I kept dodging closure on the subject.

It’s not like I couldn’t face the Death Thing. I have very clear and thorough Advanced Directives. I’ve covered every base in my attempt to avoid a miserable end of life.

But as to the end itself? I’ve got nothing in writing.

Well, that’s going to change because now there’s Wills Week – this week, May 9-13. Starting Tuesday, there are free community events to guide us through the process. Take a look: www.alaskawillsweek.org. On the website, we downloaded a really useful workbook.

Here I’ve been writing about de-cluttering and clearing out stuff so our daughter wouldn’t have to face a houseful of junk, and we leave a potential legal and financial mess for her. What kind of legacy is that? Just when she’d be grieving, I’d give her headaches?

Nope, not anymore. We’re doing this. You, too?

Facing down the Big F

I’d first discovered Brené Brown back in November when I wrote about her work as a “vulnerability researcher.”  So now I’ve just finished her book Daring Greatly, and there’s a couple of things that really resonated with me.

Brené’s daughter was freaked out about having to race breast stroke at a meet, that the breast stroke wasn’t her event, that she’d be the last girl in the water. Brené asked her, “What if your goal for that race isn’t to win or even to get out of the water at the same time as the other girls? What if your goal is to show up and get wet?”

Brené explained that there were many things she’d never tried in her life because she feared failure. As a result, she’d missed out on feeling brave. Her daughter could have scratched, could have avoided the whole contest. Instead, she “got wet,” performed pretty badly, but felt brave afterwards. I guess Brené’s advice is what being a “vulnerability researcher” is all about.

Elsewhere in the book, Brené thinks about the well-known quote, “What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail?” And instead she asks this question, “What’s worth doing even if I fail?”

That’s a whole different question! In the first, you’re evaluating your choices while liberated from potential failure; you’re saved from failure in advance. In the second, failure – in all its soul-crushing devastation – descends. The second question forces you to confront the experience of failure, forces you to decide whether to be brave and still do it. It presupposes failure and then asks, “So what will you do with that information?”

Failure is a profound experience. Such a bottoming-out, crushing, unpleasant experience. I failed so badly at graduate school, I think it left me with a stutter for a while: I was afraid of expressing myself and being shot down yet again. But it set in motion a new plan for my life, new paths I’d explore. It helped me define what I wanted and where I’d find it. Mostly I think if I’m happy with my life, even the bumps, the mistakes, and the failures got me here so they all served a purpose.

My mother used to say whatever doesn’t kill you outright makes you stronger (which drove me crazy as a kid). That whole graduate school experience made me a little less fearful of failure. It did something to my self-esteem, too. After a while, I could look at academia and critique it instead of feeling demeaned by it. I could understand the influences I’d let operate on me and instead know that I had to make better choices for myself. I began to know myself as resilient.

But twice (at least) I dodged the bullet, didn’t get in the water. Both involved travel to somewhat risky locales, but I think I exaggerated the risks to justify my fears. I still feel squirmy about them, knowing that I caved, knowing that I missed two extraordinary opportunities.

So what does all this mean for my Third Third? How much of my future planning is constrained by a fear of failure? What if I sat here and said, “Try it. It will all go wrong, but will that matter in the end? Will you feel squirmier for not doing it than you will for trying it?”

The thing about the fear of failure is that you have to dissect it. Is it fear of failure or are you just not interested in pursuing something? Are you just fooling yourself (“Oh, I don’t really want to do that anyway.”) or are you backing away? Sometimes we’ve become so practiced at eliminating options that we don’t even know why they fall off the radar. And sometimes, we just dawdle them away.

So now I’m going to look at my assorted Third Third scenarios and examine them: would I feel brave afterwards? Would I feel squirmy if I didn’t pursue them? “What’s worth doing even if I fail?”


* Special little technological treat that I just discovered from Pogue’s Basics by David Pogue. He has all sorts of handy dandy little tricks, like this one: if you have to write Brené with that accent over the é, and you have a Mac, you hold down the e key and – lo and behold – seven different variations of e show up and you get to pick the one you want! That is my delight of the day!

Lab rat lost in the maze

Today I earned $21.50 as a guinea pig, a lab rat for the university’s Experimental Economics researchers.  I was told I’d earn $5 for participating, but that I could earn more based on the decisions I made during the study. (They said I couldn’t end up losing money.) This was a New Thing with real incentives, real decisions to be made! Plus I’d be furthering economics knowledge.

Since I was thinking so economically, I decided to walk to UAA and save money on parking. I didn’t want my hard-earned $5 to disappear down a meter. See, already I was practicing my economic decision-making.

Ten of us assembled in the Lab. We were told there’d be a bag of 20 poker chips, some black, some green. A roll of a die would determine how many of what color were in the bag. Then we’d have to draw a chip out.

If we drew out a black chip, we’d earn nothing. If we drew out a green chip, we’d earn $20. If we chose not to draw, we’d get $6. Okay, I could see what was happening: would I take the risk for the green chip or play it safe for the $6?

Then we took a little test about the instructions. We’d get 50¢ for each correct answer. Okay, pretty simple.

But then things got complicated. Another person was added to our scenario: if I were the only one who got a green, I’d get $40! If both of us got a green, we’d split the $40. The rules changed again: if he got the green first, my later green wouldn’t even count … and his first draw was secret. Then it was public. There were five scenarios in all, and things got really confusing.

Each time the rules changed, we had another little test about the instructions. Then we were told the statistical probability of each outcome. There were dozens of probabilities: any green chips, how many green chips, who goes first, etc etc. Tiny, little percentage numbers all over the place. I simplified; if I saw a 38% or better number anywhere, I’d go for it. If it were less than that, I’d decline to draw and get my $6.

We were told we could opt out or change any of our decisions, and then they rolled the dice. It came up that the bag was filled with 20 green chips – all green chips – so almost everyone won!

I have no idea why. I am clueless about the whole thing, but I have my little suspicions. In the psychology experiments I did in college, you’d think the test was about response time, and then you’d find out it was really a test about eye contact. Did the people who were granted eye contact by the tester report they found the experience more pleasant? It could be very devious.

I’m not sure what economic decision-making we demonstrated. I’d guess the professor must be a little irritated that the 20-green-chip option came up so he had to pay out lots of $20 bills. But whether any of what I did showed or didn’t show any rationality, I have no idea.

But this is the odd thing. After it was all done, we had to take a little anonymous, demographic survey: age, gender, student status. (I am SURE I was the only Third Thirder in the room.) But there were three additional questions on the survey: (Try your answers in the comments; spoiler alert below.)

1. If it takes 5 machines to make 5 widgets in 5 minutes, how long does it take to make 100 widgets?
2. If the lily pads in a lake double in surface area every day, and the lake is totally covered in 48 days, when is the lake half covered?
3. If a bat and ball cost $1.10 and the bat is $1 more than the ball, how much does the ball cost?

Now why would those questions be there with no names, no identifying numbers? Are they checking if we have minimal intelligence, and why would they do that after we finished the whole green-chip lab?

This is so mysterious to me that on my walk home, I kept wondering about it, rehashing it. Why did they ask those questions afterwards? Why did they also test us on the instructions? I was such a good little lab rat because I didn’t even know what maze I was in. Walking home, pondering, deliberating.

Then it hit me: the stupid ball had to cost 5¢ if the bat was going to be $1 more. $1.05 + 5¢ = $1.10. The only economics question I understood, and I’d gotten it wrong. Was that the test?

All the world's a stage...

I think the first formalized stages I’d ever heard described were Elisabeth Kübler-Ross’ five stages of grief after the death of a loved one or similar bad news.







Recently, I heard of the six stages of retirement described by gerontologist Robert Atchley:

And now, I’ve discovered the Nine Emotional Stages of Holiday Travel:

1   Nostalgia	4   Frustration	7   Annoyance
2   Anxiety	5   Calm	8   Excitement
3   Productivity	6   Happiness	9   Relief

So I guess if we were just looking at the complexity of the process, it takes more steps to do holiday travel than it does to retire, and it takes more steps to retire than to get over a loved one’s dying. Okay, I’m being facetious.

Kübler-Ross’ stages don’t begin with looking forward to something – hers are all about reacting to horrible news – so she’s missing those steps of positive anticipation. But it seems to me that the other two processes are basically the same thing: looking forward to something, making plans, confronting the reality of that which you wished for, feeling bummed, and then recovering. (The travel one has more steps because it’s a round-trip: you get to visit family – with both positive and negative anticipation … and then you get to come home.)

This is called a PGIO. I learned this in college:

After hearing this, I bet you’ll see PGIOs everywhere, too. These same five steps apply to everything:

For instance, a First Third, college example: (1) I really wanted to go to that party, (2) I called up friends to go with me, (3) place was full of drunk assholes. (4) What a waste of an evening! (5) So let’s all talk about it and hoot and laugh over at the coffee house.

Now a Third Third example:

1. My job ends in April; I can hardly wait for all that free time


2. I’m going to take an art class, finish binding those books, finish the quilt, travel


3. I seem to be drifting, not getting any of it done, and I’m not a very good artist anyway


4. Yikes, what have I done! Am I going to be this worthless and unemployed for the next 30 years?!


5. Oh, I get it: I’m making my own future. Who knew it would involve blogging, some contracts, teaching, ice skating? But I need to impose some structure for this to work.

The thing is, I have a hard time seeing these steps as describing a period of my Third Third (or any third). It makes it sound like once you move through the steps, your caterpillar has turned into the butterfly. Well, even the grief folks say that’s not true; you can keep repeating the cycle as new realizations or situations hit.

I think there are two versions of this cycle: the daily one and the Big Picture one. I had the daily one just yesterday, with the quest for the calendars: (1) Today I’ll buy my new calendars, (2) Off I go to the store, (3) They’re all out, (4) It’s taking forever to find the calendars I want; 2016 is a mess already, and (5) Wow! I found a way to get the calendars after all.

But the Big Picture one: can we only see it in hindsight? Do we only see the stages of our lives as we move out of them?

[to be continued due to the existential crisis of the author who found herself in a paroxysm of re-evaluation, self-examination, and relentless rumination]

The Apology Test

This is that complicated post I was struggling with. Here’s a little pre-blog survey: When you think of things that require proper apologies, do you think of apologies you need to receive from others or apologies you need to give to others?

    __    Someone owes me an apology for something they did
    __    I owe someone an apology for something I did

By the time I reached my Third Third, I’d heard these two sayings many times:

1.  First time, shame on you. Second time, shame on me.
2.  Hate does more harm to the vessel in which it is stored than to the object on which it is poured.

So while they’re not complete opposites, they do reflect differences in how to deal with transgressions. Other people’s against us. Do we stay on guard and protect ourselves from people who take advantage, are cruel, or are inconsiderate? (#1) Or does holding onto our feelings (like distrust, resentment, even hate) damage us? (#2) When do the healthy boundaries we set for ourselves become grudges?

So here I am with a discussion group on the subject of Forgiveness and Repentance. In Judaism (the framework for our discussion), there’s no absolution that comes from some designated authority. God isn’t “in charge” of forgiving sins against other people. Only the parties concerned can right the wrongs between them. I like that, but it means the question of whether or not to forgive sits right in our court.

The philosophers came up with all sorts of lists as they closely examined the issue. Repentance is when you’re sorry and you want to make it better. For repentance to count, five things must be present: recognition of the act as bad, remorse, not doing it any more, restitution, and confession. And this is the biggie: none of it counts unless you don’t do it anymore.

So let’s say someone does all five things, is the other person required to forgive? Philosophers agree that repentance must be sincere, initiated by the bad guy, and involve some element of personal transformation. There is no easy forgiveness; you have to earn it and deserve it.

So Judaism is mostly big on repentance, stopping doing bad things. Not so big on forgiveness because the big deal is stopping doing bad things. The idea is that if you forgive too easily, you’re allowing evil to continue. But if you forgive too slowly, when do you become cruel?

So there I was, thinking about all the rotten things people have done and mentally cataloging which of the five things they missed in their inadequate – or even absent – apologies. Concluding, of course, that they did not earn or deserve forgiveness. So my big decision was whether to keep my distance from them (#1) or move on (#2). That was my big issue.

Only afterwards did a light bulb go off and I re-read the bit that said “…mostly big on repentance … because the big deal is stopping doing bad things.” Click! I looked in the mirror and had to ask if I was doing my five things, had I repaired things I might have broken and was I not breaking them anymore?

Oh, no, here I am again at the contest between Better Barbara and Shitty Barbara (who made their original appearance here). Shitty Barbara focuses more on the rotten things other people do rather than her own rotten stuff, so my first concern had been Forgiveness. Like, who’s entitled to it? Not you! But now it’s, What counts as a Bad Thing? To me or to you? Do I even notice my Bad Things as easily as I notice other people’s? Will I fix them?

By the time we’ve reached our Third Thirds, we’ve experienced many wrongs, both as the good guy, the bad guy, and the bystander. I keep hoping I’ll acquire some sort of Wisdom-with-a-capital-W, but really it’s always the same: Does the Better Barbara win?

Painting with water

The Quest for New-ness continues and, for the past four weeks, it’s involved a class in watercolors. Friends were taking it, and it was going to be pure fun. Then I saw the supply list.

Here I was, all prepared with my flat little tin boxes with the little cakes of color in them. But the list named specific colors like quinacridone rose, cerulean blue, cobalt blue. Well, obviously, that went beyond little blue cakes. We were going to a whole new level: watercolor in tubes.

The first shock was how much tubes of watercolor cost. And in the stores, different brands had vastly different prices. I was looking at the cheap ones, and the sales guy came over and said, “That won’t mix well. It’s just a hue, not a pigment.” ??

So, of course, I should have known the brush purchase was going to be just as complicated. Is a synthetic brush worse than a natural one? What kind of bristles? I don’t need many excuses to spend time in art supply stores, but these decisions took hours.

Armed with all my new little toys, I went to class. This is the BIG THING I’ve learned: with watercolor, the water does the work. We actually painted our paper with plain water and then added the color to let it bleed into the wetness. We put wet paint on dry paper, wet paint on top of wet painted paper. We even flicked paint from a stiff toothbrush onto wet paper. Some of them came out like Rorschach test blobs, but we were encouraged to play, to let happy accidents happen.

You’re probably looking at my illustrations and thinking, “Doesn’t she already paint?” I paint with acrylics. When acrylics dry, they stay dry. I can paint next door to one color without worrying about the colors mixing and turning to mud. Between colors, I write. As soon as they’re dry, I paint some more. Then I write. But with watercolors, they can always get wet and wake up again. Get them too wet, and they flow into all their neighbors. I tend to err on the side of wet so I make a lot of rivers and they tend to overflow their banks.

Which doesn’t matter a bit if you’re playing and creating happy accidents!

When I was a little girl, I used to watch “Learn to Draw with Jon Gnagy” on Saturday morning television. Jon Gnagy would give us shapes to draw, lines to add, and shading to round it out. Then we would create the same picture Jon Gnagy did, give or take some talent. The best Hanukkah present I ever got was my own Jon Gnagy art set with all his special tools: the kneaded eraser, charcoal sticks, blending pencils. But Jon Gnagy never said, “Play around.”

Our instructor, Amanda Saxton, believes in enjoying art, in experimenting. So our first class, we made sky. With clouds. The next class we made mountains. My mountains seemed sort of extraterrestrial to me, like the mountains on another planet.

Then Amanda brought in irises for us to draw and paint. Amazingly, we started by drawing the shape of the petals with just water. Adding the purple let it bleed into the water, take its soft shape. I finally managed my overwatering problem so my colors could get more intense. And now, because I am such a big baby who laps up positive reinforcement, I feel compelled to tell you Amanda’s reaction: “Barbara, this iris could be in a show.” She is such a great teacher!

Tonight, we had lilies. Lilies are harder because they have white edges. How do you paint a snowman on white paper? Yes, I know here on the blog, I’d just outline it in black, but that’s because here they’re more like doodles. Fortunately, my lily was aging a bit, so its edges were kind of yellowing. Almost cheating, but not quite.

Just as I learned that my Third Third needed to have structure, I think I’m learning that in art, too. When I “just play,” I tend to get a lot of mud. Red, yellow, and blue make brown, after all. But when I have a thing to paint – and next week we move on to animals – I have to put my paint in specific places. I have to think about whether it’s darker underneath or on top, whether this color overlaps that one. I have to really look at what I’m painting.

Really looking at things – that’s only good, too.

Old, frightened, and far away

When your 90-year-old mother gets sick and feels afraid to sleep alone at night, none of her four far-flung offspring can sleep either. The last few days have had us telephoning, emailing, researching, investigating, and contacting. Worrying, pacing, talking, and fretting.

But not sleeping.

My sister, Elizabeth, the only one within driving distance, drove down to Long Island. While she tried to sleep in my mother’s living room, my mother repeatedly called out – about every minute or so – “Elizabeth, are you there?” Distraught, Elizabeth checked her time zones and figured it was safe to call me at 1 a.m. It was. I was busy worrying and researching.

My mother knows that something is very wrong with her cognitive abilities and memory. When she’s drifting off to sleep, the problem is worse: she’s not sure when or where she is. Are her parents still alive? Is she home? She gets so frightened, she can’t bear to be alone and has lately taken to wandering the halls, seeking out anyone for human contact.

During the day, she’s alert and active enough to participate in lots of activities. Her assisted living place is friendly, welcoming, and familiar. And there are things going on all the time. But at night, it’s another story.

So what are we to do? If she moved nearer to one of us, she’d lose the familiarity that is the anchor to her comfort right now. She knows where the dining room is, what she gets to do at 10, 11, and the movies at 2. She knows where her bingo chips are stashed and what to look for in her local newspaper. All these things are the bedrock of her functioning, and she doesn’t want to give them up.

But if she’s ill or tired, frightened or upset, we are all hundreds and thousands of miles away. All of us have reached the point where we check Caller I.D. and our hearts lurch if it’s her area code. We exist in a state of waiting for the other shoe to drop. And they seem to be dropping at a faster pace.

Oh, the world offers such promise in exploring wide open spaces, tackling new opportunities in new locations. My mother’s four kids split to the corners of the globe, but now the law of unintended consequences is playing out all over our age group as we deal with far-away, aging parents.

As I vibrate with the anxiety of “what should we do” and have trouble sleeping, Tim says, “That’s why we’re going to move to be nearer our kid.” So the relocation question for us – which had pretty much resolved in favor of the life we like here in Alaska – is now an open question again.

Eventually, I might be an old person. (I must admit, this whole business has me reflecting on just how old I might appreciate getting.) But just like I’m de-cluttering so our daughter won’t have to clear out my accumulated junk, I don’t want her to have these tortured moments of being far away from something that absorbs her emotional energy. So does that mean we move? Or at least get nearer?

Oh, that’ll have to wait. I can fret about decisions for only one old person at a time, and right now, that’s not me.

Into the Light

If you guessed #3 yesterday, you win. It is easy to get depressed when you don’t know what you’re doing with your life.

So after moping a lot, finding a ton of faults in Tim, noticing every time I wasn’t included in a social event, and sagging deeper and deeper, I decided I was clinically depressed. I went to a therapist, Linda.

She had me artistically illustrate what gave me pleasure.

Drawing this gave me no pleasure. Only DVDs gave me pleasure. Lots of DVDs. A constant supply of DVDs from the library.

Let me tell you about Golden Moments. Golden Moments are when the universe lets you know that you are in the right place at the right time and all is good with you and the world. I can still close my eyes and picture the time I looked out my doorway and my friends were playing pick-up football on the green and one shouted, “Hey, B-squared, come out and play!” The sun was shining. All was good with the world.

Golden Moments happen when I’m in my living room, and my eyes survey the whole scene of what makes our home, and all is right with the world.

Intellectually, I could say, “There is always a period of restlessness and turmoil until it reaches critical mass and a creative period surfaces. Just wait for it.” Instead, I huddled with that restlessness and turmoil in my living room and couldn’t move with the paralysis of my unknown future. No Golden Moments there.

And Linda used that word, that elusive but oh-so-enthralling word:

Yes, that’s right! That’s it! That’s what I want. How could I bring joy back into my life? Not with me sitting here whining.

That’s when Linda told me about “If nothing changes, nothing changes.” (See this blog post.) In college, friends would call that a P.G.I.O – Penetrating Glimpse into the Obvious – but I took it to heart. I also visited my sister and we took a road trip to Burlington, Vermont. Burlington appears on every list of “good places to retire” so if you’re thinking relocation might solve your problems, it was a reconnaissance trip, too.

Burlington failed, but the trip succeeded. By crossing relocation-to-Burlington off my list, I had taken action. (Yes, it worked that way.)

Then I started this blog, happily sitting in my nice new room. Writing but using my hands to paint. And one day I sat in the living room, surveyed the scene, and felt comfort wash over me. And I thought maybe this is my Third Third. Maybe this is not a detour on where I’m supposed to be; maybe it is where I’m supposed to be, detour or not.

I have spent a lifetime whirling through the turbulence of my emotions, the bedlam of choices to be made, the ups and downs of events and tides. Arrhythmia was the rhythm of my life. I’ve collided with life.

This new thing, is this the wisdom of the Third Third?

Gasp.

Identity Crisis #314

So what's the Third Third anyway? My mother is 90. So at 62, I'm looking at things in thirds. First 30 years, second 30, and now: the Third Third. Looking at my life, I see a timeline of decisions debated and decisions made. They're like the points in my life where a life can branch off and generate a whole new parallel universe. The kind where I married that other person or took that other job or moved to that other country. I have crowded the world with parallel universes, but I like where I am so even the bumps got me here.

My thirds fall into groups, with themes. I call my first third Preparing for Adulthood. My second third, that's Parenting, and that includes both the preparation and the adaptation to no longer needing to be hands-on. (She's launched.) It's also, as my sister added, Professional Life.

So what now? What's the Third Third?

You can see my timeline, but first some history....

Back when I was in college, back when I was agonizing over what major to select, I was consumed with identity issues: "Was I a philosopher?" or "Was I a physicist?" "Was I an artist?" or "Was I a writer?" Life loomed in front of me, and it all hinged on that MAJOR DECISION.

The thing is, I'd thought I'd figured out this future bit. (I was a teenager.) I had decided (excruciatingly) where to go to college, where I would be a student. I had become THIS student in that place. I thought I was finished with deciding who I was, where I was, and how I would become. I had walked through those doors to my future, couldn't it just be lived now?

Yes, they were doors to the future, but also doors that slammed shut on alternative futures. My friend Helen pointed out that this was only Identity Crisis #14 (but who remembers the actual number). They kept cropping up!

In between, there were other decisions, other doors, too. They kept appearing, relentlessly. Some repeated. Some were more dramatic than others, but the philosopher in me won out and all of them were EXAMINED.

All those doors, all those parallel universes, this is my life:

Why is this Third Third such a big deal? 

1.  It's colored by mortality. It's the Last Third. This one leads to decline. No matter how positive I might be, eventually my times in a half-marathon will get longer.
   


2.  This one involves accepting that some options can't be picked any more. I can't be a farmer. Okay, I can, but it would take A LOT to make that happen. (Raising the big question: would I want that enough to make it happen?)
   
   
3.  I'm really, really good at some things now, but I'm also sort of tired of them. Do I follow my expertise or my curiosity?
   
   
4. How far do I go to follow curiosity? How much uprooting do I want to insert in my life? Do I want to move? Do I want to "start over" in something?
   
   
5. What legacy do I leave behind? Do I want to cement that, alter it, or branch out?
   
   
6. I don't have a passion. I'm not so in love with gardening that I deliriously welcome the idea of having the time to garden. I haven't waited my whole life to ... write a cookbook or visit all 50 states. I already crossed the country by visiting 25 waterparks....
   
   
7. I need a theme, an over-arching meaning to this part of my life. I don't want to just add up the days, and I don't want to relax or play or travel without something larger illuminating those days.
   
   
8. I am consumed with de-cluttering, but how much of my shit do I discard? I RECYCLED my journals! More on that, but de-cluttering involves deciding what part of your past you keep.
   
   
9. How do I re-insert creativity into my life? For years now, I haven't been doing creative writing or art, both of which were necessary parts of my life. What gives?
   
   
10. How much money do I need to make? Of course no one knows how much money they'll need, but there's also the bit about salary being life's report card, the measure of our worth. Women do seem to suffer from Bag Lady Fantasies, but this valuation thing still plays out with me.


So how am I doing with this Third Third business?

Maybe not floundering, exactly.

When public radio in Alaska used to announce my commentaries, they identified me as "Barbara Brown, whose daily collisions with life leave her with great stories and a grateful heart." So I'm still colliding, I still have great stories, and maybe I can gain some clarity here (and force a little for #9).