There Must Be Some Mistake

Somebody Has to Worry

Posted on April 15, 2013 by Marilyn Jean

Greetings! I haven’t written in this blog for awhile. Those of you who follow me have probably given up on ever hearing from me again. It’s been busy—the standard excuse, I know, but it really has been. I worked on the Presidential campaign and I actually took the bar exam here in February. I hadn’t practiced in several years, plus I’m in a different state, so that means I had to take the bar exam again. Much about the bar exam is different than when I took it in 1990, but the stress level that goes into packing that much information into your brain and hoping you can access it to answer two days of essays and long, complicated multiple choice questions–well, that hasn’t changed a lot.

If you’ve read my blog, you know that I have struggled with depression at times. These days, I think I have more of a problem with generalized anxiety. If I pay too much attention to world and national events, I start to feel overwhelmed. So many things seem so broken and I don’t think my generation is going to be leaving much of a legacy except for a big pile of problems that we are running out of time to solve. Sorry kids.

Coalition to Stop Gun Violence (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

It’s so troubling that gun violence and rape are two issues that people in the U.S. are fighting over. As if there were several different legitimate ways of viewing these issues. But these topics consume the news cycle and have divided the nation in ways that I didn’t think I would see again in my lifetime. We get the New York Times delivered daily but I can’t bring myself to read it most of the time.

The environment, climate change, fracking, GMO foods, the lack of empathy towards those who have lost jobs, the insanity of the Congressional filibuster, and the lack of real leadership in government—it’s hard to stay positive. One of my children who is in college—during this semester alone—has had a friend who was raped at school and knew another student who was struck by a car and killed last weekend.

How do you stay positive? Besides pharmaceuticals? (kidding–but not really). Ignoring the issues seems irresponsible. Engaging them seems impossible. I know the news isn’t there to focus on happy things and on all the areas on which we agree, but still… are things as bad as they seem? Has it always been this way? I admire people who can be present in their own lives and not take the world’s problems on their shoulders every day. It’s not like I’m creating world peace by my endless fretting and anxiety.

It is the middle of April and today it is snowing more than it did all winter, probably 8 inches so far. If I could get out into the garden, I think that would soothe me. There’s just something about seeing the green starting to poke through the ground that gives me a sense of peace, and hope too.

English: Two Nēnē Geese (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Sometimes, I sit on the steps in the garden and watch the birds that gather around the lake behind our house. We have lots of geese, gulls, and even woodpeckers. They are so unconcerned about the things I am stressing over daily.

Of course. They are fully present in their own now experience. It’s a sensibility that I lack. They aren’t fretting over their purpose in life and whether they are making an impact. We humans are rather silly that way. We have built so many ways to get information about anything and everything 24/7 and, in the end, it just weighs us down. Or at least some of us.

There are religious orders which pray for the world all the time. That’s the life they’ve chosen. Do they think it’s making a difference? Does that even

Generalized Anxiety Disorde (Photo credit: Adams999)

matter to them? I think I belong to a secular order of worriers. I’m not sure who the other members of the order are, but our purpose is to worry over everything, all the time. Someone is always on duty–fretting and nervous. So if you find that you are having a good day or just feel happy, don’t be concerned that you aren’t doing your part. We’ve got you covered.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged 24-hour news cycle, Bar examination, being present, climate change, college, Education, Environment, Fretting, gardens, Generalized anxiety disorder, gun violence, Law, New York Times, Professional Exams, rape, rape culture, Stress, worry | Leave a comment

Where Am I? Wherever My Phone Is.

Posted on July 17, 2012 by Marilyn Jean

We live in a noisy world. Noisy on so many levels. In our data-driven society, it is hard to get away from information, whether we want it or not. The ability to be quiet, within

oneself or around others, is harder than it used to be. Is this the way we want to live or do we have a choice?

Choosing to be still is not easy. The urge to check email, twitter, Facebook, the news, is an internal battle that many of us rage all day long. I read recently that a large percentage of Americans check their phones before they even get out of bed. I am one of those people. Some people sleep with their phones in their hands. I don’t do that, but my phone is close by, charging up for another day of data infusion and information overload.

The urge to be “connected” to what is happening in the world is addictive. I’m not sure what we think we will miss if we go out and leave our phones at home. I’m sure if you have ever left your phone at home accidentally, you felt naked and vulnerable the entire time you were apart. What if someone is trying to reach you or there is an emergency? Those are the excuses we tell ourselves to justify our obsession with our phones. But it really hasn’t been that many years since we all had land lines and went about our day without being constantly reachable and the world kept turning and we didn’t know that we were at risk of calamity at every turn.We should ask ourselves, why in the world do we want to be reachable 24/7? Being so available has not reduced the stress in our lives and, in fact, it has raised everyone’s expectations about how quickly we can be expected to respond to a request.

Getting picked up from camp (Photo credit: your neighborhood librarian)

When my kids were young, we would agree that I would pick them up from an event at a particular time–say 5:30pm. I knew how to budget my time so that I could use it productively until it was time to go. Once my kids got cell phones, I was “on-call,” and dare not get too deeply involved in a project in case I had to drop everything and pick up a daughter. The difference, besides being on-call, is that my kids got used to not taking my time into account. If they were having fun, hanging around with teammates after a game, or whatever, they called when they were ready to get picked up and they knew that I would come when they called. And I did.

Some would argue that it is good to be able to reach your kids and know where they are. That’s true–if they pick up your call and it doesn’t go to voice mail. Or maybe you have evolved into a texting family? No actual talking on the phone, just texting? I heard about a teenager whose voice mail message said, “hang up and text me.” That’s often the message anyway, whether it is stated or not.

Texting in the Park (Photo credit: JPott)

As for social media, I admit I do enjoy much of it. It is nice to be able to look up random facts, movie times, check the headlines, or tweet something profound (of course!) from wherever I am. (I notice that I am on my computer less, now that my phone IS a computer.) Our phones keep us entertained while we are waiting. Unfortunately, our phones sometimes replace having conversations with real people, or noticing the physical world around us, or remembering to take a book along to the doctor’s office that we’ve been wanting to read. It always makes me feel sad to see a group of people, like a family, out for dinner and everyone is looking down at their phones, deeply engaged in something there. We’re all at least a little guilty, but is this how we want to live? Is the digital world more interesting than our own lives? Maybe we use it as a distraction from having to deal with the people and the things in our lives that need our attention.

Next week, my husband and I are going on a short vacation to a place in the mountains where there is no TV, no internet and cell phone connections are not reliable. We are so excited. I think part of the reason is that it will remove the sense of obligation to be connected and available to everyone and we will can enjoy the silence around us and within us. I really do miss feeling free of my phone, and free from knowing the latest political rumors, or celebrity gossip. So much of what I encounter via my smart phone has very little to do with my life–the one right in front of me. Not that smart, really.

I think I remember how to do this–live off of the information grid, as it were. I’ll let you know how it goes.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged cell phone, Cellphones, connected, FaceBook, iPhone, Mobile phone, silence, smart phone, Smartphone, social media, texting, twitter | 1 Comment

These Challenging Times

Posted on March 27, 2012 by Marilyn Jean

As I sit here looking out over the lake that our home sits next to, I have mixed feelings. Spring is coming and the world looks reborn. Yet the country seems to be in a bad way right now. We are so divided. I don’t remember it being quite so bad before, although I’m sure it has been. With a 24 hour news cycle and endless forms of social media, you hear about every awful thing as soon as it happens, and then it is dissected and repeated, over and over again in the media. There is just no escape.

Racism has made such a strong comeback that it makes me doubt that it had ever gone away. FOX News and hate radio blast out misinformation around the clock and it is difficult to even have a civil conversation with someone who has differing political beliefs. There is no trust between the political parties and that distrust and lack of civility has filtered down to ordinary people. Truth is whatever you say it is. Truth is whatever is politically expedient to say.

Constitution of the United States of America (Photo credit: The U.S. National Archives)

Along with that, there is the insistent denial of science, climate change and an almost total abandonment of integrity. Religion is being pushed at us by politicians who are using it as a cover for a radical, divisive agenda, much like every other fundamentalist regime which hides its misdeeds under the cloak of religion. “Separation of church and state” is viewed as a conspiracy, when it has been there in the Constitution all along.

Who are we becoming? The images I see on TV and in the newspaper seem to be from another time. We are once again fighting for contraceptive freedoms and the right to decide what happens to our own bodies, while groups of white men in Congress or in churches seem to think that they know what’s best for us. People who have stood for small government when it comes to social programs, see nothing wrong with legally compelling women to undergo medically unnecessary and invasive procedures if those women choose to end a pregnancy. It is intrusive, expensive, and designed to punish. All countries that embrace extreme religious views that they force on others always end up punishing women.

I find myself worrying for my children in new ways. What kind of world are we leaving our children? It feels so wrong that just a few people with the most money and political capital can force everyone’s lives to go in a direction that they don’t want to go in. We are wrecking the planet with our ever-increasing energy needs, our endless consuming, polluting our drinking water with fracking and industrial farming and putting profit ahead of the needs of people who are just trying to get by. Profit over people is the mantra and it is not going to work for us in the end.

Dog in front of television (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These thoughts weigh me down and are never far from my consciousness. I am politically active and work for change but I worry that it is too little, too late or that moneyed interests can buy off the decision-makers anyway. Sometimes I think I know what it must be like to be an animal that senses danger and perhaps a natural disaster before the people do, but you can’t seem to get anyone to pay attention in time to take shelter from the coming societal earthquake. I really want to be wrong. But I don’t think I am.

Perhaps you caught me on a pessimistic day. But I am feeling this way more and more. And I know that the more I invest my heart and soul into changing the world, the more broken my heart will be if, or when, the bad guys win. And who are the bad guys and what gives me the right to decide? My eyes are wide open, even though I want to shut them. I hear the hate and the lies that I can’t get away from. The bad guys are the people who wrap themselves up in the flag and the Bible, yet claim that the poor and those with less are a drain on society and deserve even less than what they have. They say government can’t fix everything for everyone, even as they game the system to cut deals and provide legal exceptions for their moneyed interests. They say they hate entitlements, yet they believe that they are entitled to take the whole pie because they are somehow better, harder-working, more deserving—God’s chosen. And the scariest part is that most of them actually believe it.

If you’ve ever been in a packed subway car, with no room to move, concerned that you won’t be able to get to the door for your stop, then you know how I am feeling. I am stuck here, looking for any opportunity to inch towards my desired destination without being pushed by the crowd past where I want to go.

I wish all of us luck finding our way.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged 24-hour news cycle, Bible, congress, Constitution, contraception, corruption, fear, fundamentalism, hate, hate-speech, lobbyists, money, Politics, Racism, Small government, social justice, Television, women | 2 Comments

To Begin Again

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Marilyn Jean

As I mentioned in my last blog post, we have been in the process of relocating. We are now fairly settled in our home in Colorado. My oldest daughter has moved in and is getting adjusted to living at home (a new home in a new part of the country) with her mom and step-dad, after graduating college. She’s very laid back so we should do fine.

I am thinking about what I want to do next as a career. I am just finishing a Master’s degree in nonprofit management, so perhaps there will be opportunities to work in that field. I could look into seeing what it would take to activate

my law degree here, but I can’t work in a law firm. Been there, done that—not my style. I do hope to write more. Like many people, I’ve wanted to be a writer all my life. I usually do nonfiction, memoir-style writing but I would also like to try my hand at fiction.

About a year ago, I participated in the NaNoWriMo, which is the National Novel Writing Month, held in November with people all over the world participating. The objective is to write 50K words in a month, about the length of “A Catcher in the Rye.” I almost finished last time, until I got hung up in one of my classes that involved Budget and Finance and Excel spread sheets. As someone who is what I call “math-impaired,” the novel had to waitwhile I tried to make sense of creating formulas on Excel. Yuck.

Perhaps I mentioned that we are living on a lake. It’s a big lake and many wild birds gather here, ducks, geese and even pelicans (yeah, there are pelicans here). They can be quite noisy but it really does beat hearing fire trucks and police sirens, which were the

background noise in our last location. There’s even a little fox that

trots by most every day along the waterfront.

This is the time of year for new beginnings and I feel like I am having my share of those. For Jews, it is also a time of reflection as we approach the High Holidays, which include Rosh Hashanah (the Jewish New Year) and Yom Kippur, when we atone for our missteps of the last year and resolve to begin anew. What I deeply love about this time of year is not only the requirement to reflect. In Judaism, when we identify those people we have

Image via Wikipedia

wronged, it is our obligation to atone with them directly, not with God or any other intercessor. I like that.

If we offend God, we ask for God’s forgiveness. But if we offend Sue, we have to ask Sue’s forgiveness. God can’t forgive us for offending another person, that is between us and that person. But the duty is there, so that on Yom Kippur, we can stand before God with clean hands. I once explained to a Catholic friend that if I hurt Sue’s feelings and I go to an intercessor, like a priest, and ask for forgiveness and receive it, I feel better, but Sue still has hurt feelings. The Jewish way is harder, but seems truer to me.

I once asked a rabbi what I should do if I said something bad about Sue, but she didn’t know it. If I make amends to her, I end up feeling righteous, but now Sue feels bad because she knows I said something mean. This rabbi said I should still ask Sue’s forgiveness. But that seems self-serving to me. If I did something wrong, I don’t feel that it’s right to burden Sue’s heart in order to un-burden mine.

Summer 2011 was just a blur of interviews and traveling. Autumn is just around the corner and, like so many other, it is a special time of new beginnings, fresh starts and potential. Looking forward to sharing it with you.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged atonement, autumn, college, Colorado, Daughter, High Holy Days, Judaism, NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, nonprofit, relocating, Rosh Hashanah, Writing, Yom Kippur | 7 Comments

Let’s Get Caught Up

Posted on August 15, 2011 by Marilyn Jean

Image by Lin Pernille Photography via Flickr

Wow, it has been such a long time since I have sat down to blog. It has been a busy summer, but not the “sunshine and fun times” kind of busy. Not that it has been a bad summer, but just full of things that had to get done. Sort of a business summer, rather than leisure.

<<<– Not Us.

The bulk of activity centered around finding a new place to live and a new job. My husband had interviews all over the country, from New England and New York, to North Carolina, Indiana and Colorado. I went with him most of the time so I’ve had my fill of travel for awhile. We are going to land in northern Colorado. Last week we were there looking for a place to live. The house we are going to rent was one we almost didn’t look at, but it turned out to be perfect.

It looks like we will be moving in 2 weeks. A few days after that, my youngest daughter starts college and my oldest will be moving in with us. Once the dust settles, it will be fun to explore our new city. Life has felt impermanent for such a long time. As soon as you know you are leaving a city or job, it becomes a lame-duck situation. There is no point in investing any more of yourself in your old life, but you can’t really do anything in your new life. We’re in that strange place between two lives where you don’t fit into either.

If I had the energy, I would get on my soapbox and rant about the political situation the country is in but I think there will be plenty of time to do that. Besides, it’s depressing.

I hope that you have had a good summer. The heat was so brutal and the storms caused so much damage and took so many lives. I hope you are all safe. I look forward to blogging about interesting things again and hearing what you have to say too. I have missed writing. It always seems like the best way to understand life and its challenges on a deeper level than just getting through the day to day.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged Colorado, heat, job hunt, moving, storms | 4 Comments

Planning for the Future

Posted on June 20, 2011 by Marilyn Jean

The other day, when my husband and I took a walk, we stopped in the bookstore on the corner. I saw a book there called “ME: FIVE YEARS FROM NOW –The Life-Planning Book You Write Yourself.” It was put together by Sheree Bykofsky. Inside it asks the reader to really think about what IS right now and where you want to go next. It has a place for writing in the steps, identifying obstacles, things to do now, then later, to move your goals forward. I LOVE these kinds of books.

The funny thing is, I know from having a brush with cancer, that we really don’t have control over our lives, especially five years out. Or five weeks out. But it does feel good to at least think about the direction in which you want to go.

A week or two ago, TIME Magazine had Dr. Mehmet Oz on the cover and he discussed his

Image via Wikipedia

brush with cancer. (His colonoscopy showed a precancerous polyp.) Because of this, he will have to be screened more frequently than most people. In the article, Dr. Oz talked about the free fall feeling one has when given a diagnosis that is not an “all clear.” Do we take our health for granted? Yes. Do we take our time for granted, assuming that we will, not only be alive but, healthy enough to live out our dreams? Maybe we also assume that our partners will be there too? Assuming good health is kind of risky, the further out you plan.

For those of you who have had a brush with some disaster, how has it changed you? For me, I don’t assume I’ll get an “all clear” every time I have a test done. And I ALWAYS assume the dentist will find yet another cavity, despite my commitment to good oral hygiene. But what about people who have been a victim of crime, gotten fired from a job or been in an accident, and so on? Do you still feel safe and secure or has it changed you?

Many of us live in our safety bubble until something comes along and bursts it. When I was going through my cancer ordeal, I used to say that “disaster is just a phone call away.” That’s how I got much of the bad news from my doctor. That sounds so negative but it is

Cover of "The Year of Magical Thinking (R...

Cover via Amazon

absolutely true. If you happened to read Joan Didion‘s wonderful book, “The Year of Magical Thinking,” in which she describes how her life changed on a dime when her husband literally dropped dead sitting at the dining room table while she was cooking and they were talking. There is no way to prepare yourself for something like this. And yet, time doesn’t really stand still, you keep moving forward–or at least time does, while you catch up.

For awhile, I viewed this new take on life as very scary. The uncertainty was hard to bear. The lesson I took away from it is kind of small, and yet it comforts me. We do not really have control over our lives; control is an illusion. The force of our will, no matter how mighty, cannot change what is. But the parallel to that insight is that we are not responsible for everything that happens to us and those we love. That has been the harder lesson for me to learn. As someone who really believed that I was responsible for the happiness of my children and loved ones, it is hard to think otherwise. Letting go of the control you never really had in the first place helps me feel lighter because everything is not really on my shoulders. For example, I cannot make my children feel happy, no matter what I do because happiness is a choice only that individual can make. We can’t choose it for other people.

So, nevertheless, I bought the book and I will fill it in. I may not really have control over what will happen in my life over the next five years, but perhaps it will help me to distill my choices, my dreams and my goals. My husband often says that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will get you there. At least I can start walking in the direction I want to go and watch for the detour signs along the way.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged accident, Books, Cancer, diagnosis, future, Health, Joan Didion, Mehmet Oz, trauma, Year of Magical Thinking | 6 Comments

Cautious Optimism

Posted on June 12, 2011 by Marilyn Jean

Normally, I don’t really consider myself a pessimist but we live in some difficult times. You know what the problems of the world are and each of us might rank them differently in order of importance (or concern). Today was the first sunny (not super foggy, drizzly) day so I went out on our little balcony and just sat there with the morning sun beaming down on me. It felt good to be outside and to be quiet. I wrote in my journal.

Although we still don’t know where we will eventually be living when my husband finds a job, I do want to do a lot of things differently than when we moved here. We never really connected to a community of like-minded people. Living in a high-rise can make that difficult. We rent so we don’t go to owners’ meetings. There are 25 floors and 3 elevators and so many people coming and going that I’m never sure who actually lives here. The only people we know the names of are our next door neighbors. Our building is in more of a business area than residential, except for apartment/condo high-rises, so there are no waving-at-your-neighbor-across-the-street opportunities.

We found a Jewish minyan where the people are mainly our age and who have been very generous in sharing shabbat and Jewish holidays with us. But it is truly a d0-it-yourself community, with no Rabbi and while we have services and morning minyans–all member led, I miss the educational opportunities one usually finds in a synagogue. (We tried lots of synagogues first, but the people at the minyan were the most welcoming.)

I went back to school (getting a Master’s) which has kept me busy with studying. My husband’s position and department did not get the level of support that he was promised when we came here. Although he really built up the program he was hired to direct, he finally realized that he was never going to get the funding from the powers that be to hire the staff needed to do what he was actually hired to do. He came home discouraged more and more frequently.

Over the time we’ve been here, we both feel that we didn’t do what we needed to do to feel like we belonged here. That isn’t totally our fault, as explained above, but we could’ve and should have put ourselves out there more than we did. Life doesn’t come to you; you have to go out and get it. Because it is likely that we will be here through most of the summer, we want to enjoy what is left of our time here. We’ll take advantage of the many fairs, farmers’ markets, museums, city stuff and nature stuff as much as we can.

We learned a lot about what to do and what not to do when moving someplace new. We aren’t young parents with kids in school anymore so we have to work harder to find friends and build a community for ourselves, as middle-aged people. I am optimistic about being able to do that wherever we land. But in the meantime, we will do more here too.

Posted in Midlife Musings | Tagged community, friends, friendships, Jewish holiday, Jews, Judaism, local, middle-age, Minyan, neighbors, optimism, relocation, Shabbat, Synagogue | 2 Comments

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There Must Be Some Mistake

Somebody Has to Worry

To Begin Again

Let’s Get Caught Up

Planning for the Future

Cautious Optimism

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