The light is here longer now. 

My girl is finishing her freshman year of high school. She just got a learner's permit. She's a better horseback rider than I am and wields a mean powerpoint. 

And oh, my God, how is it possible she's going to be a high school sophomore in a few weeks?

I started this blog on my maternity leave. I started it because I didn't know how to process what I was feeling about being a mother. That totally hasn't changed in fifteen years. I still don't know how to process what I feel as a mother, except now that I'm here, I want to say this to the me there, the one who started this blog at this time of year in 2004.

It turns out okay, Rita.

I want to say that to the me who cried in the shower every morning at 23, not sure if I would find my way. I want to say that to the me who paced for miles up and down gravel roads at 17, the me who worried about grades at 12. The me who was afraid my mom would die young. The me who was afraid of tornadoes and fires as a kid.

It's not over yet, but so far, Rita, it's been okay. Your life turned out okay.

You got married, and you still are. You gave birth to an amazing girl who only got more amazing with every year. You live in the Midwest, and you like it. Your friends are amazing people who have your back through everything, even cancer. You did write those books you said you would write. Your body held up. You can still carry your own groceries and think your own thoughts. 

When I was in my twenties, I thought I had to be fabulous. Then I realized I wasn't fabulous and dismissed fabulous. In my thirties, I survived new motherhood and marriage and mortgages and friendships and career. In my forties, I'm redefining fabulous. 

Maybe fabulous is just turning out okay. 

I caught a few minutes of The Voice tonight. I haven't watched it since Christina Grimmie was killed. That was a bit of a perspective-setter about fame.

In this episode, Kelly Clarkson was having a moment. I assume from context clues that Alicia Keys has been nabbing all the hot young things to the extent it started to give Kelly a complex. She didn't even want to turn around for a fabulous voice because she said, "There's no way I will win," or something to that effect.

Oh, Kelly, I feel you.

This is not a love song.

Here's the thing: Any time you try something new, put yourself out there, no matter how high you've risen in your field or in your art, isn't there always an Alicia Keys? Isn't there always someone who intimidates you because they are amazing in their own skin, in their own art, and that confidence somehow feels threatening, as though there were a finite amount of wins in the universe?

Because there are not: A finite amount of wins.

Kelly Clarkson is a thousand million times more successful than I am, a thousand million times richer, more talented. In that moment, though, I wanted to grab her ears and look into her eyes and tell her to levelset, my friend, because you are all that and more and you need to have a Coke and a smile and shut the fuck up.

You. Are. All. That.

I know, right? Getting through a career is hard. It is so hard. You get knocked down, laid off, hired again, budget cut, high expectations, no expectations, no team, huge team, quarterly dividends, what did you say, again?

And then you start again.

Over and over and over. A fifty-year career is no longer a fifty-year career, it's ten careers, five years each. Constantly remaking yourself, retelling your story, resetting the chess piece on the board after life clears the coffee table.

And the only way out is through.

The only person who can pull you up and out is you.

Gone are the day of being told. Now are the days of telling, deciding, weighing, and doing.

It's a lot, my friends.

I've been talking to a young person trying to find his first job. It's awful, brutal, so hard. I get it. I remember. I got my first job coming off the recession that ended in the mid-nineties. Then I was working in an Internet start-up in 2000 when that bubble burst. And it's cute, because when I say the bubble burst to young people, they think I mean 2008. No, friend, that was the year after I sold my first house at a loss and went tens of thousands into debt. That year, I had a four-year-old and life got REALLY REAL because there was a little person in daycare that meant things to my career and my earning potential and my need to be available at home. I made some career-limiting choices to be present for the four-year-old, for the recession.

I don't regret those decisions, but that doesn't mean they didn't happen.

Up. And Down. And Up. It's okay, parents, to make decisions in your career for your kids and then later wish you hadn't needed to. That's human. And that's parenting. Learning to adult means weighing everyone's needs before you make a decision. And sometimes, it's not fun.

Young person, I said. I remember how hard it was to get a job at twenty-two. It's not that much easier at forty-four. The only way out is through.

And the only one who can save you is you.

Don't you give up, Kelly Clarkson.

It appears to be true that we shrink as we age.

In height, I mean. And maybe our hands.

I always thought when I was a child and observed my friends' mothers (not mine, so much, because mine didn't wear a lot of makeup), that I hoped I would never become one of those people who looked completely different without makeup.

I fear I have become that woman, mostly because when I don't wear makeup, suddenly my features seem ... small.

And I wonder ... is it just our outlook that is outsized when we're in our twenties? Does the realization that broken bones and cancer and organ shutdowns are real things cramp our ability to stand up straight?

Was I really different in my twenties, was I actually taller? Did pregnancy really make my foot bones spread so much I lost height? What's happened to my pelvic floor? Holy shit, am I actually shrinking?

I know my own parents are an inch or so shorter than they were when they were my age. My maternal grandmother had osteoporosis and a bit of a hump that literally robbed her of many inches. And as I grow older and face job insecurities again, it occurs to me that I'm no longer the precocious young one in the room as I spent so much of my internet-bubble youth being.

I've noticed the older women get, the bigger their diamonds. I always in the past attributed it to means, but now I wonder if the diamonds just look bigger on hands that shrink with age.

I look at other women's hands, because I'm at the age where I'm kind of past the diamond fuck-it point. It happens. I'm there.

At this point, I look at a lot of things and wonder ... why?

And as I accompany my dear female friends on this journey of life, I do see some of us starting to shrink. Hands getting smaller, diamonds looking bigger, hugs maybe a little more important as each year goes by. I'm not an old woman by any stretch, but maybe now I'm a woman who takes notice. Where I used to notice engagements and babies, I now track hospital visits and graduations.

I see my friends much more closely than I did. I feel their presence in the room.

I don't want anyone to feel small as they get older.

My birthday is next week. The little angel's is in a few months. She's not little anymore -- she'll be 14. So will this blog.

Everything I start to write I just select and delete. I'm not really sure what I want to say. It's a new year ... 2018. This year (next week), I will turn 44. My daughter in April will turn 14. My marriage in June will turn 17. 

God, the passage of time is relentless, isn't it?

We've started talking about when Lily ... I always had this grand plan of doing a great outing of her identity when she turned thirteen, but I'm almost a year too late ... the little angel's name is Lily Jane Arens ... will soon be driving and have an even greater level of independence ... of even when she will graduate and leave the house ... not because we want that to happen or because we're looking forward to it, but because it is actually going to happen, and if we don't prepare for it, it will catch us by surprise. 

I thought I would do this great outing, but it turns out that the world moved on while I wasn't looking, and she doesn't need my help at all. I got her Twitter and her URL reserved when she was born, and now it's possible that tech is outdated for her generation. 

Ha!

My daughter doesn't need me to shepherd her into the digital world. I thought she would, but she doesn't. Funny, considering my career trajectory. Nothing can prepare us for what comes next.

I'm all over but I haven't been here in a while and I think I might in fact be the only person who still reads this blog. If that's the case, ha, Rita, can you even believe you're writing this on the Chromebook you asked for at Christmas after getting jealous of Lily's light little device? Or that I'm still working on Parker Cleaves but no longer feel even the slightest trace of guilt that it's taking so long? That I no longer expect anyone will notice if I publish another book, nor do I feel too bad about that?

Who is this evolved individual who doesn't torture herself over lack of writerly accomplishment? Oh, me, the one who worked and worked for just such things and realized the world can still move on, no matter how much you hate that.

I come back to this space because it's still mine, as long as Typepad maintains its death grip. The app already stopped working about six months ago, so who knows what will become of Surrender, Dorothy when Typepad goes belly up. I used to save everything down once a month, but at this point, I'm a cowgirl. I'm all, "hey, I can create new words if the old ones go away." That is crazy. Who am I to not worry about losing past work? Who am I to believe my big fat brain can conjure up new ones if the old ones get flushed?

There is comfort and joy as a creative to trust you will make new words that will be just as good as the old ones. I spent half my life worrying I would lose what I had written. It has only been in the past few years I've learned to trust that there are more where all the old ones came from. My stories will just get better because they'll be informed by everything that came before, and more and more is coming before.

I started my career when I was half as old as I will be next week. 

I've been thinking about that girl I was then.

I've been thinking about fear, and career paths, and money, and making it work. I've been thinking about being hit by a bus or really bad cancer tomorrow. I've been thinking about what it will feel like when my daughter leaves home. 

I've been looking in the mirror and asking, what's next?

And I've realized, if I ever stop asking what's next --- shoot me now.

One of the weird things about letting my girl read THE OBVIOUS GAME is that she's had more of a window than is probably good and right into my teenage years. So when I came home today from my twenty-fifth high school reunion and told her about how when my classmate driving the pick-up pulling the haybale-stacked float for the big Homecoming parade circled the town square three times and then just ... drove ... it reminded her of the sled scene in my book. Stupid, and dangerous, and totally, unfathomably fun.

---

And when I told her about coronation and how the president of my senior class made a lovely speech and told the bored seniors how they really could do anything jumping off from the platform of our small town, she asked if it was the same coronation I wrote about in my book. And it was. It's in a new building, but nothing's changed. The names of the kids are the same last names I grew up with. The smiling parents are now my age, but they're the same. The teenagers may have new concepts in what makes facial hair fashionable for boys or formal wear appropriate for girls, but they have the same impatience for the dance I remember. I'm just on the other side now.

---

But the ride. Sitting on a haybale on a flatbed on a float with people I've known since kindergarten or more and driving down the highway at least 45 miles an hour to a neighboring town, a neighboring bar, where the extra tables are made of plywood and the video games still take quarters ... that was like stepping into the past. Not having my husband and daughter along heightened the surreal quality because I, for once, had nowhere to be and no time to be there. I didn't even have a car this weekend. I was dependent on rides from other people, just like high school. And the same people stuffed me in their vehicles who had in tenth grade when I was a little late to get a license, Lisa, and it was awesome.

I told them it hasn't been since John Mellancamp any song has made me miss my hometown until Ed Sheeran's Castle on the Hill, because of this: "But these people raised me."

---

Because despite what a hot mess I was my senior year of high school -- and I know I was, all of you guys, and I'm sorry I wasn't more present and a better friend, but trust me when I say I'm just glad to still be here to share these days with you, because it was that bad, so please forgive me -- you people did raise me, for better or worse.

And this weekend when everyone just hung together on those haybales flying down that highway, laughing to '80s music and forgetting we have kids and jobs and mortgages, I understood maybe better than I ever did that you raised me. We had such a small group for so long, so different than the way my daughter is growing up with a middle school of 800 and a high school of 1200. We were lucky to have 100 in our graduating class. We didn't all have expectations we would go on to more school, and I wish we'd bring that back and be okay with it in my suburb today.

---

I read today an article about how kids now are physically safer than ever before but maybe too chained to their phones. When my girl asked me if it was smart to ride the float 15 miles, I realized, okay, NO, it wasn't, but at the same time I used my phone only as a camera and a way to send Bon Jovi to the Bluetooth speaker and at one point it became so coated in gravel dust I couldn't read the screen.

And friends, I felt alive.

Just like the me I used to be, and maybe still am.

I had an internal goal of getting a job offer by my birthday and having a salary coming in by the time my husband finished this leg of his business trip. He has two weeks to go. I start February 13.

I am not the same person I was on August 23, 2016. I look at work and life differently now. In most ways, it's a good thing and change that needed to happen. I was 22 when I got my first real job, so I'm just starting the second trimester of my career now. If I want to demolish the metaphor, perhaps the queasiness and uncertainty will abate now so I can focus on what I know I can do and what I hope to learn next.

Yesterday I bagged up about one-third of my wardrobe for donation. I've worked from home for seven years and so most of my clothes were procured through clothing swaps and Goodwill in good neighborhoods. I didn't buy or get as gifts as much as I bagged up, but the luxury of office-worthy clothes in my closet feels quite indulgent. I hope I never forget what that feels like, the gratitude for the chance to fulfill a road I once thought a master's degree would let me take for granted.

This world is not that world. We all feel it.

More and more I read that world, the one our parents had after WWII, wasn't actually real, either, but an anomaly in human history. Regardless, right now is the time to be thankful for a job and focus on the abundance that can be found in human relationships regardless of everything else. Dappled light through trees. The smell of living things.

My daughter had asked me what I wanted for my birthday, and I got it. All I wanted was a job, the ability to provide for my family and move forward into the next chapter. I got that, and I wish I could tell my 22-year-old self how important the ability to work would become later in life. How low and yet high my expectations would become. How good health would seem like the ultimate prize after losing access to a prescription for months, causing my body to stop absorbing vitamin D. How much easier it would be to get out of bed when the right medicine came back.

How awful true fatigue feels.

How much of a gift "normal" really is.

For my 43 birthday, I wanted to feel normal.

🎉

I just watched the last episode of season 2 of The Man in the High Castle. At one point, a character is rightfully freaking the hell out, and as he leaves, her husband just says, "I love you."

Everything's about to hit the fan. He really should explain himself. But he doesn't.

All my life, I've been an over-explainer, a justifier. If I've learned anything in the past few months, it's that most people neither need nor want the whole story. If your story is bad or scary, it makes them uncomfortable, because if they respect you, what happened to you could happen to them. I've seen that fear on many faces in the past few months in my daily interactions. I don't care to scare people, only to survive my own challenges.

Sometimes underexplaining is a gift to all parties.

I came up in blogging in an era when raw truth was in fashion, and I am quite adept at that. As I've grown older, my taste has gone, perhaps, from raw to cooked. I now wish to see what will happen first, and as such I've felt less inclined to write anything but fiction. Because, well, fiction is really truth reframed and less personal, right?

I'm at a point now at which I feel less sure of who I am than I have been since high school. I suppose it's my midlife shift. I choose not to view it as a crisis. However, I'm curious as to who this evolving me will be and what she'll care about. Certain things -- integrity, kindness -- have not changed. But others have.

Onward.

When I was younger, I was always positive I was right.

The older I get, I realize all our politics are the same. Only the hero is different.

My father has a saying: "Sometimes you're the windshield, and sometimes you're the bug."

That echoes in my mind almost daily. I don't relish being either, but I get we are all both, depending on the situation.

With the national events of the past few weeks and my own usual tendency to absorb emotion wherever I find it, I've grown agitated. It primes me to be the asshole.

That's not a great feeling, to realize you actually want to turn people away at the door, just because you're mad.

That's where I've been, though. Even though that's not how I see myself.

It's disconcerting to realize you could be the stone stuck in a craw, the branch across a road. But we all believe we are heroes of our own stories, and that's important to remember as we move through the world.

Everyone thinks he or she is right.

And therein lies the rub.

"So you're turning 21 tomorrow?" I asked. The kid had high color in his cheeks and a scar on his arm. He threw the rope with the strength of the young.

"Yeah," he said. He was from up East staying in his folks' Florida condo for the summer, mating on the parasail boat.

"So that makes me exactly twice your age," I said, toeing the dock. "I feel old." Sometimes I fool cashiers if I have my hat on, but only until they look into my eyes and see the years and the learning and the lines.

"But in twenty minutes, he'll be where you are," said the other mate, the older mate who hailed from Kansas City, too. We'd parasailed with him twice before. I liked him. He felt like home, even in the boat.

I glanced at him, confused.

"Remember, twenty minutes ago, when you were 21?"

And I did.

I glanced at my 12-year-old daughter.

Twenty minutes ago.

Yeah.

"In twenty minutes, he'll be your age," the mate from KC said. "Twenty years goes by in a flash."

I wrapped that up and put it aside in my head, because it was so true. Battened down the hatches for twenty minutes more.