Just watch it. You have time. You'll have a way better weekend if you do.
The leaves haven't even turned yet, but last night I found myself lying on my daughter's bed with a frowny face.
My husband walked in. "You look upset."
Me: "Yes."
Him: "Should we move out?"
Me: "No. I mean, maybe. But I think it's just me. You moving out might not help, so you should stay."
Him: "Gotcha."
I proceeded to try to explain that it's October and October means cold weather is coming, and I'm at the first revision stage of THE BIRTHRIGHT OF PARKER CLEAVES, which feels like getting all your syllabi on one day and wondering how the fuck you're going to get all that work done in one semester. And maybe I was having a There's No Point to Any of It day, the kind of day where you realize you're just going to have to make the bed again tomorrow and you can be a totally awesome worker and then you'll retire and three years later the entire department will have turned over and someone will ask who the hell made the decision for the border to be goddamn orange and if you do publish books, they'll eventually go out of print, even the ebooks will find a way to go out of print. One of those days.
I felt like when Louis CK tells Conan about that time when you're in traffic and you have the forever empty feeling because it's all for nothing and you're alone, and Conan looks at him like, I'm not sure I want to admit in public that I know exactly what you're talking about. Can someone please hand me a smartphone? I need to check Twitter.
Yeah. I had one of those days yesterday. I'm still trying to shake off that feeling that really nothing I do is important or worth doing and really, I'm pretty sure that's just my fear talking and I should just revise anyway, because that's what you do in order to occupy yourself until you die.
KIDDING.
Sort of. Because even if that's what it is, maybe that's still something worth doing.
Halfway.
The average lifespan in the United States is 78.2 years. I will be 39 on my next birthday.
Halfway.
There is a part of me that feels as though I could go tomorrow having lived a full life.
There is a part of me that prays every night I will live to be the little angel's mother for a long, long time.
I have so many friends who have already lost parents. I have not lost mine.
I have so many friends who have lost children. I have not lost mine.
The average number of close friends people have is two.
I have more than that.
I am blessed.
Because I know and care about so many people through the wonder of the Internet and my job, I am subjected daily to their sorrows and their strengths. I realize, perhaps more than any generation before me, how completely normal everything that happens to me really is. I have bad days, I have good days, and that is normal. The universe is chaotic, and peace comes from within. I believe in God, but I also believe my God is both empathetic and hands-off. We learn from our chaos. We get another day, but the next day might suck. If we didn't have the low points, we wouldn't appreciate the high ones. There is a need to balance darkness and light.
My daughter is upstairs sleeping. I wanted her very badly, and then I didn't want more children. I hope she will not be upset with me when she is halfway, and I am as old as my parents, and she is looking upon potentially being the only one left when we are gone.
I pray she will have more than two close friends. I pray her friends will be her sisters and brothers, because even though I treasure my sister more than I can say, I'm also thankful for the other friends who have stepped in when my relatives can't be right by my side. I think people get planted for us when we need them, virtually and physically. I believe in paying it forward. I believe in answering the emails I get weekly from women struggling with eating disorder recovery. I believe in the woman I saw in the Serenity Suite crying for Susan Niebur when I didn't realize that was what she was upset about. I was talking with my friends when she started crying, and I hope she doesn't hold against me that I didn't realize what she was doing. I didn't lose Susan in that I didn't know Susan well, but I've lost my own Susans and I understand that pain. I'm sorry, blonde woman. I hope you don't hold it against me.
Halfway.
When I thought on goals for my life in high school, they were grandiose. This year marks my twentieth high school reunion. I have reached an age in which many professionals look like teenagers to me. I wonder if the people I bonded with in high school will come back or if they will stay secure in their new lives and their new selves, not wanting to be reminded of who we were at eighteen. I don't hold it against them if they want to forget. I was sick when I was eighteen. What does anyone know of me then? I don't even remember it myself.
Have I gotten old?
I am only halfway.
Last weekend, I listened to Katie Couric talk about how much more she has to contribute now that she is in her fifties than when she was in her twenties, and I understand. As much as I miss the elastic skin of my twenties, I don't miss the angst. I don't miss the uncertainty.
I wonder if I will feel even better about who I am in another twenty years.
I wonder if this website will still exist.
I wonder if my novels will be published.
I wonder if my daughter will still want to be held by me.
I wonder if I will be the person I want to be.
I am halfway, and for some that would seem a bad thing, but for me it feels glorious. If I am lucky enough to achieve the average lifespan in the United States, I will have another whole 39 years to become twice as good as I am tonight, twice as meaningful. My words will hold twice as much weight as they do tonight. My grandparents lived to be fifty-something and eighty-two or eighty-three, three of them. I never met my maternal grandfather, but my other three grandparents were strong well into their late seventies and early eighties. They had so much to tell me in their last years.
I am halfway, I hope. And I have so much more to learn.
Despite the fact that I didn't have time to do it, I met a long-lost friend for a chat today.
I was twenty minutes late because my GPS took me to a house seven miles from the coffeeshop.
I burst through the door, beyond stressed, to see her cheerfully sitting there waiting, looking as chill and summery as a blossom.
We ended up talking for about an hour, and as our conversation wore on, I felt my pulse slowing from the being-late thing and the never-enough-time thing and enjoying the breeze and the sunshine and thinking how wise this friend was with all she had learned over the past year.
We talked about our ex-mutual workplace and the trade-off between time and money. Sometimes money equals time and sometimes time equals money and sometimes, though very rarely, they have nothing to do with each other.
While I still very much like money, I like it mostly because it means I can pay someone else to do the stuff I don't want to do so I have more time. It all keeps going back to time. I want time. I crave time. There seems to be no time. How does that happen? I looked recently at how I spent my day and tried to figure out what I did that was unnecessary. I came up with watering the flowers. Of course, if I stopped, they would die, but then I have to figure out how much I value the flowers -- which I think is a lot, because they bring me happiness and a sense of accomplishment.
So really, not that much is unnecessary.
So I'm starting to think time is the new money. What do you think? Which is more valuable to you right now?
Is this because I'm getting close to forty?