thoughts on the cusp of april
Sometimes I have moments where the fact of my age is even a surprise to me. I am all for aging gracefully, but I also feel perpetually like I aged to 26 and just stopped at the time when my adult-self was most fully formed. I do recall spending my late teens and most of my twenties wishing that people saw me as an adult, but then again, never really felt that way myself. It may have to deal with lifetsyle. When most people were marrying and having kids and buying property, I was freewheeling through my 30s and 40s with no desire to "settle down" (and really still have no desire to change things now, despite tying the knot this summer, I just have someone else to freewheel it with...lol..)
For many of my friends and cousins, having kids seemed to shoot them into adulthood and responsibility in new ways, but I have no such markers or transitions from one kind of being. I feel like I was always in school and then I was 26 and in my first real job after grad school. Everything else has mostly been a continuance of that state. Sure, I've done things. I pursued my MFA, started businesses, published books. Rented studio spaces, and learned to make art. Evolved through a series of suffocating more and more departments and job duties at the library, then struck off on my own. There were times when I was dating a lot and times when I was dating very little. When I had more money and when I had less money. When I went out more socially, drank more, cast a wider net for friendships. Other times when I barely left my apartment. Years when I did a million readings and book events and years where I did none. Years where I read every book in my TBR stack and years, and others where I made it through just a handful. Years where I wrote entire books or just a few scraggly poems that weren't very good.
Professionally, at least my former profession, didn't have a lot of upward mobility since my grad degrees were in everything but library science. I tried to make it work despite it all, but aside from some good times and some cooler things we were able to do, there wasn't much potential for growth there. In writing, my "career" whatever that is, has a jagged and wandering trajectory though the woods and out the other side. I love the writing I get to do now, which feels more like play most of the time and less like work (though admittedly the past two months have pierced a hole in my concentration and flow. I am less productive and struggle to focus more, but I think we were all having the same problem with , ya know, the whole downfall of democracy. I get to wake up and write about interesting things, and though sometimes I am drowning in word counts and deadlines, most of the time it feels like its tenable in a way work never was at the library.
It occurred to me a little while ago that I glossed right over the third anniversary of my freedom in early February. That first February and into the spring I spent paralyzed and unsure if I would be okay without a full time w/ benefits job. Thankfully, after a year, I had a certain amount of stability and felt much better about my decision. Especially as I began to see things changing (less gray hairs even still, my vision problems/dry eye went away.) While my anxiety is still always there, I know when its spiking now and can adjust as needed. Even though I still need to make an effort to be more active (and still need to do more in terms of more walks and dance workouts) most of the time I do not greet the day in the state I used to. I certainly eat better and drink much more water (less delivery and vending machine snacks) and just sleep better in general. I still pull 40 hour weeks or more, especially when you add in press and poetry work, but I also make a bit more money and have control to dial it up or down as needed. The bonus is I also have my nights free in a way I never did before, even without the drawback of early mornings. Most days, we drink coffee and eat breakfast rather leisurely before I settle in for work (J usually runs errands or plays video games since most of his work is by night over weekends when he makes the bulk of his income .)
As I get ready to celebrate the turn of another year at the end of this month, I can take solace in the much better state of life, at least on a micro level if not a macro one, I find myself in that is wholly more healthy than the one I was living before...I'm sure it has as much to do with age and mindset, a certain sliding back into yourself that middle age brings, but so far I am not hating it...
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