This...

….is me! An average, American woman, who’ll be 50 in about three weeks! Where does the time go, my friends? How do we go from youngsters with small children, to middle aged folks, with adult children chasing their dreams? I don’t understand it, that’s for sure!
I fought the idea of creating a blog for the longest time. Now, understand that I love to write…I love to read…I love…words. I am, as my roomie would lovingly put it…contrary. My life was not interesting enough. My writing was mediocre, at best. And…people I loved were asking me to do it. Telling me they thought I’d enjoy it! So, I fought it. I clung to flimsy excuses to not do it, instead of taking the plunge. They were right. I love it. I am finding that as much as I love to see that people are reading this and that they like it…it is more for me. It’s a refuge for my ever-thinking mind, where those thoughts that swirl constantly, must be controlled, edited, and placed on a page in such an order as to be of interest! Do others think about the things I think about? Do they think in the same way I do? I will never know unless!-I write what I think down on ‘paper’. I’ve seen the effect my own daughter’s blog has had on me. it’s thrilling to go there and see what she’s doing! The fact that she takes the time to take pictures and write down her thoughts & activities (and having the ability to see she’s an excellent writer!) is stunning. It also makes me sad that I fought it for so long…but glad that I gave in and did this! I love my family, I miss them terribly, and I believe they will recoginize ‘me’ in the words on these pages. That excites me in a way I never dreamed possible!

Bucket Lists?

Do you have one? Do you think we need them? Recently, a friend I chat with made an incredibly lucid point when we were on this subject. He said (and I am paraphrasing from memory) that his idea of a ‘Bucket list’ might be kind of the reverse of what is meant in general. He likes the idea of having the bucket there, but having it empty, so that it can be filled with things…not that you might do…or even want to do SOMEday…but with things that you ARE doing. Things of import, things of interest, things you’ve put off for too long…so that when you exit this realm, your bucket isn’t empty, or worse, doesn’t have an inch of stagnant water standing at the bottom, but is filled to the brim and overflowing with things you did that helped make your life…well….your LIFE! A life well lived is the best legacy we can leave for the generations that come after us. I am reminded of when my father passed suddenly in 2001. It was stunning, heartbreaking, unexpected…and in retrospect, humbling. My father was born, raised, lived and died in the same tiny community. However, when he passed at the age of 62 (which looks awfully young from 50!) there were folks who waited in line for 45 minutes to speak to my mom, my siblings, and myself of the impact my father’s life had had on them. He was one of those people who’d never met a stranger, was larger than life, and loved & lived unreservedly. I miss him….I miss the effect he had on my life. I miss his sometimes embarrassing loudness (lol),his crushing handshake, his arm pulling me in close for a hug, just because I was his daughter and he loved me. He was not a perfect man,  by any stretch, but he lived life on his own terms, did good as much as possible, and in the end, had an impact I think he would have been stunned to see! So…a Bucket list? I think not.  I am going to try to live my life full out, unrestrained…after all, I had an awesome example!

Medals Of Honor

This is an article that was self published several years ago. All rights reserved. Portions have been reworked.

Pain should be displayed like a medal of honor. Hold it! Before you disregard that first sentence, hear me out, okay?

I am not saying it should be proudly displayed for all the world to see and exclaim over. Rather, we should wear the discreet modifications it makes in us proudly. We should not hide behind them, ashamed of what people may think if they see our scars. Neither should we wave them in people’s faces so blatantly that they are left with little or no compassion for the path we’ve walked.

Medals of honor are worn on special occasions, to remind us of heroic moments in our lives. That is the essence of pain.  As we make our way through an emotionally turbulent time, we must sometimes use heroic measures to reach the relative safety of emotional balance.

Once we have been in the mire of pain, we can not possibly be the same. Sometimes, we don’t want to own the changes it produces in our lives. Nevertheless, they are there.

At times, while in the midst of some great upheaval, we are allowed to clearly see someone else’s pain. Not because ‘misery loves company’, but because the natural human tendency is to respond to pain we see in someone else. Just knowing that others have experienced pain, even if it is totally different than ours, can give us the encouragement to say, “I will press on!”

This is not always an easy lesson to learn, for we also have a natural tendency to want to focus on our own situation, disregarding what is plainly seen in other’s lives.

True heroes in the realm of pain are those who have survived adversity in the face of overwhelming odds, and triumphed. They are battered, bruised, and yes, scarred, but they are triumphant. This does not mean they have conquered a certain disease or totally mended a broken relationship. What it does mean is that their emotions have been conquered to the point that they can accept the solution presented to the problem (or pain, if you will) at hand.

Pain is truly vanquished not when physical or emotional symptoms disappear, but when we can feel those symptoms, strong as they may be, and still press on toward the goal

The Frustration of Being...

…single….or unemployed…..or overweight…..or any of a number of other adjectives! Frustration mounts, no matter what it’s about, and the only thing to do to get through it successfully, is to push through. Look for solutions, or at the very least, distractions, so that your focus is not always on what makes you feel negative. Look at what is good in your life. Make yourself take account of things you might not even glance at…this will help your attitude, most of the time. Realizing there are good things in your life, helps re-balance the delicate scales of emotional health. For me, I find that finding something to distract me…be it cleaning, watching a movie, going for a walk, treating myself to a cup of freshly ground coffee…anything that relaxes me and helps me to go outside the realm of frustration, ultimately gets me back to that place of balance. Learning there are things in life beyond our control….is an incredibly hard lesson to learn. At least it has been for me. It’s a continuous process, and most often, a lesson that needs to be re-learned daily. Not second guessing myself, not looking for the quick answer (which I LOVE!), and trying to take life as it comes, learning to be thankful for the good things that happen, and trying to learn from the rest. I believe this approach will bring a fantastic payoff when the thing I am wishing or waiting for finally happens!

The First Step To Recovery...

…is to admit you have a problem!  Or so they say! My name is Penny…and I love to chat. Since beginning the process of living on my own almost four years ago now, I discovered I would have a lot of time…empty time…alone time…that would need to be filled. So, with limited resources and a keen curiosity, I set out to discover the world of instant messaging, chat rooms, email, and the wealth of information that is at your fingertips….just a click away, on the information highway a.k.a the World Wide Web or internet. If you’re a user/friend on my Yahoo Messenger list, you’ll see a tiny tiara next to my name. It means I’m signed in…a lot. It means I know how to use the features of Yahoo Messenger, and that I do so on an extremely regular basis. That tiny crown goes to the top 5% of Yahoo Messenger users…and I wear it proudly! I type in pink, whether I am on I M, or in a chat room. I look for nunaces in writing. Different styles, forms. I use emoticons…because they’re just so cute!

One of the few people to remain on my Yahoo Messenger list since the beginning, is a guy I met in a chat room on MySpace about four years ago. Yep…they had them, but they’re now defunct. He coined the phrase “Intimate Strangers” for how we tend to see our relationships in the online world. We’re intimate…because we choose to interact with one or more specific groups of people on a regular basis…be it hourly, daily, weekly, etc. Yet…we remain strangers, most often never even hearing the actual voice of the folks we call friends. We become invested in their real lives, yet with a lot of them, we’d never know it was them if they were sitting in a booth next to us in our favorite restaurant. We tease, cajole, get crushes, get rebuffed, get hurt, flirt, make a general nuisance of ourselves…all in an effort to form some sort of community, so we do not feel as alone as we know we are once we’ve turned off the piece of plastic that helped us ‘meet’ these people. My chatting has led me to where I am today. The roommate I live with, I met…(you guessed it!)…chatting.

A little about me...

Hmmmm….how does one accurately describe themselves…or can we ever be completely accurate about who we are? It’s cliche’, I know…but we really are a combination of who others think we are, who we perceive ourselves to be, and who we actually are. I like to think that I am bold, forthright, funny…a woman who is unafraid to look at herself in the mirror…and see what is really there! So…the basics (I promise to try not to bore you!) I’m single. I have three healthy, well-adjusted, productive, adult children…(yeah, I’m kinda proud of that fact!) I love cats, though I don’t own any at the moment. Coffee, chocolate, a walk along the beach at sunset, squishing my toes in the wet sand, sandals hanging precariously from one finger. I love frilly stuff, but hate to paint my toenails. A great conversation that’s thought provoking, is far more of a turn on to me than just a handsome face. I love flowers, wearing a dress just because, and driving my very cool car (more about that topic later!). As you’ve probably already noticed, I tend to overuse exclamation points and elipses as I write…but they’re just so much fun, I find it easy to forgive myself for this indulgence. Just a few short months ago, I moved from Michigan to Florida…(I was tired of the ice and snow). The past few months have been grueling, rewarding, sad, happy, private, telling…and completely unlike what I thought they’d be.

My First Attempt

Welcome to my page! If you were browsing ‘meat’, and stumbled here anyway…I hope you enjoy this! “Finding Me At 50″ is my attempt to find a voice…my own voice…in the middle of the chaos that is this adventure we call life. Any blog posts you see here are my original (or not so original!) thoughts and ideas. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them. And, along the way if something I write…or someone else’s response to what I write helps you, teaches you, or lets you see things from a whole new perspective, then this blog will have done its job. Thank you, and…enjoy!