When I had two young kids in my house I wrote this piece about my writing career and my life. Now let’s talk about you specifically: 35 is not middle aged, it’s “I Was Twenty Nine A Minute Ago.” Moreover, there is no way on earth to be anything but mediocre when you have two toddlers in your house. It’s ugly and if you don’t see the proof everywhere, you’re not paying attention. The essential confusion that sets in… I mean, we don’t even want to know. Some people can handle the particular mixed blessings of wealth and popularity and scrutiny and others (MANY!) are simply too anxiously attached and too sensitive and too tormented by their own guilt and self-recrimination to thrive. Interview a few famous celebrities with Forever Money in the bank. Go to a luxury hotel and talk to some rich motherfuckers. Guilt over how you should feel is a nightmare realm many people never escape from. Just like the belief that you ARE your sickness and some merciful god spared you a nasty fate that was your birthright, nothing will make you more unhappy more quickly than the belief that your luck means you SHOULD BE HAPPY AND AMBITIOUS AND PRODUCTIVE or you’re an ingrate. And the absolute worst part of being lucky is the guilt it incurs. I get letters from lucky people who feel paralyzed and lost all the time. Celebrities and evangelicals like to go on and on about their good luck and good fortune, but trust me, they’re mostly trying to remind themselves of everything they have, because most of them can’t feel it. ![]() Is she also lucky to be alive? If she were my neighbor and she said that to me, she would be. YOU SPECIFICALLY ARE LUCKY JUST TO BE HERE! In her mind, your sickness was an essential part of your identity and your fate, and now that you’ve escaped that curse, you should be thanking the gods every morning for sparing your life. ![]() I love that your neighbor said you’re lucky to be alive. Is this a phase? How can I feel fulfilled by the life that I have? But sometimes I feel like I am spinning my wheels and I would really like to do more than cope with the way things are. I have a therapist I can talk to about all of this. ![]() I have picked up a slew of little practices that help (yoga, walks, meditation, sleep, anything a “wellness” blog could recommend, short of wheatgrass and B12 shots). Sometimes I feel like a casualty of those elementary school motivational posters: Shoot for the moon and you will land among the stars! I don’t feel like I reached the moon or the stars. My yard does have a fence I have those two great kids I did get married in a way that felt very right for us at the time. And I have a job where I do a lot of reading (most of it shitty essays written by teenagers, but still reading). I was just a nerd who loved school and books. I feel like I really missed the boat to make radical change.īut do I even want change? Growing up I never had concrete dreams like the white picket fence or X number of kids or a wedding or anything like that. I went back to work teaching freshman composition. Someone wakes up from a coma and decides to become a chef or finally move to France or tell their hot neighbor how they really feel. We have so many stories about people who have a health scare or medical emergency followed by an epiphany. I don’t have it in me to “publish” my way out of my job (and I know the realities of the academic job market, having adjuncted and worked exceptionally hard for the job I do have). ![]() I feel exhausted by everything I need to accomplish in a day and I also know that real change requires effort. Make that: I want more without having to do more. I have been back at it (work, living my life) for nearly a year now. My neighbor kindly (?) reminded me yesterday that I am lucky to be alive. I have no creative pursuits or outlets beyond some very entry-level gardening and most of my time is taken up with either family or work. I have (a version of) my dream job (English professor, not tenure-track), I have two adorable toddlers, a house, and no ambition. How do I accept mediocrity? Not in the world (ha! That is a question no philosopher can answer), but in myself? I suppose this is a mid-life crisis question (I am 35), but it also feels like a career or parenting or pandemic question, possibly all three. Red Hill Form - Badlands, New Mexico (1934) by Georgia O’Keeffe
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