Over-50

Like Unhappy Families, Setbacks Are All Different

Twice-fired basketball coach John Calipari wrote a wonderful guide to getting back on our feet after setbacks.  In his book "Bounce Back," he makes it clear that life has a number of setbacks, not just one we fix, learn from, and then live smoothly ever after. 

Another point he makes is that setbacks, like Tolstoy's notion of unhappy families, are all different.  Therefore, although we learned from the one we had when we were 55 and lost a job, we shouldn't try to superimpose those lessons on the new crisis.  That will only keep us stuck.

The book is both inspirational and yet firm in leading us away from the worst mindsets and behaviors when a career or a personal matter sours.  For example, he rails against hiding, that is isolating ourselves from the world.  Being out there will help us heal quicker and devise a solid plan to moving forward.

What the book did for me is to stop my attempt to remedy my most recent professional setback with the tactics I used in 2003 (Download Geezerguts).  Had I recognized this mistake earlier I might have already cleared away the obstacles I am still dealing with now.

"The Man Who Quit Money" - Could we pull that off, we Baby Boomers again wonder

Back in our counterculture days some of us Baby Boomers actually did simplify our lives to the point that very little money was required.  Today, as we got used to getting by with less money during the worst of the downturn, we are back to wondering if we could possibly quit the system and just live out there in nature. 

Well, Daniel Suelo tried doing that in 2000.  Right now he's 50 years old and still at it.  He's free, highly social, and healthy.  Earlier in his life he made a serious suicide attempt, along with enduring bouts of depression.

His journey from being a job-holder to making it without a dime is told by his friend Mark Sundeen in "The Man Who Quit Money."  The story is compelling in itself.  What might be most useful is that it clearly shows how much work living outside capitalism demands.  Daily Suelo has to find food, ensure he can have a roof over his head, be hyper careful about not getting sick, keep himself clean, go to the public library to use the Internet, and get where he needs to be by walking or hitching a ride. 

"The Man Who Quit Money" convinced me to continue to earn a buck.  Today I had a birthday.  I couldn't imagine having to do what Suelo does just to stay alive.  Maybe when I was a younger woman I would have considered that lifestyle an adventure.  At my age I require continuity in the availability of my creature necessities and comforts.

Boy Scout Bob Woodward Might Lose Merit Badge or Two

We Baby Boomers came of political age watching the Watergate hearings. Some of some of us changed our majors to journalism because of how WaPo reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein turned up the ugly underbelly of abuse of power in the Nixon administration.

Now, we are being presented with persuasive "evidence" that Woodward might have made his pursuit of the truth a bit more theatrical than it really was.  Piled on that is the amazing reality that his former boss Ben Bradlee is among those questioning Woodward's total veracity.  The media are milking the speculative part of the story, that is, why is Bradlee turning on Woodward?

Meanwhile the media are also wondering how boy scout Woodward, who didn't implode like Bernstein, feels about losing a merit badge or two.

If I were a bookie in Jersey City, I would be taking bets how long this story will be hot.  Woodward can turn up the flame by total and explicit denial of each accusation.  Baby Boomers might enjoy watching him sweat.

Christopher Hitchens: Reflections on mortality

My circles include lots of literary types.  For years they would talk about what Christopher Hitchens had just published in VANITY FAIR or his latest book.  They talked about his illness when he was dying of cancer.  Then they talked about how much of a loss it was when he died.  Now they don't talk about him at all. 

Will people stop talking about us too after we pass over?

The Steve Jobs in So Many of Us Baby Boomers

Remember when so many of us were just as brash and mouthy as Steve Jobs?  This weekend I read his biography by Walter Isacson.  The behavior mirrored how we comported ourselves after we broke away from the vestiges of the Eisenhower era.

Of course, that wild freedom doesn't last long, at least for ordinary people.  Jobs could keep up the amazing performance art of the perfectionist until the day he lost consciousness.  We had to surrender to the need to earn a living like the rest of mortal man.  We learned to be cautious, including in thinking before we spoke. 

And, given the dicey economy, we have probably become even more conventionally socialized.  I wonder, though, how we will be out there in professional life if the economy really takes off? Will we default to our counterculture selves?

Pat Buchanan: Old enough to have known better

The world had changed and political analyst Pat Buchanan hadn't changed with it.  His views, as he expressed on MSNBC and in his book "Suicide of a Superpower" were too coldly far right for these time of economic suffering.  Instead of generating a national conversation, his tone and content shut down debate.

No surprise, Buchanan got the ax from MSNBC.  At his age he should have known better.  As we age we learn the need for flexibility.  That's exactly the message of Lewis Richmond in his breakthrough book "Aging as a Spiritual Practice."

The payoff from that, observes Richmond, can be extraordinary.  On page 29, he says:

" ... those who remain flexible and roll with the punches age the best, stay the healthiest, and live the longest."

They also keep their jobs or their clients. 

Kurt Vonnegut: He got distracted

One-time influential novelist Kurt Vonnegut became tedious in the last years of his career.  When he gave lectures at colleges like Smith students were puzzled about how out of touch he was.  After those events journalists laid into him.  That's all there in "And So It Goes," a new biography by Charles J. Shields. 

In those 415 pages we get the pieces of man who suffered greatly in his youth.  He was an outcast in a family and culture which respected science.  His family lost their wealth during The Great Depression.  His mother couldn't adjust to being ordinary and killed herself on Mother's Day. He was a POW in World War II during the destruction of Dresden by the Allied Forces.  Yet, Vonnegut had the focus to leverage that pain into truly original fiction. 

So, why did he get distracted and became a caricature of the character he used to be?  And how can other aging giants like Clint Eastwood, Betty White, and Hillary Clinton keep their eye on the ball?

The answer might be in framing fan worship as a peril.  Vonnegut saw it as his due, almost his salvation.  It's been observed that after people develop brandnames it's likely they will get stuck.  That's because their attention is taken up with being out there, not being within themselves continuing to do well what differentiated them from the pack.  Examples range from Truman Capote to Joseph Heller.

Vonnegut could have stayed Vonnegut.

Aging: Everyone's talking about Lewis Richmond's "Aging as a Spiritual Practice"

Networks are useful for catching up on everything from memes to gossip.  Tonight All The Single Girlfriends, headed by marketer Toby Bloomberg, got on the subject of aging.  That was expected since our mission is to rebrand that part of life.

From the get-go, the conversation focused on Lewis Richmond's new book "Aging as a Spiritual Practice."

What grabbed us all - a number of us had already read it - was his candid advice to surrender to the process and exit denial.  Once we did that our new self would take over and make our lives more productive and satisfying than we ever anticipated.

Richmond is right on the money.  Last week I read the book, after bumping into a review of it in the media.  It was a relief to drop the old me and go with with the 66-year-old version.  This week I am nailing down more assignments than I had in a long while. Sure, the economy is recovering but the new me also plays a role.

All The Single Girlfriends is a network of single women over-40 who treasure what a girlfriend can bring into our lives.  Take a look at our website and decide if you want to join.  Here is the post I published on that website about all that - and more.

Baby Boomer Posse: Extreme help for victims of ageism

BUSINESS INSIDER tells the story of J.R. Childress, 53.  Employers want a younger expert on construction.  After being laid off twice recently, he remains unemployed.  Can Baby Boomers in his community and online form a posse to parachute in and help those over-50 who are victims of ageism?  You bet.

That unkind commentary about Madonna performing during halftime on the SuperBowl confirmed that there is plenty of ageism out there.  We can't deny it.  And we shouldn't, advises Lewis Richmond, a Zen priest who just published "Aging as a Spiritual Practice."  In it, he explains that aging is real - so real that we have to surrender our old self and leverage the new self to seek out opportunity. 

Richmond is on the money.  Yes, too many of us chase regaining the past we had and that was all we knew about professional success.  I coached a man who had been  behind many of the breakthrough television shows of the 1990s.  His contacts are gone and that's not really his interest any more.  But he is chasing it because he wants to feel good about himself again. He now has a posse to help guide him out of the past and into leveraging his talents in the now.

How do you put together a posse?  Find professionals operating in reality and ask them to be there for you to deconstruct both your successes and failures.  My own posse grew out of those I met through groups I sampled.  Now they not only are there for me but for each other.

What I got out of my posse includes:

• Insight about glut areas I was in, such as journalism. I got out of those into fields in which I could bring my years of expertise analyzing business issues.  One has been financial writing.
• Risk-taking so I could take on assignments in which I knew I could get up to speed but didn't already have down cold.
• Applying the 80/20 or Pareto rule, that is, 80% of our revenues come from 20% of our clients.  I came to be more selective about the accounts I pitched for and kept.

"Blue Nights" - Joan Didion reflects on aging and loss

The commercial world hammers the meme of aging as a relaxed time when we are free to enjoy our friends, hobbies, and memories.  In "Blue Nights," Joan Didion takes on that upbeat spin. 

In this book which sorts through the death of her daughter Quintana Roo, Didion reflects on the pain of the many other kinds of losses which inevitably come with getting older.  Some of those are so painful that, no, we don't enjoy the memories, not at all.

Is it possible to reset our way of seeing the world to focus on what is right now, not what was?  Since May, I have been trying to do just that.  My business surged.  Also, my life has become more open to letting new people in. 

Is it the past which circumvents the present for the aging?  Could we accomplish so much more if we simply let go of what had been?