Over-50

The Edwards Family: Were they one of those unhappy ones Tolstoy talks about?

High profile families tend to cast spells on the rest of us ordinary people.  We Baby Boomers grew up watching the Kennedys.  Some of us wondered what it would be like to be Caroline who got to have her very own pony.

Then we matured and became savvy in the ways of media.  We got it those Kodak moments were staged and maybe the Kennedys weren't happy all the time. 

Then came the family of John and Elizabeth Edwards.  They seemed to be a more educated version of the Kennedys.  We wanted, maybe needed, to believe in them. 

Yesterday during the trial of her father for alleged playing funny with campaign money, Cate left in tears, reports POLITICO.  That was when a witness recounted Elizabeth's dramatic reaction after she learned of John's affair. 

Could the Edwards family be one of those described by Tolstoy as unhappy and therefore more interesting than happy ones? Did Cate, even before the death of her brother and estrangement of her parents, grow up in an interesting but unhappy setting?

Perhaps political families shouldn't take the risk of presenting themselves as happy.  Maybe that's too much of a stretch for us to believe.

My Smartphone: Now I can play in the sandbox with all the other generations

I marked Saturday on the calender.  This was it.  I was going to cross that line from dumb phone to smart.  Of course I hardly slept a wink.  But at 10:00 A.M. I left my apartment (like many aging Baby Boomers I prefer renting to owning).  I got into the car.  I sighed.  Then I headed to the AT&T retail store in the North Haven, Connecticut shopping center on Universal Drive. 

After I left and locked the car I slowly approached the center and it was a miracle of pure determination that I opened the door.  In 34 minutes it was over.  I was the owner of a Nokia 900, with a Windows operating system. 

The get-acquainted with your device was on the web.   To tranfer pictures from the handset to the computer I still needed to buy a USB Micro Cable.  That I did today with my almost $30 of Staples loyalty points.  The one problem was that a sort of error message came up that I couldn't make calls because the SIM card wasn't in.  I checked. It was in.  I returned to the AT&T store.  A Generation Y salesman fixed all that.  He promised me it wouldn't happen again.

Everything under control, I felt like I could play professionally with all the generations.  After a few years of feeling less-than, I felt equal.  At 1:15 P.M. I showed up for an interview for a part time position with the internet arm of a retail operation.  The interviewer had his smartphone on the desk. I put mine in front of me.  He was Generation X.  I was able to stand toe to toe.

Is the lesson here that Baby Boomers struggling unsuccessfully in the employment space should get a smartphone? Maybe it is.

 

Madonna: Roger Friedman at FORBES doing death watch on MDNA album

If harsh feelings could cast spells, Madonna would probably vanish from the entertainment scene.  At FORBES, Roger Friedman has been doing what he might hope will be a deathwatch on Madonna's album MDNA.  Most recently he noted that the album is selling on Amazon for $5.

Madonna also had more than the average share of critics.  However, now that she is over-50, she is more vulnerable because of her age.

 

Tense Clients/Bosses: You really mean we attracted them

Intuitively, most of us Baby Boomers know that if too many of our clients or bosses are lemons we're doing something or maybe a lot of things wrong.  Today, I had that confirmed by psychic Andre at Psychic Interative, a web service which provides affordable spiritual insight into what we're doing or not doing.

The conversation started off with my decision to dump a tense client.  Always wise Andre asked me how I attracted that kind of client and was there a way I could turn it around.  After all, the client was being billed at that nice juicy pre-recession rate.

Mmmmm.  After Andre posed that question I sure got to thinking.  Despite talent and a bit of a financial cushion right now, I am still giving off near-desperate vibes.   Andre had taught me over the past few years not to dig for the why but rather just focus on the behavior and change it. 

The rest of the work day went gloriously.  My new law of attraction became to pull toward me clients who need my service, respect my ability, and are pleased to be paying an affordable rate.   On Thursday I am going for an interview for a part-time assignment.  I will approach is as an exploratory, not an ordeal.  A few hours ago a prospect called.  I listened.  I will not follow up.  I don't need to cope with his unrealistic expectations.

You can reach Andre at Psychic Interactive 702-216-9900, ext 827.

"Mommy's Dead" - Denial, its many forms

"I went to my mother's room to say good-bye before I left for high school.  I was a freshman.  She was dead, in bed.  I  left for school, didn't say a thing about it at school, and that was that until I returned home."

That's what the speaker at our 12-step meeting  in North Haven, Connecticut told the group one night.  That didn't seem like strange behavior to me.  The voodoo of denial of death is diverse.

"Mommy's dead."

When my younger sister Anne Murga-Ring called me 1 Saturday morning in the mid 1980s to tell me that, I just kept repeating the statement.  The night before I had talked to my mother on the phone and she was her usual intense self.  Later, when I got myself together or thought I had, I told my sister that had she not called that day I wouldn't know that my mother had died and therefore she would be still alive. 

As Baby Boomers we are going through a lot more loss on a regular basis.  Not that it's easier.  But finally I seem to spend no time in denial.  I make the passage right into grief, which speeds up getting on the other side of that change.  Thanks to that development, I fear loss less now.  The loss can be of my pets, status in my professional field, or the 87-year-old neighbor down the hall who helped forgive myself when a part-time job went sour after 3 days.  W/o the fear, everything is different, isn't it.

Baby Boomers Who Cared Too Much: The zen of not caring at all

Not cool and conservative like our Eisenhower-generation parents, so many of us Baby Boomers became red hot with caring about just about everything.  Of course, when it came time to grow up and go to work, we cared way too much about that.  That probably gave rise to the booming career-advice industry.

Then, so many of us lost it all.  The good job or the thriving business, the nest egg, the irrational optimism about being way too smart and educated to fail.  Piece by piece we put together a new world view.

That took time, of course.  And pain.  Here's where I was circa 2003 Download Geezerguts.  Now I am a late bloomer who's in demand in fields of communications that I never anticipated being in.  Those include financial writing and copywriting.  How did I break free from caring?

In my 12-step group, across the table from me was a middle-aged American man who was canary-yellow.  I asked him if he was new "in the rooms."  He said yes and then asked me how I knew that he was new.  Just hadn't seen you around, I answered.  In telling his story at a speaker meeting he told us that the nurses at the hospital observed that all the attempted suicides they had treated he had made the most comprehensive attempt.  Somehow he got the epiphany not to care.  His recovery was so dramatic that he emerged as a leader in the 12-step program.

Now, I just don't care.  The biggest freedom is not giving a damn about my daily professional mistakes, big and not so big.   What a shock to realize that we can survive our own myopia and even wind up thriving.

 

Those Kodak Moments: Facebook can't hold a candle to them

For a female Baby Boomer, at least we Roman Catholic ones, the biggest Kodak moment was our First Communion. 

We got the white dress, the white veil, the white socks, the white shoes, the white gloves, the white pocketbook, the white prayer book, and the white candle, with gold trim.  The Kodaks ran out of film and relatives and neighbors hoofed it to the corner store for another few rolls.

The next big Kodak moment was supposed to be our wedding.  But, I ducked out of that one.    

Given that photos required a lot of paraphernalia as well as some talent, picture-taking was once a major event.  We who were being photographed felt important.  For those six or seven minutes we were celebrities.  No photos on social networks, including the Timeline on Facebook, could even equal that emotional experience.  As I got into bed the evening of the day of my First Communion I realized that the best of my life had been lived and was over, forever.  Somehow I sensed I wasn't destined for the next major event in white, a wedding.

Donald Trump: Role model for over-50 risk-taking

The Donald is casting spells on the 2012 presidential race.  Before this, Donald Trump embedded his unique kind of voodoo on reality TV.  And before that, he had been an early game-changer in real estate.

What can we over-50 learn from this leader in so many fields?  Obviously, it's to never stop taking risks. 

There's an interesting dynamic which takes place as we age. One part of us - the social self - becomes more cautious.  We spend more time assessing who to allow into our lives.  In self-disclosure we become more circumspect.  When it comes time to make amends, we weigh how the confession of our sins against others might affect them.

On the other hand, having been through so many ups and downs in our career, we develop the inner confidence to continue to take risks.  If we screw up, it certainly won't be the first time. 

As this year fades out, my colleagues in communications are considering radical shifts.  One Baby Boomer, who has developed a brandname in social media, is toying with the strategy of making that a sideline and concentrating more on research.  After all, THE ECONOMIST predicts data is the sweet spot for this second decade of the 21st century.

Is this willingness to take the great leap forward what separates us from Generation Y?  Are their members, with the exception of outliers like Mark Zuckerberg,  not risk-takers?

See some sun? November Jobs Report

Moods are contagious.  This upbeat one might help boost the GDP.  According to ADP Inc., the estimated addition of jobs by private-sector employers was 206,000.  That's up from 130,000 in October, reports Tucker Echols in the WASHINGTON BUSINESS JOURNAL.  More good news came from outplacement firm Challenger Gray & Christmas. In November, planned layoffs fell by 13% from this time last year.

100+ years old, still working

Has a magic spell been cast on Ashkenazim Jews so that they are not only living to 100+ but are still productive in the work world?  It seems that way since none of them seems hell-bent on staying healthy.  They smoke cigarettes and eat what they want.  Also, their lives have not been charmed.  They have endured extreme adversity such as the Nazi regime, and continue to battle anti-semitism.

In NEW YORK MAGAZINE, Jesse Green looks at this group, which he could join some day since he himself is an Ashkenazim Jew.  Here is that article.  We are able to know so much about them because of the Einstein study.  For years, science has been observing, poking, and probing 540 members of this unique aging population.

From the article, we probably conclude that the amazing combination of long life and ability to function professionally is due to genes, a hyper active lifestyle as opposed to living in their heads as do too many of us, and self-acceptance. 

A self-hating Roman Catholic, when I was growing up with Jews in Jersey City, New Jersey, what struck me was they thought they were fine just the way they were.   That's a fundamental in the teaching of American-born Buddhist nun Pema Chodron.   She hammers that we can't live fully in the present moment until we like who we are.