I owe me a big one.
The media were so full of the 20-year mark in the past week, the penny finally dropped. I have now spent 20 hours or more thinking about the last two decades.I was 69 when the Millennium arrived, still living up north on Bass Lake in Muskoka and semi-prepared for a meltdown in services, which of course, didn’t happen. I had neighbours who braced for it by buying generators. I had a fireplace, so I was okay. I turned 70 in 2001, still what is accounted as “Young Old Age”. Twenty years later I am now Old Old Age, almost — 90 in 2021—and past the measuring. We, my cohorts and I, are outliving our doctors’ knowledge. I’ve been saying that, said it in my book: I have outlived my friends, family, furniture, doctors, dentists, agents, publishers, producers, editors and people’s memories. I’m outliving my contemporaries. My geographically distant friends and I used to exchange Christmas gifties, wee jollies or cards to reassure ourselves that we are still here. Well I am, but they’re not. What happened?
All it took was time.
Those 20 years have been learning years. That’s what I’ve been thinking about. I’m going to a friend’s for lunch and tea and chat and then I’ll come back and attempt an analysis of my double decade. I’d be happy to hear from you. Tell me what you learned, what stands out, in the last 20 years of your life.
Anon, anon….
I’m back, and still here, I might add. And I’m happy to say I still have deadlines and projects I have to think about, not the least of them my blog. I admit it has been difficult to maintain these past several months, what with my personal physical and emotional problems with my son Matt.
Financlal, too, compounded by my first crack at self-publishing, not a pleasant experience, beginning and never-ending with the increasing irritation that no one at the company called me by my name (Bettyjane; I write it like that now to suggest that people do NOT call me Betty. For over a year, every new staff person I encountered called me Betty. Aargh. You’d think they’d put it on my file.
I had a good editor and I’m grateful for that.
The whole experience put me in a retrospective mood as I looked back on my writing career, especially the last 20 years, in a way the most transitional of all. I’m watching with interest and curiosity how the elder writers among us are reacting or/and surviving, Margaret Atwood not included. I remember John Updike speculating about the themes and subjects of his contemporaries as they aged. The topics of their youth had been dealt with: youthful angst, rebellion, resentment, reconciliation or rejection. What were they going to deal with next? I think Updike himself received disappointing reviews for his last work(s): respectful, yes, but perfunctory with a hint of dismissal.
I guess if we live too long we all get the question: Who did you used to be? It’s a genuine question to ask in 2020.
Actually, that’s why I took to self-publishing. Most of the people I used to know in the publishing business were retired or dead or gaga. Those who were still hanging in there told me no one remembered me (even if they did) and that I needed a young audience like Facebook. I tried FB for a couple of months but it doesn’t comprise the audience I want, and it’s terrifying, but that’s another discussion. I got out, not without difficulty. It’s harder to get rid of than static tissue paper. Well, I wanted to do this book before I die and who knows how much time I have left? Not being morbid, just realistic.
Hence, ENDNGS. It’s the summation of the last 20 years. I actually started to write it over 20 years ago, so I suppose, in a way, it fills in the gap. But It is not, as some people seem to think, about death and dying or leaving this planet. I do refer to the Departure Lounge, but I have not booked my flight. I still have a lot to do.
I’m still on a learning curve.
How about you?