Posts from — August 2012

I actually wrote this on Thursday before I left and scheduled it to run today, so I have no idea how the conference is going.  I don’t even know if I’ve remembered to pack pants at this point.  Only time will tell.

I feel like I should take this opportunity to write something to my future self; to all the future versions of you.  Which is actually the current version of you because you are reading this in my future.  Blowing my mind.

Except I can’t think of anything profound to say.  What is life like on August 3, 2012?  Is it very different from August 2, 2012?  I have to imagine it is since things change on a daily basis.  Perhaps Facebook has folded and Twitter is now passe.  Maybe you’re reading this on a new device, one I can’t even begin to imagine on August 2nd but will be commonplace in the future such as on August 3rd.  Oh my G-d, it just hit me that YOU know the results of the Olympic events that I’m going to watch tonight.  Don’t spoil it for me; don’t tell me a thing!  I don’t want to know what is happening at the Olympics on August 2nd.

In all seriousness, fill me in since I’m at the BlogHer conference, and I know from past experience that I will have no clue what is happening in the world beyond this windowless room.  What is life like for you?  In other words, what are you up to today?

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week as well as the week before.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “The Words We Use” (Journey of a Woman Warrior)
• “The Greatest Show on Earth” (Everyday Stranger)
• “What Causes Adoption” (Write Mind Open Heart)
• “Uff Da” (I Lost a World)
• “This Mortal Coil” (Too Many Fish to Fry)
• “This is What We Do With Broken Things” (She Laughs at the Days)
• “Lessons in Infertility” (From IF to When)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Hobbit-ish Thoughts and Ramblings has a post about being thankful that she’s not living her life in the public eye with all the pressures a princess goes through to produce an heir.  She writes: “As someone who dealt with years of questions, even before I was married, about when I would begin having children, I take offence on the Duchess’ behalf.  She has only been married for a year and a bit, and she’s still adjusting to her new role within the royal family.  Cut the woman some slack!”  I mostly just loved her hypothetical questions, even though I had no potential answers myself.

My Bum Ovaries has a great post depression and infertility.  She explains her fear: “We started by talking about how I’ve been depressed. I told him I’m worried that this depression isn’t just a phase and that being infertile is actually re-wiring my brain to be different. I know I’ll never be who I was before, but what if I don’t ever get back to being a happy person?”  It’s a beautiful post about trying to find yourself as you are losing yourself, and the ending brought a huge smile.

Lastly, Quietly Southern has a very moving post tying in a memory of almost drowning as a child to how she feels going through her recent loss.  She writes: “For the last month I’ve felt like I’ve been drowning.  Instead of water filling my lungs it’s been loss, despair, sadness, anger, depression and frustration.  Immediately after the miscarriage there were times where I literally couldn’t breathe.  There simply was not enough air on the face of this earth to fill my lungs and push out all the raw hurt I was feeling.”  It is a heartbreaking post; a must-read.

The roundup to the Roundup: Fill me in: what is life like for you today?  And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between July 27th and August 3rd) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

As you read this, I am on a swanky swank bus traveling up I-95 to the annual BlogHer conference.  Or maybe I’m actually already there by the time you get to this post.  I don’t mean to imply that I am going to be indefinitely traveling the interstate until you read this.

This will be my fifth annual conference.  I think.  Working backwards: I went to San Diego (2011), New York (2010), Chicago (2009), and San Francisco where I distracted Lori from learning about Twitter (2008).  Yes, so this is my fifth conference.  Though perhaps the first one that I am entering without feeling completely discombobulated despite the fact that I have been living on Jupiter all summer.  Some of that comes with the fact that it is closer to home than past years, some of that comes from getting a lot of work accomplished right before I left (just in time to return and be behind again!), and some of that comes from knowing so many people going.  I’m going to get to see a lot of old friends as well as meet people that I have spoken to online for many years.  Plus I woke up an hour before everyone else this morning so I could finish packing while everyone else slept and have time with the twins and Josh once they were awake.

As I’ve done in the past, I’m going to write posts and upload photos when I can from the conference.  I am traveling sans laptop, so we’ll see how well this works.  If nothing else, look forward to seeing a photo montage of a bunch of ALIers when I get home.  But I think I’ve figured out a way to post from the road.

Also know that I’m probably going to be slow to add people to the IComLeavWe list over the next few days or respond to email.  No worries — you don’t need to resend.  I’ll get to it when I get home, but I’m just explaining the lag time.  Not that I’ve been excessively on top of things in recent months so it may just feel like business as usual.

I would love to take you along with me as I have in the past, so feel free to leave a comment below and direct me here or there, to meet people or hear things or take a photo.  I love having you along with me in my pocket for the trip.  It makes the wheels on the bus go round and round.

Updated at the bottom

I was reading a post on Cafemom yesterday about the inability to make friends after 30, right as I’m leaving for the annual BlogHer conference which is for all intents and purposes the equivalent of sleepaway camp for adults.  We’re even going to steal someone’s bra and run it up the flag pole Friday morning.  I bet you $10 that it will be Martha Stewart’s undergarments.

Meeting people at the conference is like shooting fish in a barrel as long as you are willing to dive into conversations with strangers.  Last year, I plopped myself down at a lunch table for book bloggers and walked away with 15 book recommendations and a new blog to read.  It’s also very easy to go there and have the whole outing feel like that game show staple where you have to catch dollar bills blowing through the air while you’re in a glass box (come on, you know exactly what I’m talking about).  It’s people, people everywhere and not a friend to be made.  And that can be INCREDIBLY lonely.  There is really nothing lonelier than being amongst 4500 people and feeling like you’re not connecting with any of them.

I had a large outpouring of new friendships this past spring; a Friendnaissance, if you will.  Some of the new friends are neighbours, some have kids who are in the same activities as my kids, some are the parents of the twins’ friends, and some are random people I’ve met from volunteering or activities.  Three or four have entered daily phone call/just drop by status.  The Friendnaissance was as surprising as seeing Brunelleschi’s Baptistery doors on the heels of the Middle Ages.  The thirties can bring a bit of a new friend drought, and even longstanding friendships can get weedy as attention is split in multiple directions.

During my twenties, most of the people I met were on the same tier: new job/maybe dating someone.  Now, in my late thirties, most of the people around me are on different, non-matching tiers.  I have newly married friends and newly divorced friends and long married friends and single friends.  I have some with kids and some without kids and all the kids are different ages.  I have some who are working and others who are not and still others who work bizarre hours in the house tucked around their children’s routine.  It’s harder to make friends because people are busy, and it’s harder to keep friends because schedules don’t always mesh when people are in different life stages.  My newly married, no kids friends want to go out at night.  My newly divorced, older kid friends want to meet for lunch.  My long married, not working, new baby friends want a playdate in the middle of the day.

It’s not just that the opportunities to meet people dwindle when you’re in your thirties; it’s just hard to make something stick that works equally well for both people.  I lost a few friendships because our kids were at drastically different stages of life and our schedules didn’t mesh, and a few others who ceased to put out an effort around the same I phoned it in too, and the friendship drifted away.

So the Friendnaissance was surprising and much appreciated; it was like getting a fantastic new outfit after feeling a little dumpy for a few months.  Getting a new friend made me feel good about myself, which probably made me more enticing to be around, which netted me more friends.  And now there are all these people around.  And there are all of you.

I’ve said before that a dearth of friends in childhood has made me cling to people much in the same way our grandparent’s generation clung to money after coming through the Great Depression.

I never felt as if I had enough friends.

It’s that feeling you get when you sit down to eat, fully expecting to be satiated by the end of the meal, especially when you see the amount of food at your disposal. But you walk away from the table with this gnawing hunger still present. And what is it? A failure of my own body to not recognize that there is food in my stomach? A true need unfulfilled? How do you know if it’s something wrong with you or something truly missing?

The same could be said for my heart. I had friends and I obviously connected with people and loved many. I’ve never consciously known what was missing or looked for it (or, more accurately, known how to look for it). It was always this small emptiness, a tiny gap of air in the heart. In my mind, I imagined everyone I love squeezed into atriums and ventricles, bodies locked against each other as I carried them inside my chest. And somewhere, free-floating through that mass of love, a tiny space. A pocket of emptiness. And absence searching for a presence.

I’m still trying to make myself understand that I don’t need to amass an army of friends; we’re not fighting an enemy.  We’re just trying to make each other’s lives a little easier.  And you can do that with one other person or you can do it with ten other people, and the number doesn’t matter.  I’m trying to remember that friendships have an ebb and flow, and sometimes they drift away like dandelion fuzz.  That everyone who steps into your life serves some purpose whether it is to get you through a moment in time or a lot of moments in time.

I’m just appreciative of my friends; the ones that came before 30 and the ones that have come after, like all of you.

Are you finding it easier, harder, or the same to make friends later in life?

Updated:

Blanche brings up a fantastic idea.  Anyone in Richmond, VA or have friends in Richmond, VA you can connect with her?  Anyone else looking to meet people?  Throw out the nearest big city to you in the comment section below and please follow someone back to their blog and connect with them (or connect them with a friend) if you live near them.