Slowing Down?

My husband sent me an article about a new study that finds workers over 60 are just as productive as young workers.  As one, I can tell you honestly that I don’t have the stamina of colleagues half my age in the office but I do have the decided advantage of lots of experience, so I can be pretty efficient and fast when I need to be.   (The only thing that still completely flummoxes me is that whole hash-tag social media thing.)

So why, you ask, is he sending me this article?  Could it be he never wants me to retire?

My husband thinks retirement will be a one-way ticket to long term care for me.  I know he worries about my sliding into dementia if I don’t have at least 15 things to do each day (3 meals to make plus lunch for my daughter, 2 dog meals and 3 dog walks, plus a load or 2 of laundry, never mind the human interaction stuff…and this is before I even think about using my brain!).  

But here’s the thing:  I know how to fill a day.  The following is a blow-by-blow recreation of a typical Friday when I don’t work…which my husband calls my “vacation day.” 

6:00-8.30am:  Get household up and at-em, including Mrs. Sedd and daughter.  Chauffeur child to school.

8:30-8:45 am:   On the way home, stop at the nearest Starbucks.  Stand in line while waiting to get a vente iced Decaf Americano, no water.

9:00 am:    Arrive home.  Turn on computer with coffee at the ready.  Get online and do office email, read papers, write blog posts.

11:45 am:  Think about lunch then eat it.

12:30-2:30 pm:  Conduct errands, e.g., get gas, money, groceries, dry cleaning, birthday presents for daughter’s friends (complete at least 3 tasks in that timeframe).

2:30-2:45pm:  Walk dog and provide treat for performance (“good dog”).

3:00 pm:  Get daughter; wait in pick-up line at school for 3:30 dismissal and play “Subway Surfer” on smart phone.

3:50 pm:  Arrive home; review mail and debrief on dinner preferences with daughter.

4:10 pm:  Feed dog.

4:15 pm:  Place load of laundry in washer; fold laundry in dryer.

4:45 pm:  Plan dinner; communicate with husband regarding his ETA at our castle.

5:00 pm:  Pour glass of wine

Elapsed time:  11 hours

Yup, I sure am slowing down.

Happy weekend, everyone. 

 

My Digital Darlings

As someone who advises clients about how best to communicate the value of their organization, their corporate brand, or their ideas to a variety of different kinds of audiences, I naturally try to stay current on trends and so forth. 

In fact, my home sometimes serves as a mini-laboratory for validating or revealing multi-generational patterns when it comes to information consumption.  My husband (mid-50s) likes his social media, his cable news talking heads, his Kindle and his “old media” car magazines and newspapers; my tween daughter LOVES all things digital -- and their habits are quite different as you might expect.

Or so I thought.

Recent research shows that our kids’ digital media usage looks a lot like their parents.'

·         52% of tweens (ages 10-13) have mobile phones

·         28% of tweens have tablets and 16% have e-readers

·         Everybody texts these days – it is the most common way of staying in touch.  Sadly, it is also is the end of basic spelling as we know it (“you” becomes “u” and “K” becomes “ok,” etc.). 

       P.S.  I fear for the future of speech itself! (Remember, we’re still evolving, people!)

·         67% of tweens would rather get a device than a toy. (Duh)

·         7 out of 10 tweens are doing something else while they’re watching TV.

·        74% of tweens are more excited about driving a car, going to college and making their own money than going to parties and dating. (Say whaaaat?)

Source:  The Intelligence Groups’ Cassandra Report, Winter/Spring 2013

Of course, I don’t necessarily agree with the findings about tweens being more excited about college, cars and making money than parties and boys (my daughter is definitely into parties even if she’s not quite sure what she really thinks about boys – and she loves spending my money, not her own).  At the same time, though, her multi-tasking capability is breathtaking to behold; she can text, carry on a phone conversation and have a pretty good idea of what’s unfolding on her favorite Teen Nick show, while also wagging her finger at me to get her a snack!  Wow. 

When one stops to consider how much our technology tools and media consumption patterns have changed in just the last 3 or 4 years it boggles the mind that we’re still at the beginning of the digital revolution.  I can’t even imagine what it will all be like when my daughter is 20 and I’m…gulp…68.  But I’ll leave that to my “meme” to figure out!

Thank god it’s Thursday.  Cheers.

 

 

 

In Praise of Bob

He’s played more shows than Springsteen, the Stones and U2 combined.  He’s written some of the most wonderful, bizarre, memorable and poetic music of our times – from albums like Freewheeling Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited and Blonde on Blonde…to Time Out of Mind and Love and Theft.  His great songs are too many to name here, and his voice too distinctive to be successfully imitated.

I am here to sing the praises of Bob Dylan who, as today’s Wall Street Journal points out, has performed more than 2,500 performances since 1990.  To underscore the enormity of this accomplishment, Dylan sings more than 120 different songs a year in concert without a teleprompter and nearly half of those songs are not his own.  He is 72. 

I can’t remember my grocery list!

My husband and I have seen Dylan in concert twice:  Once in 1999 when he toured with Paul Simon (not an intuitive coupling, but it worked somehow) and then 5 years later when he played the Patriot Center at George Mason University.   Because the first tour was a showcase for Simon, too, it was hard in some ways to appreciate how energetic Dylan’s sound remained as he aged.  The concert at George Mason, on the other hand, was a revelation:  Backed up by a talented, three-man Texas-swing-style band that was not stuck in that or any other genre, Dylan played with the passion, athleticism and stamina of someone half his age.  He dipped deeply into his catalogue, playing Masters of War, Tangled Up in Blue, Love Sick, Like a Rolling Stone, All Along the Watchtower and more.  Jack White’s sideline band, The Raconteurs, opened up the evening with an earsplitting set– but the kids (and their parents!) wanted Dylan, who delivered with the power of the younger Jack White but also so very much more.  The kids in the audience raised their fists and swayed to the music and Dylan, looking gnomish in his cowboy hat and dandified western shirt, growled with pleasure like a very happy cat.

From time to time when I’m bored with what passes as serious pop, rock or blues music today (which is often), I turn on Dylan and the Beatles to bring me back to that golden age of my youth when the music was freeing and the lyrics seared your soul.  I sing and tap my foot and move my upper body, nodding my head to the rhythm, lost in the sound.

“I’ll look for you in old Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go…”

Thanks, Bob and congratulations on your truly "never-ending tour."  You’re gonna make me lonesome when you go, so don't, okay?

Ornery

Some days I’m just ornery.  
I had a lovely beach weekend with my daughter and my BFF but came home (as one must) to the reality of my usual, work-a-day world.  A full if uneventful day at the office…a husband unusually hungry for dinner…a missing ATM card…an early morning business call the next day that I had failed to bring home my computer for…and yes, I was ornery at the end of my day yesterday.

So ornery that when my husband demanded to know when we were eating dinner – and what -- when I had been home just 10 minutes and I’m already in the kitchen flipping his omelet(!), I let fly with a few choice words.

So ornery that my daughter asked if I was mad about something and I snapped, “No!”

So ornery that my husband said I shouted out in my sleep last night, “Hey, hey, HEY!!!,” clearly angry at someone in my dream.

That ornery.

I do tend to get especially testy on the first day of reentry after a lovely weekend (or week) away from a normal routine.  (There is a record of past behavior to support this observation, trust me).  Also, lack of sleep when I’m away from my normal bed and world can contribute to general ornery-ness for a day or so until I’m caught up again in my usual rhythms of living.

Whatever happened in my sleep last night, however, seems to have cleared the cobwebs in my head away today.  I woke up feeling like…Happy, not Grumpy.

And then, the heavens opened.  My husband gave me $60 because of my missing ATM card…which my daughter found 10 minutes later in my orange cross-body bag in a pile of her clean clothing left over from the beach, lying on the top of her dresser (a preferred storage technique for my tween).  My husband laughed at me when I returned his $60, waving my ATM card, and he gave me a kiss, too…implicitly making fun of, and forgiving me for, my bad humor of the day before.  I kissed him back.

Next time though, I hope he gives me at least 20 minutes to get his dinner prepared.  (I’m just saying….) 

 

 

Old Friends

"Can you imagine us years from today
Sharing a park bench quietly?
How terribly strange to be 70."

--Paul Simon, Old Friends

I met my best friend in the 6^th grade during that epochal transition from childhood to teen known as “middle school.”

My father was a school teacher, and hers was about to become one.  We both had stay-at-home Moms as was customary in the mid-60s, and we were both, by anyone’s definition at the time, children of the lower end of the middle class. 

We clicked immediately.  I can close my eyes and remember the first time she visited my house, eating petit fours (a gift from a wealthy, elderly aunt) and drinking pop while we played Monopoly at my dining room table.  Although our circle of shared friendships would grow through the years – many of them from wealthier neighborhoods of our small and class-conscious community on Long Island, which presented occasional challenges and disagreements, too – we remained hard and fast friends even as other important relationships of that era drifted away.

“We may have been the kids from the unfashionable part of town, but we were the real brains of the operation,” my friend said with a laugh, as we talked about our high school circle while we spent the weekend with kids in tow at her beach home on Fire Island.  It had been 3 years since we’d seen each other and a lot had happened to both of us.  We’ve both done well in life, but we’ve each faced some significant trials and disappointments too.  Her children are now grown and she is making big changes as she looks forward to a new and exciting chapter, including retirement in the next year or so.  I’m the late bloomer of the two – married late, a mother even later than that -- so I have more of a focus on my daughter’s teen years and all that comes with that.  Though these different circumstances mean very different personal choices and opportunities, we continue to see the world with the same gimlet-eyed humor and honesty.  Regardless of how life redirects our attention, that fact alone ensures we remain deeply relevant to each other.

Plus, nobody can out-talk us.  Nobody.

So here’s to my dear friend and the godmother of my child – Cindy, so beautiful at 60 that I look at her and still see the self-effacing girl I knew so very, very long ago.  One of the sweetest pleasures of my life has been the joy and endurance of our friendship. 

I look forward to that park bench at 70 if I know she’ll be sharing it with me from time to time.

 

Come Fly with Me: Summer Travel Preview

I don’t need a survey to tell me that people don’t like to be seated next to, near, or even in the same airplane cabin with crying children.

However, a recent poll claims travelers were even more judgmental about being seated next to those afflicted with…how to put this delicately?  B.O.

Public education – maybe an e-mail to ticket holders before they leave for the airport – can help remedy the “stinky traveler” problem by pointing out both the social and personal hygiene benefits of a shower, strong deodorant or some decent perfume (but not too “musky,” please!) before boarding a plane.  But a kid is a kid is a kid, and they tend to cry a lot when travelling, especially during take-off and landings:  Their ears hurt.  They sense their mother is terrified of flying so they are too.  They’re hungry.  Or bored, and they want you to know that they’re as tired and cranky and unhappy about being on that plane as you are.

The flight from Hong Kong to Dulles Airport outside of Washington, D.C. is just shy of 17 hours long.  That’s a lot of movies to watch, time zones to cruise through, drinks and meal carts to wait for, magazines to read, memos to prepare. 

When we brought our daughter home from China, she cried the entire trip home.

That's right. 

Everyone in our cabin hated us. In fact, no one on that plane had any empathy for us or our distraught child.  Fellow travelers glared at me, but they especially disliked my poor husband, because he walked up and down the length of the plane for hours – literally -- trying to quiet our daughter.  He failed.

And if you've ever traveled a lot, you know that these most recent survey findings reveal just a few of the basic truths about air travel in the 21^st Century:  Babies cry.  Parents sulk.  Talky seatmates are a nuisance.  Business travelers drink too much.   Flight attendants are rude when treated rudely. Economy seats are too small, especially when you’re seated next to someone who is obese.  Business class is too expensive.  Holiday travel is the worst. And airplane food (even if you have to pay for it) still stinks.

Personally, I’ve got to hand it to the person with B.O. because he or she probably doesn’t really give a #@$! so they settle back, and just try to enjoy the ride.  A little lack of self-awareness can be a good thing.... 

So as we kick off the 2013 summer travel season, I wish you a bon voyage and a reminder to not sweat the small stuff if you possibly can.  As for my family, we're driving on our vacation this year -- less aggravation and expense!

I'll be back on Tuesday.  Happy summer solstice!

"Like" Me?

Do you find yourself “liking” things and people you really don’t know or even “like” for that matter?

I do.

I click on “like” sometimes (but not always, never always) just to help people feel better about their personal choices, photos or opinions.  And hey, I know people are doing it to me, too, especially when one of my Mrs. Sedd@60 blog posts is particularly uninteresting -- which by the way, I know they are from time to time (at least, I hope it’s just from time to time).  Frankly, I appreciate your honesty by declining to “like” my post even though it took 30-60 minutes out of my day to memorialize some cockamamie idea or insight in the hope that someone, anyone out there might find it has some small relevance to their life….but I digress.

This is tricky stuff because it’s so….psychological, isn’t it? Facebook, for example, where all of this liking takes place, is such a public forum that you don’t really want to contradict someone’s opinion in a “loud” way, because opinions are just one of the mirrors we put out there so others can see us and, we hope, themselves.  But then again, you may not really know the people whose opinions, etc., you’ve liked in the past well enough to send an alternative opinion or critique of their current comments in a personal email because it’s…too personal, I think.

Mark Zuckerberg and company really were genius when they came up with “like” because it is everyone’s zeitgeist. That’s what we all really want (except for sociopaths, who don’t care).  Isn’t it?  To be liked?  We all want to believe that “You’ve Got a Friend (in Me),” whether it’s Carole King or Randy Newman singing reassuringly to us.

To quote the one and only Randy Newman:

“Some other folks might be
A little bit smarter than I am
Bigger and stronger, too
Maybe.
But none of them will every love you, the way I do…
It’s me and you…
You’ve got a friend in me."

I know you "like" me and I "like" you, even/except when we don’t.   I’m ok with that and I hope you are too...because you have a "friend" in me.  Gooey, but true. Sort of.
 

Happy Thursday.