Shifting Gears

I originally started this blog with three goals in mind: to talk about the great places I've visited; to encourage other older, single women to be bold about traveling; and, to inspire people to learn about the history of the US. I explained how life circumstances first led me to discover my love for travel. Now, life circumstances have conspired to limit my ability to do so, at least for a while. But, it's all OK! I still refuse to live a fuddy-duddy life. And, I still want to inspire other baby boomers to continue in the movement we all started as teenagers, that of never growing too old to challenge ourselves!

So, I'm shifting gears and have decided to dedicate this blog to sharing ideas and inspiration for changing the perception of post-productive years from winding-down to awe-inspiring. I hope you'll share your experiences, as well. And, with 2012 only hours away, it's the perfect time to reflect on the theme of "out with the old, in with the new."

Do you fall into the trap of making the same New Year's resolutions, year after year, but never really achieving those goals? I know I used to. But, I think I know why, at least for me, I was never able to reach my intended goal... I made my resolutuions too vague and unmeasurable. I found myself saying, "This year I'm going to lose weight, work out more, spend more time with friends and family, blah, blah, blah." The key to that is, I never said how much weight I was going to lose, how many times a week I was going to work out, how much time I was going to visit or communicate with friends and family. So, it was a glass half-full/half empty concept of success, with success depending solely on perception. One pound would be weight loss, but hardly worth counting as an achievement.

But, in 2011, I did something different. I became specific in my goals. For instance I promised myself I would read at least 30 minutes a day. I read 12 books last year, a new record for me. (By the way, Goodreads is a great online resource for reading.) I also shared my resolutions in writing... on Facebook... with everyone I knew... and that brought in the element of accountability. So, after having some, albeit nominal, success in meeting my goals last year, here are my resolutions for 2012. I hope you'll feel comfortable in sharing yours, as well. But, if not, I challenge you to, at least, make one measurable promise to yourself, write it down and save it for future inspiration.

I do hereby resolve that, in the year 2012, I will (in no particular order of importance):

1.  Work out and/or exercise at least five hours a week.
2.  Spend 30 minutes a day in leisure reading.
3.  Achieve my goal weight of 150 pounds.
4.  Once a month, eat at a restaurant I've never visited before.
5.  Attend four cultural events.
6.  Attend four knowledge-building events.
7.  Volunteer 25 hours.
8.  Put $1,000 in savings.
9.  Give to three charities.
10. Post to this blog once a month.
11. Make my spare room habitable for overnight guests.
12. Spend one evening per month with friends and/or family.

It seems like a lot, but there's a method to my madness. You'll notice a lot of these are strictly for fun and entertainment, easy to keep. It helps with motivation on achieving the harder ones, such as volunteering, saving and losing weight. OK, now it's your turn... 

Oh, and before I forget, my best wishes for all of you to have a great New Year's Eve, with happiness and prosperity in 2012!! Cheers!! 

Real Women Travel Alone

From the movie “Steel Magnolias” —

Ouiser Boudreaux: Well, these thighs haven’t been out of the house without lycra on them since I was 14.

Clairee Belcher: You were brought up right.

If you’re a baby boomer woman reading this, you may have had a mother, like mine, who tried her dead level best to instill in you some really strange inhibitions that were supposed to help you maintain your respectability… you know, like wearing a girdle so your stuff wouldn’t shake when you walk and make you look like a "loose woman." Or, how about that thing about not wearing black patent leather shoes because they shined like mirrors and the boys could see up your dress? Oh, and never, ever go any place alone. Girls who went anywhere without a chaperone or group of friends were "just asking for it." 

I never did get a clear idea of what "it" was, but I knew by the stink-eye look from my mother, it must be something really, really bad. 

However, as a single woman, if I had waited for someone to travel with me, I never would have had an excuse to buy matching luggage... tell me I'm not respectable. So, if you’re single and you’re still hearing your mother’s voice in your head telling you, "Nice girls don’t travel alone," now is the time to respectfully tell her to shut up.

Making the decision to defy the teaching of my childhood wasn’t too hard. While I wasn’t actually a card-carrying bra-burner, I figured out by about the age of 16 that my mother was pretty out of touch with the new reality of womanhood. But, the decision did require stepping outside of my comfort zone. After all, I still didn’t have a clear picture of what the stink-eye "it" was. 

I can’t even remember what led me to completely throw caution out of the window and make a journey alone to a place where I had never been and knew absolutely no one. I just knew I hadn’t experienced even half of what life had to offer, and that wasn’t good enough for me. And, the years were getting shorter.

And, bless my mama's bloomers, I found traveling alone to have a rather intriguing set of advantages, especially for someone who loves observing. A solo traveler doesn't have the distraction of carrying on the conversations that are inevitable — and, let's face it, sometimes even annoying — when traveling with another person. You’re able to be much more attentive to your surroundings and the people occupying the space around you, some of which just might be infinitely more interesting than anything or anyone you now know.   

The planning of the trip was half the excitement because there are no necessary compromises to be made, no one else’s wishes to consider. In planning my trip, everything I selected, from the hotel to the activities to the restaurants, was aligned with only my interests, making the experience one of sweet anticipation. How can you have a bad vacation if it’s all about doing only what you want?  

There is the added bonus of being able to react to every experience with totally natural, uninhibited exuberance. Sometimes we hold ourselves back out of fear of "making a spectacle of ourselves," another one of those respectability mom-isms. If you’re able to celebrate without restraint, on a completely personal level, the moment automatically becomes a treasured memory.

Finally, there will most assuredly occur a time when a person is almost forced to strike up a conversation with a complete stranger and, if lucky, make a new friend. On each trip I’ve taken, I’ve encountered at least one person with whom I traded contact information and have maintained a correspondence.

Renowned British explorer and travel writer Dame Freya Stark wrote, “To awaken quite alone in a strange town is one of the pleasantest sensations in the world.” Yes, ma'am, it certainly is! There is a quickening of the senses, a feeling of intrepid, youthful adventure, no matter what your age. Dame Freya lived to be 100. I believe I know why.

The Age of Enlightenment

In my last post, I ended with a promise that I would tell you how I became a believer that the period of life after 50 isn’t about slowing down, it’s about getting your second wind. On the downhill side of life, you can get through your days at a more relaxed pace. There are fewer demands and less urgency. The need to maintain the “rep,” “make the grade,” and keep up with the whozits has no significance. And, maybe that’s why so many people slip into a lifestyle of moderate imagination, gentle goals and sedate activity.

Now, don’t misunderstand me… I’m not advocating giving in to a mid-life crisis wherein you try to turn the clock back and relive your youth. Face it, no matter how young at heart you think are, your body is old; have some compassion for it. No, what I’m talking about is using the sum of the parts… putting together that feeling of invincibility you had as a 20-year-old, some of the drive you had in your 30’s and, for the sake of your old body, let’s throw in the maturity you gained in your 40’s — pool all those life stages and become an explorer of possibilities. Consider it payback to your kids for the many years you spent wondering what the hell they were going to do next. That sounds fair... and even righteous. 

While 35 and 40 used to be considered middle age, modern medicine has stretched that to 45 and, possibly, even 50, so you still have a lot of years left on this earth. The hard part is deciding how you want to spend those years. Maybe becoming a homebody who gardens and babysits the grandkids is exactly what floats your boat, and that’s great! The important thing is that you choose that lifestyle because it is what you want, not because it is what you think you SHOULD want. Grandchildren are great and the reward you get for making it through two generations of teens, yours and your kids'. I have two grandchildren myself. But, I’m their grandmother, not their substitute parent.

So, now we get down to the nitty-gritty of what this blog is about. Think about that wish list I suggested before. How would you end the sentence, “I really wish I had been able to…” For me, the finishing of that sentence was “…travel more.”

As I mentioned before, I have always been interested in history. I was born and lived most of my life in Texas, which has a glorious history that is vigorously taught at a very early age. I learned about the Alamo before I learned my parents had names other than “mama” and “daddy.” And, in school, it was only after spending an entire year learning Texas history that I was allowed to move on to World and American History. While European and Asian countries have histories that trace back for millennia, it’s pretty much about one ruler wanting to knock off another ruler, so he can claim territory and subjugate the inhabitants, in order to get more money from taxes to pay for the war he just fought to knock off another ruler, so he could claim the territory and subjugate the inhabitants in order to get more taxes… well, you get the picture. But, in American History, I saw fifty unique legacies of discovery and innovation, expansion and settlement, pride and shame, victory against all odds and heartbreaking loss… and I wanted to know more, but by experience, not by just reading about them in textbooks. However, travel was a luxury I felt I couldn’t afford, so I read… and read… and read. Then, in my mid-forties, life circumstances necessitated a move to Kansas City, which has an interesting and unique history of its own. I fell in love with the city immediately, in spite of the fear of a major life change, and yearned even more to see and smell and taste everything America had to offer.

As if by fate, something occurred that forced me to purchase airfare… a mistake I made in not reporting that expense on behalf of an executive I supported and, quite frankly, didn’t want to admit to making. So, I bit the bullet and paid for it myself. The airline and its fares helped determine the destination as Seattle, and thus started my age of enlightenment. Making that trip to a strange and interesting location, taking that one adventurous step of traveling solo, sparked in me a spirit of exploration, not just of locales, but of deep-rooted interests, hidden talents and undiscovered tastes. Travel became my real-life, hands-on, history-seeking gratification. Not all my trips are long distance. Weekend getaways can provide plenty of learning and adventure. But, at each of my destinations, I make sure there is one aspect of the trip that is a unique — or even outrageous —experience, and that I enjoy as much of the local culture and food as possible. (Please read about my travels under the tab of “Trains, Planes and Automobiles” located at the top of the blog.)

Very recently, I was trying to talk a friend of mine into taking a trip with me to the Grand Canyon. I mentioned that I wanted to take a helicopter ride into the interior of the Canyon. She wasn’t interested. When I asked her why, it was the usual excuse of the risk of a crash. I said, “Are you kidding me? If the damned thing does go down, it’ll be in a blaze of glory in the beauty and magnificence of the Grand Canyon! We’ll be legends to our grandkids!” I didn’t win that battle; but, I have every intention of winning the war against fuddy-duddy. Just as a viral joke suggested to me once, my ultimate goal is to leave this world in a long skid, thinking, "Woohoo, what a ride!"

Now that you’ve heard about my ongoing mission to combat decrepitude, I hope you’ll tell me yours! And, if this has inspired you in any way, I would love to know. Come back again, soon!

Discovering YOU

It happens to almost all of us. Call it mid-life crisis or empty nest syndrome, there comes a time when we look back on the goals we had in our 20s, 30s, and even our 40s, and realize we have done a lot of what we had to do, what we needed to do, what we were expected to do and very little of what we wanted to do. In the everyday struggle to raise our children, manage households, forge relationships, obtain financial security, we constantly tell ourselves, “Some day…,” until we reach the point where we realize time is running out. And, that list of "want-to's" starts to look a lot like a “bucket list.”

It's never been a mystery to me that, throughout my life, I have always been interested in history. But, I can remember the exact moment when I discovered it wasn't just a passing interest, it was a genuine passion. About thirty-five years ago, I was visiting San Antonio, Texas, and standing in Mission Concepcion in its library. (By the way, for history buffs, San Antonio is a must-see.) On the ceiling is a fresco, called “The Eye of God,” and directly below it, in the stone floor, are indentations, caused from the feet of who knew how many penitents subjecting themselves to divine scrutiny. I placed my feet in those indentations and felt a tingle, knowing I was standing in exactly the same spot where once stood people whom history has long forgotten. I can't remember what I had for breakfast yesterday, but my memory of that moment is like it happened today.

More recently, I've discovered the fun and challenge of learning about the different kinds of wine, after spending a lifetime convinced I didn't like red wine. Funny, I don't remember that awareness having a strong impact but, then, I'm sure that has something to do with the learning process. It must be working, though, because I have a nice selection of reds in my house now and am enjoying a glass of Tamas Double Decker Red, 2008, as I compose this post. (Tasting notes provided on request.)

Somewhere between history and wine, I discovered a talent for cooking, which luckily pairs really well with the wine interest, and an intense love for travel, which happily feeds my hunger for history.  

So, what's your passion? What moves you? And, what are you doing about it? Please tell me you're not just sitting there reading a book about interesting things or watching a program on TV about fun activities. Those are for when you have the flu and can't be around other people for fear of starting a pandemic, for crying out loud. Life requires hands-on experiential learning. Make a list, call it a bucket list if that will motivate you, but become a kid wishing on a falling star again... I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight. Then, make your wish come true! It's not that hard, really. Come back later and I'll tell you how it happened for me.

Just Another Blog

Just about everyone has a blog nowadays, and mine isn’t anything special. But, I’ll tell you what made me decide to blog. A few years ago, through my own error, I had to pay for airfare. (Long story, I’ll explain later.) I decided to “make lemonade” and use it for the first real vacation I had taken in 20 years; but not just any trip. I was going to a place where I had never been and knew absolutely no one… alone. I was so excited about it, planned it in great detail. (Trust me, the planning is half the fun. I’ll tell you about it later.) But, as I mentioned the trip to friends and family, I kept getting startled looks. My mother was aghast! Her response was, “You’re a brave woman,” with a look that said, “Stupid, but brave.”

Well, that was three years ago and it was the smartest thing I’ve done since... well, since 1996. (That’s another story, too. Bear with me, I’m just getting started.) However, the most frequent response from my friends, especially my female peers, was the remark, “I could never do that.”

And, that brings me to the purpose of this blog, to encourage my fellow baby boomers, especially the single females, to push the limits of comfort. Don’t sit around waiting for that life companion to happen along. Do! Go! Be!!

So, this blog is a story, in a sense, of a very late bloomer who is discovering how much fun life after 50 can be… about how I found my thrill over the hill.