What does success mean?

N and I did her first of several college visits the other day, and it has made me think all kinds of things. 

She said something on the order of, "I don't want to be an adult," and I responded with something like, "I don't want to be an adult helping you become an adult." 

Mostly I meant paying for college, but I also mean just having to vicariously go through the ORDEAL.

Obviously, I love my kid and will support her, but MAN, there is so much angst and stress and ugh. And that rubs off on me and sends me down a rabbit hole of thinking. 

I'm ever closer to having to change my blog subtitle to "cognitive-behavioral therapy for a 50-something mother of three," but I still don't know "what I want to do with my life." 

I work part-time and don't make much money and that is by choice. 

Am I a success? 

Not by "the world's" standard. 

I'm not famous or wealthy. I don't hobnob with important people. I don't make decisions that have huge impact. I don't set policy. I won't be listed in history books. One hundred years from now there will be no one who knows I existed. 

One hundred years from now even most of the famous, wealthy, hobnobbing, decision-making people won't be remembered. 

When I was thinking about modern music (sometime after my daughter's boyfriend turned me on to this jewel of ridiculousness), it dawned on me that people say things about Michael Jackson or Elvis Presley or Frank Sinatra being the "greatest." And I'm like, "WHAT ABOUT THE MUSIC THAT PEOPLE MADE SOME 3,000 YEARS AGO?" How do we modern humans know that THAT music wasn't the greatest of all time?

Seventh grade social studies curriculum covers a wide swath of time, and I sometimes wonder about the short shrift that some of these civilizations get (if they get mentioned at all). 

My ultimate point is that one individual life doesn't matter much, and yet the paradox is that one individual life matters a ton. 

I've read and taught The Great Gatsby enough times to feel pretty sure that anyone with an ounce of sense should reconsider whatever they think "The American Dream" is. 

Even if you don't buy into the world's standard of success, it is a weight that hangs around your neck all the time. It is a voice that reminds you that maybe you aren't doing what you should be doing. Maybe you're not achieving the dream that someone other than you set for you? 

It takes making a conscious effort every day to redefine success in a way that makes sense to you.

Today, I subbed with a class of first graders. When they had library, the librarian read them this book, and they repeated the words after her. 

At the end of the day, I showed the kids a video of Louis Armstrong in 1967 singing the song. They were mesmerized. And I taught them a new "oat" word--moat--which one of the boys drew at the end of the day and showed me. 

I felt like a pretty damn successful substitute teacher today. 

I've spent years putting most of my attention and energy into my children. That has earned me zero pay and mostly intense headaches (and maybe at times a short-lived penchant for too much wine). Success, if there is such a thing in parenting, will come years and years from now. 

Maybe success is putting all your energy into something you believe in?

Maybe success is devoting attention to something you truly love doing?

Maybe success is dabbling in lots of things and becoming adept in different areas?

Maybe success is having integrity and being the type of person that people know they can trust?

Maybe success is as unique as each individual person who has ever graced this earth?

Butting my nose into other's business OR saying what needs to be said

All it takes is one Google search of my daughter's school and the word "dress code" to see my name blasted all over the internet. 

If anyone can tell you that one event posted on social media can change how others perceive you and have impacts on your life, it is me. 

At the time, I spoke out because it was the right thing to do. I didn't say shitty things about the principal or the school. I didn't cuss anyone. I maintained my dignity and integrity while pointing out that what the school did was wrong.

But I was in mid-40s so my pre-frontal lobe is totally done developing. 

And there was fall-out for me. The number of times I was called to substitute teach at the school after that was ZERO. I picked up jobs there that were canceled. My assumption is that they didn't want me in the building. To them, I wasn't to be trusted. 

I doubt I would have felt any differently had I been in their shoes. 

But enough about my experience. 

I get that teenagers are going to say stupid things on social media. 

(Background: A student on another team at my daughter's school posted a not-great comment about a local school that included a picture of members of the team. A parent from that other school told me about it. I emailed the team my daughter is on because some of the girls in the picture play on both teams. It was a notice that 1.) Something on social media had been shared with me and 2.) Be careful what you post on social media (because talking smack about other schools is childish and reflects poorly on your school and coach...WHICH IT DOES.) And maybe be careful about who you take pics with because some of them post stupid stuff.)

But as a 1.) person committed to integrity and a believe that social media should be civil if nothing else and 2) a parent of a teenager at that school and 3.) a parent member of the SBDM council for the school, it is my responsibility to remind students (any of them) what is expected of them while they are in their school uniform. 

The teacher in me came out a little bit, ok.

It is my responsibility to remind them (and parents) that conversations need to continually happen about 1.) who you pick for your friends and 2.) that your friends may post stupid shit that makes you look bad simply because they posted a picture of you with their asinine comment. 

(I KNOW about logical fallacies, including guilt by association. I may not agree with it, but it is part of how the world works. I don't make the rules.)

And to be perfectly honest, this kind of behavior simply burns me up to the core. I HATE bad sportsmanship, and it may be one of the reasons why I despise sports in general. If you see too much of it, and you don't love sports enough to forgive it, it sort of ruins it all for you. 

I didn't go looking for this problem; my kid isn't even on this team. This problem was brought to my attention (and subsequently brought to my daughter's attention). And, unfortunately, I'm a "if I see something, I say something" kind of person because I recognized some of the girls as being teammates of my kid. I know some of their parents, and I like to think that if I would be angry to see my kid's picture on a post like that, they would too. 

I ended up having two people (full grown adults) say something along the lines of "Well, the other team was doing X,Y and Z." To which I responded, "Just because the other kids or other team does stupid stuff doesn't mean our school and our students stoop to that level." 

I don't have many lines in the sand, but this is one of them. 

So did I overstep? 

Maybe. 

Did my email cause the coach more grief? 

Maybe.

Did I further my reputation as somebody who says shit no one likes to hear and is a bitch?

Almost certainly. 

Would I do it again?

Yes. Because it isn't a bad thing to remind young people with undeveloped pre-front cortexes that social media can follow them around and cause an awful lot of stress in their lives (even if they never intended it.)

How I became an introvert

I haven't always been an introvert.

Or

I have always been an introvert but my anxiety made me need to go and do and talk so that I didn't have to deal with the fury that was my moods and fears and the depression that hovered nearby. 

I don't know which of these is the correct answer. 

What I do know is that my becoming what most people consider an introvert (who gets tired from being around other people or having to talk to other people for too long) happened slowly and over a long period of time.

I married an introvert and had to learn how to occupy myself and be ok with my own company. Sometimes when I don't feel like talking, I wonder if he thinks "What happened to her?" And to this I want to say, "Being married to you happened to me."  

However, I don't say this in a blaming way. I have always been attracted to introverts. My oldest friend from high school is an introvert, as is D. 

I clearly remember being intrigued by quiet people and what seemed to me their ability to just be in space and time. I felt frenetic (which is why I suspect untreated anxiety was part of it). I sucked at being quiet for a long time. 

And to be perfectly frank, I do talk easily to others. I'm not shy at all and will literally talk about anything. There are very few topics I won't talk about with other people, and the deeper the conversation, the better. So I think people sometimes confuse "having no filter" with being introverted, but there is a difference. 

Anyway, back to causes...

I became a mom and was with my children full-time for years and years, and that made me appreciate alone time in ways I hadn't before. Being a parent who works full-time outside the home is a challenge, but there are certain benefits that a full-time working inside the home parent doesn't get (like quiet car rides or lunches with adults or being able to pee at work alone). 

When I was teaching, it took a lot of my energy. During planning and after school, I did not want to sit around and chit-chat; I had stuff to do and wanted quiet in which to do it. 

It has recently occurred to me that my work for the past 11 years has involved me talking to people A LOT. Generally, I think of my freelancing as writing, and it obviously is, but what precedes that is a whole lot of communication. 

And now I do podcasting, which is more talking and listening. After 75-90 minutes of recording, I am ready to put myself in a dark room and be alone for at least a couple hours. 

The downside of becoming more introverted as I've gotten older means I'm less concerned about how I appear to other people. It means instead of making polite excuses, I will just say something like, "Ya'll have worn me out. I gotta go." 

The kid line up

There are few things I'm traditional about. 

Mostly what I've watched my family do is modify traditions through time. Things simply change, and the harder a person fights to keep things exactly the same (tradition), the worse it is. 

I think I learned from my mom that it makes more sense to adapt than to fight and then be angry that things haven't stayed the same. She was an adapter; she watched too many people in her family be unhappy trying to keep things the way they had always been.

I was never big on dressing my kids up cute for holidays. They mostly didn't cooperate, and I'm not a dresser-upper for holidays so eventually I moved on. I guess my tradition when it comes to dressing my family for holidays is seeing how much like hobos everyone looks. 

But there is a tradition that my side of the family has done since our kids and my brother/SIL's kids were young:

THE LINE-UP

At first, it was easier to lie them all down than to try to stand them up and keep them in order. 

It got a little easier, but the two youngest didn't get it, and the middle boys were (and still are) complete doofuses.

N took a lot of pride for being the tallest....

but her one year-younger cousin eventually took the title of tallest grandkid (which he currently still holds)

And then the next cousin took her spot in the height of grandkids line-up.

AND, unfortunately, now her younger brother has taken her spot:

To make her feel better, we did a LINE-UP by age, and she was queen again: