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:

O, the places I'm not going this spring break

I'm engaging in quite a bit of my own CBT this week as I see social media posts from people who are traveling.

On the one hand, even though I'm fully vaccinated, it gives me a severe case of the heebie-jeebies to see people out and about engaging in life. And I have to remind myself that the pictures they post are of their own families together outside. They aren't packed into a subway car mask-less with hundreds of strangers. 

My parents, who are also fully vaccinated, got together for a meal with several other also fully vaccinated couples for dinner (not at a restaurant; in one of their homes). My initial reaction that never got past my lips was, "OMG. Are you crazy?" 

But then I went through the "They are fully vaccinated. The other people are fully vaccinated. They are fine" mantra and was ok. 

I'm doing a lot of the self-talk business lately. 

As mentioned, I do some CBT to manage the anxiety of seeing people out doing stuff.

And then I do some CBT to help me manage my feelings of meh and self-pity at seeing other people doing stuff because we're not doing stuff (even though I don't yet feel comfortable doing stuff especially if it involves being on an airplane).

My brain is putting itself in freaking knots.

So I give my brain this talk:

Me: "Brain, you've gone some really cool places, and you'll go to some really cool places again just not right now."

Brain: "Yeah, ok."

Me: "And you wouldn't enjoy traveling right now because the boys aren't vaccinated so you wouldn't want to fly. And you don't want to stay in a hotel. And you wouldn't feel comfortable going out to eat at restaurants."

Brain: "Yeah. You're right."

Me: "Not to mention that you've been able to save a crazy amount of money this year from not going places which means you may be able to do some stuff to the house that you've been wanting to do."

Brain: 'Yeah. That would be good."

Me: "And finally, Brain, you know as well as anyone that pics on social media are one moment in time. You've posted your own pics that make everything look amazing and wonderful even when five seconds later you felt like murdering your entire family."

Brain: "True, all."

Me: "So quit feeling mopey and boring. Life is 95% mopey and boring, and you know that. Cool it."

I'm finding that navigating all the rules and protocols and reservation systems is overwhelming me and taking all the fun out of doing stuff and that is just attempting to do stuff in my city. (We had a zoo attempt failure a couple weeks ago). 

I can't handle the idea of doing this from several states (or countries) away. YIKES!

This summer we're going two hours away and that will be good enough. 

I am having to remind myself a lot (more CBT) that it took me months to get used to pandemic life and it will take as long if not longer to readjust to whatever is going to look like normal. 

A reason I'm not sending my kid back to IRL school now (that hadn't occurred to me until recently)

Every parent is having to make decisions right now that both they and their kids can live with regarding in-person school. 

I made the decision to not send my kids back to school for the remainder of this school year.

At its most basic, this decision is about the virus.  

But the decision is about a lot more than the virus, and it took me a little while to see this. 

My basic argument in my head was that all this seemed like an awful lot of work and struggle (especially for teachers and staff) for what will ultimately amount to 12 days of in-person school per child (due to the hybrid scheduling). 

In "normal circumstances," the first six weeks of school in August are aimed at establishing routines (that is 30 days of consistent 5-day-a-week school). To me, starting IRL school in mid-April (after Spring Break when everyone is mentally done with school anyway) seemed like an effort in futility. 

But it dawned on me (finally) that my feelings about this futility had a lot to do with what the virus did to all the work G had done pre-pandemic (starting in November 2019) to manage his OCD. 

He had been going to therapy once a week. 

He was dealing with his uniform and his shoes.

He was going to school ok and managing his anxieties.

And then COVID hit. 

No IRL school; no uniforms; no shoes; nothing normal.

No being around unknown people and having to manage his anxiety in the face of them. 

So a lot of those things that set off his OCD haven't been there for a year. 

Which is EXACTLY the wrong thing when you're doing exposure therapy. The goal is to EXPOSE yourself to the things that cause anxiety. COVID made exposure not happen. 

(If I was a better person, I would have forced him to wear his uniform and put on his shoes, but given all the pandemic and all my dad's stuff and all the STUFF, I didn't have the mental energy to fight with my child constantly.)

And part of the therapy is the consistent practice of managing your anxiety in the face of exposure. Consistent being the operative word. 

To send G back to school now for two days a week in a hybrid schedule means to force him to deal with all of his OCD issues for six weeks inconsistently and then have a huge summer break (again, no consistent practice). 

It means to send him back to deal with all his old OCD issues and all the new anxiety issues from the virus. 

Prior to COVID, G would experience anxiety seeing his classmates and peers act out in school and not do what they were asked to do by teachers. How will he handle seeing this happen with mask-wearing or social distancing? 

Last year, he rode the bus home. How will he handle that, being in obviously close quarters with other kids who may remove their masks and hide behind the seat? 

G could barely manage the uncomfortable feeling of his uniform so I'm not sure he could manage 7+ hours of mask-wearing.

I know there are lots of kids who need to go back and have some semblance of whatever they describe as normal. But there are, I suspect, an awful lot of kids for whom going to school before COVID was an emotional labor that they maybe aren't super keen to return to especially because all the COVID protocols will heighten their anxiety even more. 

My kid is one of those. 

OCD itself is tantamount to rolling a stone up the hill to only have it roll back over and over and over again. It is a labor at all times, and I really do not have the desire to intentionally make ourselves Sisyphean in April of the nearly over school year. 

Sad to see the pandemic go

Let me qualify that title a bit.

I don't think COVID is done with us even though people are continuing to get vaccinated. I would not be a bit surprised to see rates climb again after March and April spring breaks. 

I've read too many dystopian apocalyptic books to think things are just going to go totally swell (cause 526,000 deaths is not swell). And I've read enough Buddhism books to know it is all hopeless/emptiness, and I can't control it anyway. 

But I am sensing an "end-to-this" feel, and it makes me a little sad. 

Maybe it is just the spring weather?

I won't be sad to see sickness and dying go away.

But it saddens me to think that everyone is going to pick right back up exactly where they left off a year ago, perhaps none the wiser, perhaps having learned nothing or thought nothing about what was better about life in the pandemic.

As the months wore on, I heard people lament their kids being home, things not being normal, and I wanted to shake them and say:

In one year (or 10 years) you are going to be wailing about how your "baby" is going away to college. You have been given the gift of time seeing your child in ways you never would have had if the pandemic hadn't happened. You got a bonus. 

Our family has long been on the slow boat. That is always how D has rolled, and I have gotten more comfortable on the ride over the years. Our kids generally like being home and not doing much. Our lives in many ways didn't change much due to quarantines and the pandemic, but it changed enough that it was a gift. 

We took hikes last spring before N got a job. 

We always ate most dinners together, but now we were eating all meals like we would if we were on a vacation. 

D and I take walks together every single day, and sometimes twice a day. 

It wasn't all bad. 

And so now to think about going back to "normal" makes me cringe because...

I didn't miss the early mornings and the travel time.

I didn't miss the hours away from home and the homework when the kids got home.

I didn't miss being in my car and driving so much. 

I didn't miss the school functions and the paperwork that came home. 

I didn't miss the guilt that sometimes came with not attending school functions. 

I didn't miss the uniforms and the lunches.

I didn't miss the meetings.

I didn't miss the go, and the go, and the go. 

I didn't miss the small talk with people I barely know.

I didn't miss the being friendly when I didn't feel like being friendly. 

Once you become used to more stillness, the idea of returning to the buzz of sound and motion just feels like too much.