At 50

Today is my 50th birthday. Although I know this is a tough milestone for some people, I started looking forward to turning 50 when I was about 30. Back then, everything seemed so unsettled. I thought surely by 50 I would be in a place where I was not starting over all the time. I would hopefully have more control over the way my life was arranged than it seemed I had at the time.

I made mistakes for my 30th and 40th birthdays. At 30, I was at the MacDowell Colony, an artist’s colony in New Hampshire. I thought it would be a good idea to celebrate my writing self, and I was very lucky to get accepted. I had been at Yaddo when I turned 26, and that had been a fantastic experience. On the day I’d visited a composer in residence who played for me a Kyrie Eleison he’d composed. While there, I saw my first opera, The Marriage of Figaro, when the Met performed at an outdoor venue near Saratoga Springs.

But turning 30 at MacDowell, I was terribly lonely. It was a very intense group in residence, and the energy in the place was difficult. I was working on a very dark novel, and my cabin was in the woods and seemed to only get sunlight from 9:35-10:50 a.m. Despite the good writing and the intense beauty of an Audubon lake where we went swimming most afternoons, I felt alone, unsettled, very uncertain about my future. I was not in a relationship, the novel would almost certainly come to nothing, and I had just learned from a phone conversation that the friend staying in my apartment back in Chicago was having sex in my bed, which seemed really unfair and disturbing at the time!

It was still a magical time and place. I will never forget watching the O.J. Simpson slow speed chase in the small t.v. room. One of the writers at the colony was also a producer who had worked for years with Diane Sawyer. She was weighing two job offers, with Primetime on ABC and Dateline on NBC. Flipping back and forth (manually) to watch the coverage of the chase on the two networks, she made her decision.

At 40, I was newly divorced. I went to another artist’s colony for the month of June, this time in Costa Rica. It was gorgeous and the other artists were very nice. I had planned to work on poems, but a memoir started spilling out of me, page after page. By the end of the month, I had a good first draft. Still, on the day of my birthday, I was lonely. There was no real internet connection and everyone was working like a regular day. One of the very nice painters made me brownies and a woman put together some flowers for me. But I felt very unsettled and uncertain about the future.

So here I am at 50. And life is quite good. I am married and more settled than I thought I’d ever be. I am surrounded by beauty and rich stories. I feel loved. And I am spending my birthday in Chicago with family and friends. Such a better option!

A week ago on a bike ride, a phrase went through my head: “Failure is really holding me back.” It was about writing and thinking about how I’m struggling having confidence in my ability to revise the novel. After having a great time writing the first draft, I now am having trouble maintaing confidence in my ability to craft it into something that will make its way out in the world. The self-talk related to the projects that didn’t go through (that novel from 1994 that was not really very good despite several drafts; the memoir that was very good but didn’t get published) kicks in.

My sense of the writing path has changed. And though I’d like to think the writing itself is all that matters, it is not enough. The real goal is to “get it out there,” have a readership.

Of course, it has not been all failure for me! Habits was a wholly successful venture. For what it is, a small collection of prose poems, it had a greater run than I would have ever predicted. It got press! It got into the hands of readers who love it! I am proud of the writing! It looks beautiful!

I would like to bring out a book a year. Some will be self-published, but there are others I’d like to go a more traditional route. I will try to have expectations that match the project. I will enjoy the readership that comes my way.

And for my birthdays, I will have cake! I will be with friends and family and celebrate the beautiful, rich life I’ve had so far, and the promise of all that is to come.

Thank you to all the blog readers! I do appreciate you being on this journey with me!