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Today's my day to post a lot, I guess. Here's my answer to the Five Questions meme--questions from ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-syndicated.gif)
gleefulfreak
Cut for length and possible TMI--nothing you shouldn't read, but could get boring.
1. What's your evening routine?
It doesn’t really get routine until around 10 when I started trying to drift down to sleep. I’ve learned to do all the stuff that’s mentally stimulating (writing, yoga, meditation, arguments, even LJ!) earlier in the day, because I find it harder to sleep as I get older. So around 10, I watch something on TV maybe, or surf around for information, or work on a crossword for around an hour. Then I do bedtime cleanup (contacts, teeth, pj’s, etc) and make a cup of ginger tea, find a moderately trashy novel (mystery, etc) and read it in bed.
2. What's the one thing you wish you could do (or do better) ?
Oh, well, still working toward doing a handstand in yoga, still trying to speak Spanish—I’ve got a list that’s pretty long. Maybe the biggest one is revise this $#@^ novel…see last post!
3. Five condiments or ingredients you can't live without?
Ginger in all forms! Basil—Thai or Italian! Pepper—the black-white-green kind or the vegetable kind, but hot! Garlic! Coriander—leaf and seed! Would you guess I like Asian cooking?
4. When you were my age (ie, not yet 30) did you accurately foresee any aspects of your current life, or has the path changed directions several times?
It’s funny, but I could see where I’d be now from there much better than the path that led me here. I kind of knew from seeing the other women in my family age that life at 60+ was going to be good, that I’d probably find some of the balance I lacked so much when I was young. But when I was in my twenties, I was a hippy-radical-typical of my era, and never dreamed I’d spend years as a college administrator/faculty. Didn’t even expect to go back to grad school, then. And thought I’d left writing behind. It came back as poetry when I was around 40, and then fell away again, but I hadn’t written fiction since I was a child. And then when I started thinking about retirement, I kind knew what I needed more time to do. Getting divorced and married again—thought I’d either make it the first time or never. Would never have expected to wind up with Bill, if I’d met him in my 20’s. We wouldn’t have had anything to do with each other, back then. The spiritual path has been less twisty-could tell even then that some form of Buddhism was what I needed to explore, and since then have been just looking for the right teacher. Same with yoga—in a way, but didn’t expect to drop it for so long, or get back into it so strongly this late in life, although I knew I’d inherited a fairly enduring body. Children, cats, garden, friends—those have been a straight path, too.
5. If this isn't too personal: describe an experience you've had that was painful, but also transformative - one that you can honestly say was for the best.
Hmm. I can think of a lot of painful things that weren’t for the best, where the pain came from my own selfish behavior, and the main thing was that at least I eventually saw how selfish I was.
The most life-changing pain was something that probably wouldn’t happen now—getting accepted to graduate schools I really wanted to go to, but not getting funding (I later found out that they didn’t give fellowships to women in those schools in those days, or not often—they figured we’d just get married and never really be professionals). And my parents had no money at all then, and I had no concept of how to support myself in a strange town while trying something that hard. (See? I just can’t think of a young woman reacting that way, now). So I just stayed here and went to the local U, not a very good department at the time.
My first reaction was that I was a total failure, that I’d never be an academic, that I might as well just screw around. I made it through that year with a lot of personal distractions, did OK but not spectacular. Took comps and tried to start a thesis and realized my heart wasn’t in it. I began to look seriously at the academics around me, their egos, the trivial nature of so much they did and their inability to see that, their out-of-touchness with the world, their trivial turf battles, and began to understand that academia was kind of like that everywhere. Of course I still had that great passion for literature and still loved the classes and the papers, but I couldn’t really see myself fitting into that world.
I was saved—it was 1964 and the world changed, big time. Via the Civil rights movement (which helped a lot of white people in surprising ways, I guess) I met my first husband, then went to California and found a whole new world of radical politics, spiritual discovery, different ways of relating to people. And then I could write a new chapter about the disillusionments that followed that, but you didn’t really ask for an encyclopedia.
So eventually, to make a very long story short, I found community college teaching, where I could unite my intellectual interests and my social commitment. It was perfect. And I spent 30 years there, hardly peaceful and content ones, but extremely worthwhile. I remarried an academic, and seeing his department up close (and it was a doozy, even as battling academic departments go) confirmed everything I’d thought—as did the experiences of many other friends who’d gone the traditional academic route. I did go back and finish my MA in lit but got a PhD in Linguistics, a totally different way of relating to language, with a dynamite woman director, and wrote a dissertation that I completely enjoyed (well, not the statistics part, but other than that). I even published academically after all, but for my own reasons, not outside pressure.
So glad I didn’t get that fellowship to Vanderbilt or Chapel Hill. I would have been a different person…I like this one better.
ETA: Forgot to say: if there's anyone left who still hasn't done this, let me know and I'll give you five questions!
gleefulfreakCut for length and possible TMI--nothing you shouldn't read, but could get boring.
1. What's your evening routine?
It doesn’t really get routine until around 10 when I started trying to drift down to sleep. I’ve learned to do all the stuff that’s mentally stimulating (writing, yoga, meditation, arguments, even LJ!) earlier in the day, because I find it harder to sleep as I get older. So around 10, I watch something on TV maybe, or surf around for information, or work on a crossword for around an hour. Then I do bedtime cleanup (contacts, teeth, pj’s, etc) and make a cup of ginger tea, find a moderately trashy novel (mystery, etc) and read it in bed.
2. What's the one thing you wish you could do (or do better) ?
Oh, well, still working toward doing a handstand in yoga, still trying to speak Spanish—I’ve got a list that’s pretty long. Maybe the biggest one is revise this $#@^ novel…see last post!
3. Five condiments or ingredients you can't live without?
Ginger in all forms! Basil—Thai or Italian! Pepper—the black-white-green kind or the vegetable kind, but hot! Garlic! Coriander—leaf and seed! Would you guess I like Asian cooking?
4. When you were my age (ie, not yet 30) did you accurately foresee any aspects of your current life, or has the path changed directions several times?
It’s funny, but I could see where I’d be now from there much better than the path that led me here. I kind of knew from seeing the other women in my family age that life at 60+ was going to be good, that I’d probably find some of the balance I lacked so much when I was young. But when I was in my twenties, I was a hippy-radical-typical of my era, and never dreamed I’d spend years as a college administrator/faculty. Didn’t even expect to go back to grad school, then. And thought I’d left writing behind. It came back as poetry when I was around 40, and then fell away again, but I hadn’t written fiction since I was a child. And then when I started thinking about retirement, I kind knew what I needed more time to do. Getting divorced and married again—thought I’d either make it the first time or never. Would never have expected to wind up with Bill, if I’d met him in my 20’s. We wouldn’t have had anything to do with each other, back then. The spiritual path has been less twisty-could tell even then that some form of Buddhism was what I needed to explore, and since then have been just looking for the right teacher. Same with yoga—in a way, but didn’t expect to drop it for so long, or get back into it so strongly this late in life, although I knew I’d inherited a fairly enduring body. Children, cats, garden, friends—those have been a straight path, too.
5. If this isn't too personal: describe an experience you've had that was painful, but also transformative - one that you can honestly say was for the best.
Hmm. I can think of a lot of painful things that weren’t for the best, where the pain came from my own selfish behavior, and the main thing was that at least I eventually saw how selfish I was.
The most life-changing pain was something that probably wouldn’t happen now—getting accepted to graduate schools I really wanted to go to, but not getting funding (I later found out that they didn’t give fellowships to women in those schools in those days, or not often—they figured we’d just get married and never really be professionals). And my parents had no money at all then, and I had no concept of how to support myself in a strange town while trying something that hard. (See? I just can’t think of a young woman reacting that way, now). So I just stayed here and went to the local U, not a very good department at the time.
My first reaction was that I was a total failure, that I’d never be an academic, that I might as well just screw around. I made it through that year with a lot of personal distractions, did OK but not spectacular. Took comps and tried to start a thesis and realized my heart wasn’t in it. I began to look seriously at the academics around me, their egos, the trivial nature of so much they did and their inability to see that, their out-of-touchness with the world, their trivial turf battles, and began to understand that academia was kind of like that everywhere. Of course I still had that great passion for literature and still loved the classes and the papers, but I couldn’t really see myself fitting into that world.
I was saved—it was 1964 and the world changed, big time. Via the Civil rights movement (which helped a lot of white people in surprising ways, I guess) I met my first husband, then went to California and found a whole new world of radical politics, spiritual discovery, different ways of relating to people. And then I could write a new chapter about the disillusionments that followed that, but you didn’t really ask for an encyclopedia.
So eventually, to make a very long story short, I found community college teaching, where I could unite my intellectual interests and my social commitment. It was perfect. And I spent 30 years there, hardly peaceful and content ones, but extremely worthwhile. I remarried an academic, and seeing his department up close (and it was a doozy, even as battling academic departments go) confirmed everything I’d thought—as did the experiences of many other friends who’d gone the traditional academic route. I did go back and finish my MA in lit but got a PhD in Linguistics, a totally different way of relating to language, with a dynamite woman director, and wrote a dissertation that I completely enjoyed (well, not the statistics part, but other than that). I even published academically after all, but for my own reasons, not outside pressure.
So glad I didn’t get that fellowship to Vanderbilt or Chapel Hill. I would have been a different person…I like this one better.
ETA: Forgot to say: if there's anyone left who still hasn't done this, let me know and I'll give you five questions!
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
1. What’s your best-loved physical activity (hmm, not counting the kind that produces kids!), and what do you like about it?
2. What do you eat when your family’s not there, and it’s just you?
3. How was going to school this time different from when you were younger (as an experience for you, mostly--not so much the difference in the schools, but that too if it's important).
4. What do you hope your child has learned from you?
5. When in your life did you see a real choice, and know that you’d be a different person, depending on what choice you made?
From:
no subject
From:
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I think we all create ourselves daily, all those choices, wise and foolish.
And I'm glad to hear you say you're a person you can be proud of. Yes, I am proud of what I am now, though not of all the things I've done in the past.
From:
no subject
I haven't done this meme yet. I broke back into lj with "10 words that start with the letter..." and now I'm looking for something else to write about, so if you have the time...
;o)
From:
no subject
And yeah, she really knows how to ask. If these questions are too big, feel free to substitute or ask for something less huge.
1. What do you do if you get a Sunday afternoon all to yourself?
2. Where would you most like to live the rest of your life?
3. What about your life has turned out the way you planned it?
4. If you could pick anyone in the world and give them one sentence of advice that they would have to follow, who and what would it be?
5. Have tough times in your life radically changed your ideas about how the universe works, or reinforced the ones you had already?
From:
no subject
;o)
From: (Anonymous)
no subject
From:
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1. If you could live anywhere, where would it be?
2. What's your favorite way to pamper yourself when you've had a tough week?
3. Cook for yourself alone? Yes or no?
4. If you could go back and talk to your teenaged self, what would you say?
5. What's been the biggest turning point in your life (that you're willing to write about, that is!)
From:
no subject
From:
no subject
I've done the 5 question meme before, but I'd love new questions. Looking for inspiration to post...something other than the really mundane, woke up went to work stuff. Ask away!
From:
no subject
2. If you wake up hungry in the middle of the night, what do you eat?
3. If animal-care were no barrier, where would you travel?
4. If you had life goals as a young girl, which are you happiest that you acheived? Which are you glad you dropped?
5. What person or event in your life caused you to change directions?