And why that has anything at all to do with you and me
“He’s still around?”
I nodded. My gym friend shook his head. “Unbelievable,” he said, then went back to his bicep curls. I could see him grinning behind his mask. I was too.
Planet Fitness was jammed this morning. Well, jammed in comparison to what it’s been since we were on lockdown. The energy level was amazing in there. It’s spring, the pollen count around here is horrendous, but we’re in the gym at 6 am pounding it out as the weather report promises us sun every single day this week.
Oh. My. God. Spring. Warmth. Sun.
Why Mick Jagger? What does that have to do with…
It doesn’t take long to cripple ourselves. Just watch.
As in watch TV all day, all night, and see what happens to your spine. Your brain, your organs, your entire body.
Kevin Plummer is my sports chiropractor. At well over six feet and dynamic as hell, he sports the cobbled belly that is the envy of any man. A decathlete in his youth, he competed successfully. That competitive lifestyle is ingrained in his lifelong training habits. Today at 48, he can jump higher, lift more and run faster than he ever did at 20. The same doesn’t go for his younger brother.
While I was on the table yesterday…
If you’re terrified of aging, you’re in good company. Let’s talk.
Dear Reader: this is a journey, as is aging. As with some of my longer pieces, this might be best consumed in chunks, considered and mulled over. Or not, up to you. However, you and I are aging. Will get old, if we luck out. HOW we do that might well depend on how we frame it. To that, read on.
Was it being stuck in quarantine? Was it too many close inspections in the bathroom mirror? Was it a come home to mama talk with ourselves when we fell in kitchen?
Or did we read an article on Medium…
Shakespeare was right.
I recently got into a bit of trouble with one of my more respected commenters for having a rather spicy say about a post that, for my reading dollar, was about as negative and depressing a piece of writing as I have even fallen into on Medium. I continue to be unapologetic about it for one simple reason: even after returning to that piece, I still couldn’t find anything positive about it.
She was wallowing in being SO OLD at 51. Look. Those of you who know my writing, know how I feel about such pap. And while my commenter…
I’ll bet this has happened to you, if you’ve got a mouth like I do.
This afternoon I was reading the Crow’s Feet monthly story roundup. Saw a title I was interested in. Clicked on it.
I’d been blocked.
Huh?
Didn’t recognize the author’s name. Clearly pissed her off at some point. No idea where or how.
I do that sometimes. You too? Join the club. This article is about blocking, some of the whos, whys and hows of blocking for both the blockee and blocker. Might be a fun ride. Or not. Have you had your second quadruple shot macchiato? Good. Climb aboard.
On Being a Troll Magnet
If you have strong opinions, like my Medium buddy Nicole Chardenet…
When your side conversation becomes a lesson in heroism, courage and everyday resilience
If I want examples of heroism, I don’t have to look much farther than those around me at the gym. In so many cases, the people who are sweating it out have pretty interesting stories. Most of us, however, are too busy either ogling ourselves (for better or for worse), especially after a year in lockdown, or comparing ourselves to people we assume either are just plain lucky or have it better than we do.
How little we understand. To that, I will share what happened this morning around 6:35 am.
She was standing next to the cleaning station, which…
Late-in-life musings about how parental behavior shapes us
Last night shortly before I rolled into my four poster- solo, as it has been most of my life- I read the following simply exquisite article about loving our kids by Medium writer Jack Calhoun:
As I read through, here is what bit, hard and deeply:
If you have resentment or regret about having brought them into your life, they will know it.
If your love is conditional, based on their behavior, they will know it.
If your love for yourself is greater than your love for them, they will know it.
If you are ashamed of them, they will…
I put this up on Twitter but forgot to put quote marks around your words. I"m still learning Twitter. Crap. I didn't realize we can't edit something after it posts! Well, it's still up there.
Egregious: extraordinary in some bad way; glaring; flagrant — Dictionary.com.
Let’s talk.
In the last couple of weeks, especially under the shadow of mass killings and the flagrant far-Right attempts to prevent Black and Brown voter turnout (don’t get me started) I’ve had the pleasure of two very smart Black women’s input and point of view put a few things into perspective. My hope here is that you can get at least a bit of the value I did, and the importance of different ways of seeing. This is how we grow.
First: what I saw on LinkedIn.
Tonie Guajardo and I are connected on Linked In. I haven’t met her and I don’t yet know her work…
The invisible, unheralded things we do speak to who we are.
My father was a petty thief. I don’t mean that in the sense that he made a living out of it. He was a child of the Great Depression, having graduated from Cornell right into the teeth of the 1930s. He ended up marked for life by that experience. As a result, he developed a habit of taking small things from stores, long before there were security cameras. He never got caught.
Dad was complex. I am not condemning him for being a petty thief. However, I think that this small compulsion of his, which my mother told me about…
Julia E Hubbel
Horizon Huntress, prize-winning author, adventure traveler, boundary-pusher, wilder, veteran, aging vibrantly. I own my sh*t. Let’s play!
