Reinvention in the Mirror

"Inspiring you to reinvent yourself"

Dear Friends,

I’ve written five new posts in my imagination since the last one that actually made it to you. (Each brilliant in its own way.) Today, I want to open up a bit of my character for our collective inspection, reflect on the reinvention I’ve been sharing since February, and let you know why I paused.

“It’s all fun and games until someone loses an eye.” Just like the giddily playing kids whose parent must yell this cliché, I began my journey of reinvention with little idea of the risks. For one thing, it did not dawn on me, though it should have, that this blog and my FB pages would be stalked by someone without my best interest in mind. As I hope you’ve figured out, there are aspects of my life that I do keep private, writing nothing about here or on Facebook. Besides simple discretion and courtesy to others involved in my “reinvention,” I am sensitive to the idea, developed in social science, that to observe something is to change it in some way. So, I share with you what I am open to your influence over – you, meaning the innumerable people, currently known to me or not, who may ultimately read these musings. By opening myself to your observation, I know that my experiences themselves are somehow altered. All the more so, as I am describing my life to you with intent and choices; of course I’m aware of and influenced by your presence.

This blog is about growth, learning, joy, gratitude and excitement. In these areas, the more the merrier! Come on in for a swim in these pools of my mind; splash around; make some noise; run, even, if you wish. It’s safe and I welcome it. 

Why did I start the blog this year? Because I have illnesses that have forced me to change direction; because I was too ill to work and what on earth was I going to do with myself? Because I have financial and familial circumstances that one could consider dire. (Okay, that are dire.) Because I am much lesser abled than I ever was, in life-critical ways. Because everything must change because everything has changed.  

My response to those truths is to dwell as much as possible on these equally available truths: that there are also good circumstances in my life, that I have plenty of blessings to count, and that to a great extent, I get to choose my private and public responses to the losses. (Jewish tradition includes very sensible distinctions between public and private mourning.) It is not the circumstance that defines one, but the response.

My cyber-stalker – yes, someone I know – believes that if one is true the other must be a lie. Either I am in dire straits or I am joyful.  If I write about joy and good fortune here, that belies my “claim” of difficult circumstances. If my physical and financial difficulties are true, then – obviously – I am lying to you in this blog and on Facebook. This person has decided that I lie habitually and that I have little integrity.

So I paused. To ponder. To give the stalker less fodder for misinterpretation. To wonder, am I being truthful with you? After much deliberation, I came to this thought: 

Pthththththththththththththth!!!!

It may be harder to burst with joy when counting too few pennies or when feeling knocked off one’s feet, but it is by no means impossible. A stimulating conversation may do it, as may evoking an infant’s smile. 

Watching a cat choose the posies’ planter as a cat bed has done it. Seeing FB photos of former students loving life does it. Chocolate ice cream does it (duh!), as does linguistic and philosophical discourse with a new FB friend.

I don’t yet have the answers to my fiscal well-being, and I don’t know how I will live a productive life with the ailments that limit me. I don’t. I grieve plenty, in private and to my closest confidantes. It scares me not to control the outcome, not even to know it. 

What I do know is that for me, joy is the antidote to fear. Laughter pushes stress away. Creative expression lightens the burden. Loving family and friends soothe my achy soul. And that, my dears, is no lie.

So, after this, back we go: to aspirations, inspiration, and the occasional stinky perspiration. Back to joy, growth, and beauty. Back to learning, reinvention, naysayers be damned.

Thanks for reading!

Love, Rhonda

Unintentionally Slapstick

"Inspiring You to Reinvent Yourself"

Dear Friends,

Years ago, I asked two colleagues to stop talking about their sex lives in front of me: "Don't you understand," I said, in mock exasperation, "I'm unintentionally celibate!" 

They chuckled, left my office, and we went about our week. Except that Sandy giggled every time she saw me, returning repeatedly to the concept of "unintentionally celibate." 

Just as a staff meeting was about to begin, Sandy and I made eye contact across the table; muttering, "unintentionally celibate," she began to laugh again. 

Here's a nice picture of a nice cucumber. No reason. Why?

"Sandy," I said in mock exasperation, "Don't you understand? It wouldn't be funny if it weren't true!"

"Oh!" she responded, thought a minute, nodding her head slowly. 

"Ohhhhhhhhhhh." 

It was an odd concept. Celibacy, as opposed to “not getting any” or “in a dry spell,” connotes choice, virtue. To be celibate is to be well-behaved, disciplined, pure and strong. In control of one’s destiny. I was unintentionally strong and in control? Yes! I'd much rather have been impulsively screwing up a storm every night and bow-legged with exhaustion every morning. It was my age-right, my birthright. I was racking up virtue points when I should have been racking up notches on a bedpost. It was frustrating. And funny.

I often burst out laughing when I recount my frustrations, and, as I saw clearly this week, so do my friends. I’ve been in NYC, down from Albany for a divorce mediation session that took place on Wednesday. I planned 1.5 days free and close by on either side of the stressful event, in case of debilitating potential Fibro flare-ups. (Thanks to the Have Computer Will Work strategy, I am able to be as productive in borrowed digs as I am at home.)

Making time to connect with friends through the week, I had lunch at a café, dusk beside the Central Park Reservoir and dinner at a corner Italian place. After each get-together, my abs ached and my cells felt over-oxygenated from belly laughter. The stories were the sort that are over-the-top funny because, well, they aren’t really funny at all. Self-deprecating slapstick: Not so-and-so slipped on a banana peel; rather, that’s me slipping on the damned banana peel that I threw down to begin with!  

My friends and I laughed about grunting like old, arthritic men every time we move, the relationships that went insanely south, the most bizarre moments of those relationships, and the grief of lost love and trashed dreams. Conversation sloshed between sharing real pain and giggling over it, being worried and being giddy and strategizing and caricaturizing.

I could barely catch my breath or hold my bladder. At the café, the woman behind us could barely hear herself think. At the reservoir, self-satisfied runners just barely managed to ignore us. No matter – we were thoroughly enjoying the fruits of our failures.

Often, I describe my body with Fibro as a carnival fun house mirror – everything’s warped and unreal. “It would be hysterically funny if it weren’t true,” I say. But enjoying this week so much and remembering back to “unintentionally celibate,” I now see that if it weren’t true, it wouldn’t be funny.

Are you enjoying these posts? Please do share them. It’s fun to see what new countries people are reading me in. I don’t have anyone in Africa or Scandinavia yet. Let’s go, people!

Love, Rhonda

PS. Need writing or editing help? Write me at rhonda@reworkediting.com.