Tag Archives: ageism

Old Enough to Know Everything

Fairly recently — I’d say maybe within the last couple of years, maybe more — I’ve realized that the world’s patience with me being uncertain — about basically anything — has ended. Because I’m old enough to know everything.

Subtle ageism, perhaps?

Blogger on the left at a callow 16/17. On right, at an uncertain 66.

I’ve always been a fan of the retort, usually attributed to Oscar Wilde, as said to any know-it-all: “I’m not young enough to know everything.”

Because there’s a truth to that. When you’re a young or young-at-heart person, you are sure of things. Even though you could be and often are totally wrong.

Which is something you learn as you mature. As you get older, because with age comes experience, at least lived experience. Even if you’re a total idiot in other regards. Which teaches you a few things:

There are Patterns

Actions come with consequences or results, which are often predictable. There’s less magical thinking and daydreaming, as you internalize the truth of, for instance, not doing the same thing over and over to expect new and different results (the 12-step definition of insanity, by the way).

So if you get a parking ticket and ignore it, it won’t magically go away. It will get more expensive and thus more painful for you. This pattern is endlessly repeated throughout life.

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The Only Constant is Change

I know it’s a cliche, but it’s really true that the only thing you can really count on is that things keep changing. This is one thing definitely reinforced by living longer because you simply get more evidence this is true.

Just when you think things are all set, something will happen to spin the story in an entirely different direction. To paraphrase another 12-step favorite, “if you want the universe to laugh at you, tell it your plans.”

True Catastrophes are Rare

I’m a fairly anxious individual and my go-to reaction for almost any obstacle is that it’s going to be a catastrophe. Possibly the worst thing that ever happened, and I certainly won’t be surviving it.

I felt this way when I got cancer. I’m still here. I felt that way when George Bush won a second term in 2004. Somehow we all survived that. Trump was/is a catastrophe but he hasn’t succeeded in destroying the country – not yet anyway. Climate change may beat him to it – but I’m optimistic. Because there’s really no other choice that makes sense to me.

Personally, I’ve been fired from jobs, had creditors actually come knocking on my door, had messy breakups with screaming men. Somehow I’m still an outwardly calm 66-year-old.

Perhaps that’s why people, younger mainly simply because there are more of them — can’t seem to tolerate any ambiguity from me. If I don’t possess the answers, then who does?

So, you know, ask me anything — since I apparently know everything.

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What I Learned About Leaving the Workforce Early – Some Thoughts On That

thank you CNN

thank you CNN

I’ve realized lately that I’ve read an incredible amount about early retirement, reinvention, midlife change, and related topics to probably  write a book on the subject. OK, maybe not enough for a book, but certainly enough for a blog post.

So I write this in service of anyone reading who may be contemplating these issues and the difficult decisions they often entail.

First of all, once you leave a certain level of job early, you can’t go back. It’s like going home again, you can go to the physical place, but you can’t ever recapture the feeling you think you remember. I find it’s the same kind of thing with the working world. You’ve moved on; they’ve moved on and everything is different. It’s an important choice to leave, and not one to take lightly.

I left a high paying high esteem high stress corporate type job (public relations work) in the early aughts for more time to devote to writing and filmmaking and other creative pursuits; while having that time has been great, I didn’t truly suss out the financials, whether it be self-employment or part time work or just living on savings.

While it is possible I could survive on savings, living a very frugal existence (which I have done for some of the time since I left this aforementioned job), I’m the type to get nervous at only seeing spending with no income coming in at all. So I wanted to do something, just not what I was doing before which was overwhelming (this I realized after I survived a bout of cancer while at that job).

So one of the dirty truths I’ve learned is that nobody will hire you in the same industry you used to work in at a lower level job. You can only be hired again at the same level you were at or higher. The idea that someone with a lot of experience might want a lower pressure job just for the sake of paying the bills does not really compute with the HR types or the always upwardly -driven. And it’s even more that you “marry” your job these days than it was when I left – -management employees are tethered to the company 24/7 by all manner of digital handcuffs. So, no thanks.

So if you don’t want to get back on that rat race treadmill, new opportunities will always pay less. Sometimes really a lot less. So this it another thing I’d think long and hard about: do you really need or want to leave that job so much that you’re willing to give up the salary and the perks that come with it? You’re saying “of course I do, I just have to escape it, it’s hell.” Hell is also having absurd health care costs when you have just very basic insurance; no paid holidays or vacations, no fun gadgets the corporate budget pays for, certainly no paid-for travel, food or even coffee!

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I have been greatly blessed in my life; we’re not talking about a hell of no roof over my head or no food on the table, so I’m really not complaining so much as managing expectations. But can someone tell me whatever happened to that idea of job-sharing – for instance, you “share” the job, say, of PR Director with another person; perhaps they work mornings and you work afternoons, or alternate days. You’d think in PR, which as a industry has a ton of female executives, there’d be mothers who’d want that kind of arrangement. But it seems it never took off. One person I asked told me it was around the idea of benefits, as in, who gets the healthcare. Just one more reason for national single payer, Medicare for everyone, if you ask me.

Another thing I’d mention is that age discrimination is rampant and horrible and really hard to pin down. After my last full-time job layoff at the end of 2009, I got crickets response to my resume, with its 30 years of PR experience and several more years of publishing experience. Gurus I talked to encouraged me to leave off the year of my college graduation (1980 – and that was 3 years later than if I’d gone directly after high school) but I figured when they called me in for the interview they’d figure out my age anyway. Except – there haven’t been any interviews! I’ve not been called into any interviews for full time communications jobs in the last five years. Depressing, sure. You become, in a sense, unmanageable (and I understand this now) which derives from many things – experience, age, temperament, your accumulated wisdom, etc.

So one of the gurus told me: “I think consulting is the way you should go.”

Truly, she was correct. And actually, there wasn’t much alternative. So I have become a B2B writing consultant. But this guru also said: “And then you must commit to it 3000 percent!” She was right about that, too. Passion is key if you’re going to become successfully self-employed. Not everyone is cut out for this. For most of us, clients don’t grow on trees. You need to do major marketing work to have a chance to bring in the work — so again, make sure this is something you really want to do.

Some other thoughts on early retirement/involuntary retirement: If you retire at, say, 55, that’s maybe 30 years in retirement. That’s a long time, a really long time! You really need to think long and hard about what you’re going to do with all that time. Lying around the pool or catching up on TV series is OK for a month or so, but beyond that I think most people need a purpose. In fact, I’d say you shouldn’t retire even at a traditional retirement age of 65 or 66 unless you have a plan for what you’re going to do with all that time.

I used to look down on people who were unemployed or said they couldn’t find a job, thinking they were probably doing it wrong or just plain lazy. Then it happened to me. Funny how that works, eh?

I have more pearls I hope to share in future posts.

 

 

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Aging People With H.I.V. Struggle to Live – New York Times

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Even though this New York Times story was published a couple of months ago now, I thought it was important and wanted to highlight and link to it.

As older people become invisible to so much of our youth-obsessed society, long-term HIV survivors face a special stigma. I think there’s some truth to the idea that this is something we’d rather not talk about, thank you very much, let’s just close that door and forget about it, or forget about it as much as we can.

And why is that — because these men, these women, remind us of that time we still shudder at the memory of. Reminding us of the time and of the people, the thousands we’ve lost, a reminder every time we look into an older face and remember what we were like in our 20s, 30s . . . The pain and the fear come back. That fear.

So AIDS is as treatable as diabetes — is that true, or are we fooling ourselves? Sometimes the wonder drugs stop working — does that happen with diabetes, too? Maybe it does. I still hear about mysterious complications long HIV-positive folks have with their health, which may or may not be related to the treatments themselves. And the longer these people do live, the more uncharted the territory, right?

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Still we have the almost institutionalized fundraisers in the gay community, the “AIDS emergency” — hmm, maybe we need to fund prevention more. Maybe we need to fund a vaccine. Yet all these things are being done, still. Still people get infected, now it’s mostly those too young to remember the fear.

Depression and isolation, often found with otherwise healthy people who are aging, is also part of this picture. One quote from the story stuck out at me: “as older gay men with H.I.V., they feel shut out from AIDS service organizations geared to younger or newly infected men, and from bars where they once felt at home.” That is true. And it’s not just older men who have HIV who are shut out — that ageism is pervasive.

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“Over 50 and Out of Work” Project

near vacant Palm Springs Mall

I had this photo of the dead Palm Springs Mall in my files, thought it appropriate enough to illustrate this post on on unemployment and underemployment, highlighting a fascinating project, the Over 50 and Out of Work stories and documentary film.

As well all know, the two candidates for president go on and on and on, sometimes talking about jobs but really not offering anything very specific, while huge parts of the population are really hurting, suffering long-lasting unemployment or underemployment. It’s chronic at both the young and the older ends of this spectrum, and these stories on this website are about people over 50 who’ve lost their livelihoods and their continuing struggles to find something new.

Think ageism or age-based discrimination doesn’t exist? Watch a few of these videos. They’re fairly addictive. What do you think?


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Over 50 and Out of Work | Stories of the Great Recession.

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Huffington Post Unemployment Links/Stories portal

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