WordSisters

Category: Adjusting

  • Navigating Life’s Turbulence: Lessons from a Country Walk

    Candidate signs and Halloween decorations needed clearing November 7th along the country road where I walked. My feet moved slower than my thoughts of how to accept election results. 

    Five hundred feet ahead, at least a dozen large, wild, turkeys covered the road as well as both shoulders. They can be mean in a standoff. Future concerns fell to immediate safety. Should I turn around, my clap hands, swing a fallen branch to clear a path? Yelling and singing haven’t worked in the past. My walk was over.

    Two deer bounded out from woods on one side of the road, gracefully crossed the asphalt, and entered deeper tree growth in beautiful synchrony. The turkeys scurried behind the white tails. Here, then gone. The walk cleared.

     “Awesome” I said out loud at the display of natural beauty. Unattractive turkeys had been swept into a brief glimpse of something amazingly natural on another day of unpleasant election rhetoric and deep discord.

    Decades ago, St. Mary’s in Luxemburg, WI began my Christian orientation. Small towns, filled with relatives, made it easier to accept a set of beliefs and traditions. What I still carry is a careful relationship with God. Call it spirituality or faith, old-fashioned or unnecessary, I value the foundation. At the turkey and deer moment, I followed the spoken word with a silent “Thank you, God” for a reminder of good possibilities.

    In November, regardless of voting on the winning or losing side, many people remain thankful for family, friends, freedom to have a public opinion. I dread how politics and powerful men with money will affect the quality of life. 

    Fear feels like too powerful a word at a time when caution is critical. Fear was two years ago when I had major surgery to save my life. I knew what I feared that day. I could balance fear and hope. Today I can’t name what to fear beyond unpleasant changes. Fear and dread appear in definitions of each word, but fear has a more expansive description. 

    I’d love to be one of those deer easily running through the woods. I can accept moving closer to the speed of the wild turkeys shuffling through fallen leaves or awkwardly flying up to their nightly roost. During the day I will keep looking for ways to move the threatening turkeys out of the way of my walk and yours.

    Two years of thankfulness. More to come.

  • “Why, in my day . . .”

    Growing up, I recall elders recounting tales about life before some innovation. Today, the advent of artificial intelligence (AI) is a hinge moment like so many technological advances I’ve experienced in the last 40 years. I look back on past breakthroughs with wonder and nostalgia. I’m trying to come to terms with current developments.

    1984 – Desktop Computers

    I roll my eyes when young volunteer coordinators enquire if I’m comfortable with computers. In 1984, my boss handed me boxes for an Apple IIe desktop computer and an amber monitor (orange type on a black screen) and told me to set them up so I could write marketing and training materials. 

    1989 – Internet

    Today, that old setup is quaint and humorous—a one-color monitor, 5¼ inch diskettes, a computer that didn’t connect to the Internet . . . because the World Wide Web wasn’t mainstream until 1989-90.

    When the Internet became commonplace, we used painfully slow telephone dial-up modems with their crackling static and rubber band sound. Modems meant I no longer had to courier work product files to my customers on diskettes, which had shrunk to 3½ inches. 

    1994 – 2001 – Search Engines and Websites

    In the mid-1990s, search engines like Yahoo, AOL, and Netscape came on the scene and Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helped people, products, and businesses get found. Google started in 1998. It’s hard to imagine a time before Google, when research meant visiting a brick and mortar library to use printed resources that might be checked out to someone else.

    As websites grew common, having one for my business became important. A friend and I designed and rolled out mine in 2001. Several versions followed until I retired it several years ago.

    1996 – Cell Phones 

    For me, the next technological cliff came around 1996 or 1997 when small cell phones arrived. They made calls. That’s it. If you had the patience to tap number buttons repeatedly, you could eke out texts. No camera. No Internet. No email. No music. No maps. Next, I owned a different dumb phone that opened to a qwerty keyboard. Around 2005, I acquired a fancier flip phone with a camera. Woohoo! Before long my 35mm digital camera was obsolete.

    2007 – Smartphones

    The world shifted dramatically again when the iPhone was introduced in 2007—the best of the available smartphones. Cell phones had enabled me to keep up on client calls and emails seamlessly when I was away from my home office—in other words, an early version of remote work. Staying connected with family became immensely simpler too.

    2007 – 2008 – Facebook & Twitter

    The advent of social media—Facebook and Twitter along with their many step-children—has transformed the world. How we discover, understand, and consume news. How we see ourselves and connect with or demonize others. There’s no denying social media’s far-reaching impact. Despite my mixed feelings about Facebook, it’s where a number of readers find our blogs. 

    Now – Artificial Intelligence

    Evidence of artificial intelligence is everywhere—Siri and Alexa, helpful spelling prompts in texts and emails, blank-eyed, AI-drawn models in ads, and who knows how many AI functions we are unaware of. 

    AI makes me uneasy. But I don’t want to be a Luddite, so I’ve told myself I really ought to dig in, try to understand its scope, possibilities, and implications . . . insofar as any non-AI developer can. I’ve begun experimenting with ChatGPT as a research tool (think of all the data it accesses), but it’s never going to be writing my blogs! Count on 100% Ellen, all the time.

    Five years from now, when the next technological wonder launches, who knows what we’ll be saying?

  • Making It Up as I Go Along

    Making It Up as I Go Along

    In my everyday life, I’m a planner. I schedule visits with friends, household chores, exercise, and so forth. I mark my calendar and make detailed lists. But when it comes to big decisions, I’ve often acted on a gut feeling and made consequential choices without really knowing what I was doing or how they would turn out. I’ve winged it.

    For example, I moved cross-country for college teaching jobs when I was in my 20s. I knew very little about the English departments I’d be part of or the small towns I was moving to. In the first college town I discovered the lack of privacy. Students hounded me about grades at the bar when I was blurry after half a pitcher of happy hour beer. Or they’d chat me up in the drugstore as I reached for a box of tampons. The next college had three different presidents by December, and we worried our paychecks would bounce. Nonetheless, I grew into a competent teacher and made lifelong friends.

    When the second college’s financial troubles led to layoffs, I moved back to my hometown to be closer to family. I didn’t have a job but hoped I’d figure it out despite the recession. For nine months, I burnt through my teacher’s pension before I got a job writing training materials—which launched my next career as a marketing communications writer. Once I was employed, my fiancé joined me and we were married in the loving circle of family.

    A few years later, I moved away again after my husband got a job in Minnesota because our prospects were limited in Ohio. We started over in an unfamiliar city—with new jobs and a new house but no roadmap for how to be settled and happy there. 35 years later our roots are deep. Our expanding family and circle of friends are here. We happily consider ourselves Minnesotans. Wind chill and all. 

    Although I liked the fulltime job I first took in Minnesota, I wanted to have more time with our young sons. I launched a freelance communications business with only one client and nothing but promises of work from others. I knew little about the ups and downs of managing clients and erratic cash flow. 

    Fortunately, my husband is excellent with finances. I discovered I had a knack for keeping clients happy and writing about their products and services. I kept my business going for 18 years, but after our youngest son left for college, I wanted to have coworkers again. My collie/office mate was sweet but didn’t have much to say. I took a hospital communications job and enjoyed being part of a large team.

    Several years later, there was a reorganization and the joy went out of the job for me. At 61, I didn’t see other part-time career opportunities, so I decided to retire. Although I knew retirement would be major transition, my vision for it was vague. Since then, I’ve built a satisfying life which includes writing, reading, tutoring, gardening, traveling, and plenty of time with family and friends. Occasionally, a headhunter approaches me about work, but I’m not tempted. Retirement life is great!

    At each of those turning points, I wasn’t sure how the change would play out. I didn’t have a blueprint to ensure my new life would be OK. I trusted myself to make up my new life as I went along. I’ve made my share of mistakes and endured some tough times, but so far, things have worked out.

    These days, I occasionally worry that I haven’t prepared enough for the coming years. We have organized our retirement finances, and we’re actively enjoying life while our health is good. Otherwise, I approach aging in a short-sighted way—with no real plan, just wishes. As if I’m not aging. As if I won’t have to deal with assisted living. As if my own health won’t deteriorate and friends and family won’t get ill or die. I’ve been living life as if I’m not growing older, except obviously I am. 

    Sometimes I wish I could prepare for the emotional and physical hardships in my future. Like if I had a plan, I could avoid them. But I know worrying about what hasn’t happened only robs today of joy. I remind myself I’ll figure it out as I go along—just like I always have.