The biggest frustration about web publishing with the hope of making money is really understanding you are not omnipotent.

Yet, I am still determined to do it all myself. Mainly because I want to do it all my way. Secondly, because I can't pay anyone to help me. Thirdly, I don't have the prestige to get "interns" to work for free.

Today I have the plan to work on an editorial calendar. (I found something new to try via WordPress and if it works I will post it to WordGrrls). Offline, I am sorting clothes and deciding what to keep based on the space left in my closet now that it also contains almost everything else I own. Something has to go, might as well start with clothing.

I sprained my ankle. I spent the day at home, I didn't do anything more than sit at my desk, writing and making dinner, etc. Nothing strenuous and no accidents. At some point I noticed my foot was sore. After spending time playing cards with my Mom I had to gimp around because my ankle was severely unhappy every time my foot moved. So, how did I possibly sprain my ankle, doing nothing? It is very weird.

I bought a tensor bandage. Amazing how much harder it was to wrap that around my own foot now that I'm not 20-something. But, I got it done. That helped, the bandage I mean. There is no help for being over 50 and a long way from skinny.

Today is day three. It only hurts when I try to move my ankle. My Mother gave me one of her canes. I'm not getting the hang of it. Might be because I just don't want to.

Vanity goeth before the fall. All too likely to be literal in this case.

In our culture it is very alienating to be 50. That age where it hits you that you may not even be middle aged now. Being young, from childhood to somewhere in the 30's was such a different perspective. I didn't see it then but I can see it now. Being in my 40's was (so far) the best time of life for me. I felt ok and even good sometimes. I felt I was ok with myself.

Then, among the years I should have been 40-something, 50 hit me. It came down hard and clouded everything. Even when I could have been happy being 40-something that 50 hung over me, hovering like my personal rain cloud of doom.

In younger years I had read about actresses and such who said there were no roles for older women. I thought little of it. I could see older women in TV shows, movies, commercials, etc. Likely they were in theatre too if I cared to look.

But, the actresses said it wrong. It's not that there aren't roles for older women. It's that there are so MANY roles for younger women, younger people.

Our culture is based on youth. Not just being young and looking it, but the parts of life which come in those younger years (traditionally): going to school, dating, marrying and having children. When I watch anything on TV now I am swarmed with the feeling of how much I don't belong. How far I am past those parts of life. I don't want to go back. I just want to be ok with where I am. But, it's hard.

It's hard to feel ok with being older when it seems we don't exist, are expected to keep to ourselves and not be seen or heard. Unless it's something to do with spending money like buying insurance, buying sedate vacations, buying pee pads (not for your period, whether you still get it or not).

I feel alienated in my own world. I don't see where I fit in. I can talk to the younger generations. I don't know their particulars any more: the music, the actors, etc. But, those are just entertainment. I know about life, having come through those younger years. But all my experience and knowledge is tainted by how younger people see me. I'm old. I don't know the entertainment stuff so I'm relegated to being outdated, out of place and I don't really understand how things are today.

Odd, but things aren't all that different. People are born, go to school, try to get along in the world, get married, have babies (or not) and then.... it's the long stretch of being there, but not getting in the way, until you're finally as old as you feel.

I don't feel old. I feel like me. I feel almost the same as I did when I was twenty. But, those are memories and I know that. No wonder we tend to look at the past more as we fall into the future where we don't fit in and don't have a place. In the past we had a place and the world was about us.

Now I'm an alien. Just because I'm 50.

If it weren't for the perception of others (and my own awareness of time limits) I could believe I'm twenty. Young people expect being older to feel so different. It's not. It's almost exactly the same as feeling twenty. But, I look at those who are twenty and I can see a difference then. There is a shiny new-ness, an extra bounce and they're just a bit quicker to laugh.

So maybe we do become an alien as we get older. Where is the mothership then? I'd like to find the other aliens and feel I belong again. I don't like this feeling of being isolated among all the people I see every day.

The other thing I don't like to think about is to look past myself and see those older than I am. Right now I may not feel I belong and I may feel like an alien... they look more alien. I worry about how I will still feel like myself when I start to look even less like myself and more alien to who I think I am.

Where is that mothership...?

I thought all my posts from that far ago were long lost. But, I looked up my old domain (it was hijacked and lost). On the WayBack Machine I can see my old site and the blog I had then with Movable Type 2. About half of 2002 is there. It's nice to find because it's about the divorce and moving back to Ontario.

I've saved it all but I think I will repost it here by the old dates. That way I can read it back post by post instead of all in one lump. I will link it here but it will be a project for the morning.

I wrote this about my Dad, so long ago I had forgotten about it. Originally published to BackWash.com on May 28, 2004 and written when my Dad died.

My Dad would sometimes say, "If that's supper, I guess I've had it." This past week after his death that phrase has caught in my mind only I've adapted it to, "If that's life, I guess I've had it."

My Dad was 71 years old when he died. He was born in South Shields, Scotland in 1932. He had one sister who also came to Canada (the whole family did when he was in university). My Dad was an electrical engineer though he didn't have the actual engineer stamp due to not finishing that last year of university. He could have many times over, but he chose not to bother. He chose not to bother about a lot of things.

Anyway, he married my Mother in 1964. They lived in farm houses and city apartments for awhile, back and forth until one run down farm in a town called Kincardine where my sister was born. She was the third of four kids. We moved back to the city from there cause the farm house had no running water and my brother and I were having asthma problems with the country lifestyle. Two more moves and we ended up in The Rouge. It was the town of Port Union then, later it became part of Scarborough and thus part of Toronto. When someone asks where I grew up I think of The Rouge. It was a very white middle class place. Nice though a bit sheltered.

Dad always loved jersey cows. He kept buying the Jersey Breeder magazine long after we had seen our last farm house. While I was growing up in The Rouge he was daydreaming about a jersey farm. He made lots of plans on paper and now and then we had family trips into the middle of nowhere Ontario to look at a farm he could buy. By that time Mom was pretty much prepared to veto them all. No more run down farm houses, no more him expecting her to run a farm and cows while he worked in the city and came back on weekends to supervise.

Dad liked to sing and whistle while he worked. Often the same old songs about 'stay home and mind baby brown eyed girl, captain brown being down amongst the dead men and tally my bananas day o'. I'm not even sure what the names of the songs are. But I've heard them over and over all my life.

We started looking through his things, picking what to keep, what to display at the service and what to toss. There is a lot to toss. He wore his clothes till they were worn out, he was no fashion plate though he liked to think he looked good. Sometimes he did. Among his things I noticed an old program from a theatre performance of 'Man of La Mancha" that he went to with my sister and myself a very long time ago. I was surprised to see that. Also one Father's Day card from all the cards I had ever given him. Usually he left them sitting right where he had opened them and let Mom eventually toss them into the garbage. I put away the one card that he kept. There were also more pins and badges from the local Lions clubs that he had yet given to me to sew onto his Lions vest. Between my Mom and I we had kept them sewn on for him for the past ten or so years. He also had pictures of golf games and events with business associates and sometimes my brother or his current son-in-law too.

He had his first small heart attack while we lived in The Rouge. After that they came more frequently, over time, slowly. He ignored them. Even though his own Dad had died at age 65 from a heart attack which he ignored until he died in the hospital that same night. That just proves you can't help people who will not help themselves.

I remember being in the hospital up here in Alliston with my Dad just a few days before they took him down to Newmarket for the quadruple by-pass operation. He wasn't sure about having the surgery and I can see now that he was afraid. That makes me feel very sorry for him. But, I don't see how we could have done differently at that point. It was likely already too late. Anyway, he had a very bad heart attack right before the surgery but they went ahead at that point cause he would have died anyway I guess. Either then or the next attack. Surgery seemed to at least give him a chance to survive. He did pull through for two more days and seemed to be feeling pretty ok for someone who has just had his chest opened and adjusted. But two days after the surgery he didn't wake up. He was in ICU and stayed there. Being worked on, his body kept functioning with life support. The hospital staff seemed to think his chances were not too bad at that point. But he never got better and last Saturday, the very day they were going to pull the plug he died himself sometime before 6:00 AM.

Maybe it's having the distance of time and now death, but I do feel less angry about him and things he did and said. In the end it doesn't matter. It's up to me to get on with my own life. On Monday we are having the memorial service. Mom is bugging me about what I will wear. I am not looking forward to having to make chit chat with people who think they knew him. Cause they didn't really know him. Dad liked to make a show of his life. He was always Mr BigShot and we were holding him back, picking on him and making things difficult in general. He would tell his business associates, the local Lions club which he joined and others all about us, as he chose to see us. So, no, I'm not looking forward to two hours of hearing about what a good guy he was. But the service is for them I think. For me, I don't care. He is dead and it's over.

Right now beside me I have an old rolodex of his business cards which I'm sorting through for valid names to add to the guest list. If he could be there for the memorial he would be happy with the show put on for him, because of him. His due I expect he would think. For me it's just something else I have to do. I wonder if I will think of him much after the wind down of everything. It seems as if we've been expecting and waiting to put on this last show since we were kids and here it finally is. Now we can do the show and put it into the past and leave it there. All the build up and the suspense will be gone. Just like Ian N. Brown himself.