I joined the Dull Women's Club, on Facebook.
When asked what I thought dull meant, I wrote: Simple, plain, normal, sane. Able to appreciate the smaller things in life, if not the better things.
This is what I wrote as my self introduction:
I'm excessively dull. Sometimes the highlight of my day is finding my backscratcher to get rid of an itch on my back. I live in Ontario, the small city of Barrie. At the end of this year I will be 60. I live with my Mother, who is now 80. I collect books, more than I can actually read. I make ASCII art. I have been a writer and editor online for years. I used to crochet and sew. I'm divorced with no children. I drink coffee. I couldn't find a photo of myself though I have easily a thousand photos I've taken of old farm houses around Ontario. I'm a volunteer with Ontario Barn Preservation, writing the newsletter, etc.
A later comment about growing foot size as we get older:
I think everything you don't want to grow, grows as you get older. Things you wish would grow, like getting just a bit taller, don't grow. I started wearing men's shoes because I could get the same size (more or less) by number but they were wider and longer than women's shoes. Once upon a time I was a size 6, now I'm a 10. Not a 10 in the way I'd like to be a 10, just the dull way of having bigger feet.
It takes bravery to get old. Young people won't know, or may scoff at the idea, until they get here too. If they get here, not everyone is fortunate enough to get old.
Getting old means dealing with your health in new and innovative ways. You take pills and don't really know what to expect from them. You go for tests and don't know what they're going to do to you. You trust people, professionals, who were in diapers and learning how to drink from a cup just a short time ago.
Getting old itself. Knowing things aren't what they used to be. Knowing other people, younger people, look at you and see an old woman. They don't see the person you are. Every old face is a resting bitch face.
You measure things differently, especially time. More of your decisions are about time than quality or quantity.
It takes bravery to look at yourself in a mirror and see yourself, still there. To find yourself, as they said long, long ago.
Is there something about getting older that I find myself looking for shortcuts. To make things simpler, less complicated and less trouble. Or, is it the loss of confidence, maybe bravado, from being older. I can remember being reckless (I've tended to caution, not a big dare devil all my life) enough to open my computer and fix it myself, things like that, in my younger years. Was it confidence or trust or that feeling of invulnerability that people say young people have. I don't know. These days, I look for shortcuts.
Maybe its the idea or feeling that I just don't have as much time. I'm 59 now. Since December. Turning 50 was a big deal for me. Now 60 is coming around the corner, assuming I get there, and I don't feel too bad about it. Still seems an odd surprise, even though I can count past 60 even as far as being mathematically correct. The surprise is finding myself this old. I wasn't born this way. I used to be much younger and I looked different too.
Younger people look at me and assume I've always looked this way. I can remember thinking the same, even though it isn't logical, about people when I was younger. Look at old photographs and you imagine everyone living in black and white with (mostly) dour expressions. It's hard to think of them as real people in colour. But, real life has always been in colour. Its only technology that couldn't show it that way, at the time. We rely too much on technology, far too much as time goes on.
Anyway, shortcuts, to stay on topic. The more time I spend looking for shortcuts the more I think about the time I've wasted looking for shortcuts that I usually end up rejecting and I could have been actually making real progress, without shortcuts. (There's a good run on sentence for you, and I'm not changing it).