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| decisions, decisions - the finger of truth points this-a-way |
Whatever my midlife is, it's not about being a shrinking violet. Though I've never been one to follow the herd and have always yielded to dumb authority with noisy misgivings, I find that now I am much more likely to call B.S. when I sniff it out. My reaction to something that isn't right is much more visceral than it ever has been and, as I'm finding, it's better to give the old gut reaction a good hearing out before progressing in an opposing direction.
For example, I'm having real problems with the (changing) direction one of my last semester assignments is taking. The choice seems to be between a spicy exposé of a younger college student's life decisions in the form of a magazine-style profile, or the safer but rather boring string of nicely articulated facts, veering away from any form of spiced up. Implicit in that choice is a pass or a low grade/fail. I'm choosing fail over yet another restless night wrestling with my conscience.
The more I read about women and midlife and the changes wrought by impending menopausal transitions, the more I recognise myself and my feistiness. I'm not quite there yet, but my next decade has been dubbed the Feisty Fifties, followed by the Selective Sixties, emphasising that with age a woman starts to stick up more for herself.
I've started.
I feel sorry for my beleaguered boys, one of whom will be hitting his own hormonal milestones at around the same time as this opinionated old c*nt.
