Pre-birthday thoughts

Some random thoughts on the day before I turn 49:

 - Supposedly we can request a day off duty for our birthday, but we are expected to make up that eight hours. I suspect that applies much more to staff - whose duties are more fungible in time - than faculty (where cancelling a class is a no-go). Tomorrow is one of my lighter teaching days anyway (Soils lecture and I give a quiz and review in my intro class, then have the afternoon off)

I dunno. It would be nice to get a day off but not if I had to "pay that time back" (though then again, arguably, I already paid that time this weekend....). And at any rate....I can "float" doing something fun indefinitely to commemorate the day (sigh) if I have to.

- A quotation I ran across today, from Orwell's "hospital notebooks": ‘At fifty, every man has the face he deserves.’

Well, I'm not a man, and I'm not quite fifty yet, but I don't know what to think about that. On the one hand, no, I don't think of myself as wildly unattractive any more (I used to, when I was younger, because of how some of my peers had treated me, but more recently, friends have broken me out of that mindset). But I'm not sure what my face says about my deserts....

Though I do look at myself and the one thing that distresses me a bit, and perhaps this is the bit of the "face I deserve" - I almost always catch myself looking worried or concerned, if I don't remind myself to smile or relax my face.

One book I am reading right now is Young Titan, about Churchill as a young man. I am somewhat distantly related to Churchill - fifth cousin or some such. And I know I once joked, "Thank goodness I take after the other side of my family" (Thinking of how Churchill looked as an old man, and yes, I do look more like my dad's German antecedents than any of my mom's relatives - my brother does look like her French-Canadian father but I look like my dad's German grandma).

BUT: when I look at that photo, there is something about the eyes there, or the anxious vertical furrow in the forehead that I see in my own face of a morning (before I apply moisturizer and pore-correcter and foundation and powder and blush....and then lipstick comes after breakfast and brushing my teeth)

But yes. I wonder if my anxieties about the future are beginning to show a little on my face, make me look a little, maybe, worn. I don't know. (When I photograph myself for here I mostly make a conscious effort to smile and relax my features. A lot of women joke about RBF - for resting b*tch face - where they look grumpy or mean. I think I have Resting Anxiety Face....)

- This article about Lisa Simpson (warning: there is discussion of eating disorders in there). Discussion in particular of "Lisa's Substitute," which is one of my favorite episodes (Like many Simpsons fans, I greatly prefer the early years of the show; the last dozen-or-so years it has gotten - I don't know, more topical and preachy? Something. It's not quite as heartfelt as the older episodes are. Some of the old episodes are quite moving - I think of the one where Bart thought he sold his soul and was terrified to think what "some weirdo out there" might be doing with it....)

Anyway. The heartbreaking bit of "Lisa's Substitute" and the one that brings me to tears while also having left me puzzled through the years is the very end - the note Mr. Bergstrom gives her: "You are Lisa Simpson."

And it's so multilayered. I always took it to suggest that perhaps that was slightly her curse - we can never get away fully from who we are (Lisa is, after all, a Simpson).

But then again, Smith notes that she realized the note also could have meant: "All you need is already inside of you."
 
Which is maybe not that different from Dorothy Gale's  "If I ever go looking for my heart's desire again, I won't look any further than my own back yard. Because if it isn't there, I never really lost it to begin with.”

And that is something I admit I wrestle a little with: not feeling "enough," or feeling that I have to do more, constantly, to "prove" myself. Or that people won't like me if I don't do stuff for them. (Childhood training at the hands of your peers lasts longer than it should).

But Smith goes on to give more detail about her struggles (and perhaps Lisa's): “Do not attach your identity to your work. Attach your identity to things that are to your own personal growth that mean something to you on the inside. Because you can’t fill up the inside from the outside.”

Ouch. That is also something I really struggle with. Who am I, really? What am I, separate from my work? And perhaps that sort of hole in my soul I sometimes feel is me trying to take fulfillment from work that will never love me back....but then again, what does a person who is single do? (Dating is hard, and I have no time and little patience for it any more. And friendships only go so far....and right now, especially, I feel a little like curling in on myself, because even good friends can be taken from you, even when they wouldn't want to be....)

I probably need to attach my identity more to things like trying to learn Irish Gaelic and German, and to play the piano, and to the quilts I make, and to the things I do at church, so that I'm not nearly-sobbing outside a locked Chemistry building and feeling like I "failed" because I took 45 minutes to grade an exam (that I volunteered to give on a Saturday) instead of the 40 minutes we were allotted....But I've been so trained, by being a bit of a little Lisa Simpson, to attach my identity to what I can do academically....And I don't know. I need to start learning a new identity now - a colleague and I were talking after Faculty Meeting about the trajectory of higher ed in this country, and I made the comment, "If things don't change from the way they're going, eleven more years and I say 'bye.' I cash in my TIAA account and....I don't know, buy a longarm quilting machine or something." (And yeah, that might be a viable retirement career/activity, if I could make room in my house - or build a climate-controlled and electrified studio on to the back of my garage for one).

There's also some commentary on Metafilter (where I found the link to the article) that "the writers seem to hate Lisa, they never let her be happy" but another commented noted that a lot of the writers were Gen-Xers, and cynical about the world and pessimistic about chances for its improvement. (And I admit, as a Gen-Xer myself: I fall into that trap. I tend to expect to get shafted, I tend to expect things to get worse, and all I can do is to try to make my tiny vicinity a little better). And perhaps in a way, Lisa is a bit of a Gen-Xer in a way: incredibly idealistic and wanting to change the world, and yet feeling thwarted at every turn?

I don't know. (I do still watch the old episodes when FXX re-runs them; the more recent ones leave me cold and frankly these days, "Bob's Burgers" seems to have an absurd humor that is family-driven and is closer to the old Simpsons than what The Simpsons has become...)