I’m thirty-sex. The average life expectancy for a Canadian woman is 82.7 years. My blog is all about sex, money and meaning, three universal midlife prompts for anguished hand-wringing and spousal trade-ins. I usually like to be on-trend and organized for events in advance, so I was wondering: shouldn’t I be creeping up on a midlife crisis?

I’m trying. I really am. I am indeed having a brand/blog/boob crisis. But my identity? My purpose in life? Not so much, and I think I know why.

There are three obstacles in my path to to a true, fraught, overwrought, sell everything and fuck off to India, Eat Pray Love-style midlife crisis:

1. I have two kids and no airmiles*.
2. I had a peremptory quarter-life crisis.
3. I’m prone to depression as a lifestyle choice which means I consistently audit my life in grim, grey fits of despair, usually from November to February each year because holla! Vancouver, and June through August because that’s bathing suit season, and after break ups. So, monthly.

A midlife crisis seems like overkill, somehow.

Still, I am persistently attempting to manufacture a dramatic midlife crisis because a dramatic juncture might be a dramatically necessary plot point in my imaginary drama-soaked memoir (title: Thirty-Sex) and I am, generally speaking though perhaps not obviously, pro-drama.

In fact, I’m deeply suspicious of people who say “no drama”. Single heterosexual men of a certain age, for example, might tell you on early dates or even pre-date that they don’t play games and are specifically not looking for drama.

Do not believe them.

These men inevitably turn out to be being shifty, high-maintenance people only passingly acquainted with the truth.  When they say “no games,” what they mean is I sincerely hope you are not smart enough to see through my games or reciprocate in kind. When they say “no drama,” that’s really code for this is all about me and if you protest I’ll disappear. Or, alternately, they don’t understand that the  initial back-and-forth and The Dance of Romance necessarily entails veils and fans. They say “no games” and “no drama” because they can’t keep up.

To recap: run from people who claim to be drama-free. They are either liars, have nefarious plans to treat you badly sans accountability, or are very, very dull.

I think life – in all its microscopic, gorgeous minutiae –  is dramatic. (Hence, blogs.) Drama gives us reason to live/bitch/live. That’s why we watch TV. I mean, have you seen the quiet, histrionic, mundane dramatics of the minute, heartwrenching disappointments that make up the terrain of small town life that is Friday Night Lights? Even better, have you read Heather Havrilesky’s piece on Friday Night Lights? WHY NOT??? SHE IS A FUCKING GENIUS WRITING!

I got cable because of Heather Havrilevsky.

I haven’t actually connected the TV to the cable outlet yet but it is actually possible to do so and I know this because the cable guy in hospital booties arrived two hours late,  fiddled around, charged me $60 and told me “all good!” with a grin that was not shit-eating at all.  So I know that I could watch TV if I wanted to, which means this blog is officially dead. FYI.

My previous lack of TV wasn’t  a self-righteous, things white people like thing(#28, aka look at me! I’m so liberal and crunchy and righteous that I’m too good for mass culture! And now I’m going to smile smugly and condescendingly and tell you TV rots your brain while I silently scream, “oh god, I’m so lonely!”).

It wasn’t that. Really. Instead, the absence of the television chez moi was a choice rooted in sheer mofo practicality.

I want to write. I can’t write if there are moving pictures in this house, because moving pictures are fucking entrancing. I mean, have you seen Mad Men (#123, btw, on the list of Things White People Like)?

Why not???? It is fucking genius writing!

(Pssst. It looks like it is a really sexist show. If you look just at the surface, it is.

But every time I watch it, I think: the women in the show are the only ones who know what is going on and have any sort of conscious struggle with it.  The men are all about denial and running from their fears. They’re running for their lives, from their lives, and they’re running in place.

And the women are so real. I know these women. They’re me. They’re archetypes. They’re faces of proto/pre-feminism, before feminism was an ism to femme.

Betty is pre-Betty Friedan or maybe Sylvia Plath if Sylvia didn’t have a thing (poetry) and had to shoot small creatures to get off.

Peggy is Helen Gurley Brown. Seriously, she is.

And Joan is Marilyn Monroe gone scarily professionally effective, competent, not-dead, and better looking. Holy shit.

And they are us, right now – stay-at-home mom, career woman, sexpot – but we just can’t see it because it is set in a different time.

Fantasy authors do this all the time. Take a story right now and put it in another time and place. It is a great trick. Ask Ursula K. LeGuin.

Back to the secret about Mad Men. It is written by women. I FUCKING KNEW IT. You know how I knew it? SALON. Where you can also read Heather Havrilesky. I effing LOVE Salon.)

I have a point. These random streams of consciousness are indeed conscious.

Life – especially mid-life –  is about resolving, interpreting and freeform dancing the poetics of mundane disappointment.

Cary Tennis says so only differently and better. He pretty consistently writes about the tension between leaning into and adjusting to society’s demands, and discovering your deeper nature, confronting it and finding the courage to live according to it.

Ah that Cary Tennis. He’s another Salonster and he gives  ’sometimes frankly unhelpful’ advice if the kind of advice you want is a Dr. Phil-ish itemized list of how-to-behave-conventionally bullet points followed by  good ol’ slap on the rump/back of the head.

Mr. Tennis, my beloved Cary, mosey’s up and around this point, too. He writes,

Sometimes, despite my allegedly poetic tendencies, I would like to be Dr. Phil. That way, when you say you moved across the country with a man you don’t want to be with anymore I could say, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, Whoa, stop right there, young lady, you did what? and we could all have a collective moment of generalized self-righteousness.

But I do not represent the conscience of America’s status quo. I have heard too many stories that start out with such revelations but which when told to completion make a difficult, riveting, beautiful sense. That is why at Salon we run such letters at such length, because we have faith in the ability of adults to tell their whole story until it does start making sense.

So straight shooting, big, branded Texan-style conventional thinking is not the ball Cary Tennis will lob.

If, however, you have an issue about which you want to be encouraged to question the universe and the institutions and conventions of daily life all whilst eating an apple under an oak tree and finding a way to get centred and be okay, right now, then he is most definitely the one and only advice man for you.

Except for Dan Savage. I would totally cheat on Cary Tennis with Dan Savage, who is gay and hates fat people and so can you picture what our relationship would look like? A drama-lover’s wet dream.

Imagine, for a moment, the bitch sessions with my girlfriends. They would have to call Dr. Phil. I’d probably get my own reality show or at least a tummy tuck. It worked for Kate Gosselin but maybe I’m mixing up my shows where doctors dispense free cosmetic surgery. No matter. I’m emailing Dan right now.

Havi Brooks.

Havi Brooks is part of the pantheon of loopy advice giving gods and goddesses and my future business coach though she doesn’t know it yet and neither does my anemic bank account.

Havi, for example, writes that she is the Rainman of coaching and she hates the word coaching. Umm, sold. She also worries, deeply, about the “face the fear and do it anyways” bullshit masquerading as therapy.

She thinks it is abusive. She thinks that confronting fear entails a violence to self and re-experiencing pain and terror is regressive and personally harmful. She thinks we develop comfort zones for a reason and you don’t need to jump out of the plane.

For some reason, all sorts of people seem determined to push you out of where you’re comfortable to where you’re …. well … uncomfortable. Which is bizarre enough that it’s worthwhile to find out why.

Just so you know, I personally have zero patience with the whole “you have to leave your comfort zone if you want to make changes” thing.

Not just because it’s a tired cliche of the “think out of the box” sort. Not just because it’s an annoying self-help-ey trend. But because it’s a seriously bad idea. Also, not true. In fact, I’d call it a potentially dangerous misconception…

I can’t even tell you how many eager beaver coaches I meet at business events who can’t wait to meet people just like you, so they can drag you kicking and screaming from your comfort zone. They think they’re doing you a favor. They’re not.

They’re not doing it out of meanness, of course. They sincerely want to help. They think that if you can leave the place where you’re comfortable and try this new, scary thing, you’ll get over it already. The problem is that sometimes what you need in order to grow is more comfort. And this kind of work needs to happen where you feel safe; where you’re most comfortable.

That’s why there’s a zone for it.

In the future your grandchildren will look back on this age of insisting on people leaving their comfort zones with shock, horror and a sad shake of the head. The way we do now when we think about things like electric shock therapy and lobotomies. The atrocities of good intentions.

Take that lil’ nugget and do a survey of personal development sites. Has Dr. Laura run hippily amok?

(Havi also wrote about a “channeling Dr. Laura” exercise. It sounded very, very scary.)

Even our TV writer, Heather Havrilevsky, has some trenchant shit to say about abusive therapy. First, she admits that she’s addicted to watching other people stuggle with their addictions. (I can relate. TLC is effing fascinating.) Second, writing about the uber-sensitive, non-exploitative (ahem) “Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew” show, she wonders if there is an inherent tension in tackling the “tremendous shame surrounding sexual addiction by shaming a bunch of sex addicts on national TV?”

So it maybe that in-your-face aggressive truth-telling and fear-confronting as-seen-on-TV is abusive and unhelpful. It may even be that what appears to be common-sense how-to-behave- properly advice (hellooooooo blog-o-sphere!) is also deeply judgmental and self-righteous.

I think – I don’t know, because I haven’t asked her, Arwyn? – this is why Arwyn’s feminist parenting site, Raising My Boychick, is resolutely not a how-to blog.

(A word about Raising My Boychick. It is really, really good. It might be a little confusing if you’re not acquainted with the intersectionality thing, but there is a glossary. If you have questions, though,  get one with Google. Google is awesome. If I made a list of Things I am Grateful For, Google would vie with my children for a top-three ranking because Google’s mission in life is to help you figure shit out without ever going to the library again. Google changed my life. I heart Google. And Arwyn.)

I do the how-to thing, sometimes. It makes me cringe a little. It is a blogging trope so I did it a lot when I first got started. My how-to pieces, though, aren’t really how to’s  so much as writing prompts which just means I’m subverting copywriting for evil which possibly means good.

I know. Imagine how confusing it is IN MY OWN HEAD.

So. About fear. A survey of my chosen gurus says to  make room for it on the sofa. Cuddle.

I can get on any self-help advice that involves sitting on the sofa and cuddling.

Which is why I like Havi, who says her job “as an educator, teacher, coach, healing person, whatever you want to call it, to get in there with you (if I’m invited and it’s comfortable for you, etc) and meet you there.”

And it is why I like Danielle LaPorte – another unconventional rockstar advice goddess who also wants to meet you where you are – and her take on the  Scaredy-Cat:

While we’re busy managing fear, fear can be managing us. It’s still creeping in, grabbing at our pant leg, begging to be paid attention to. And fear can always find a reason to get your attention – that’s it’s job – to get you to feed it. But what about the flu? (feed me!) But what about the market? (feed me!) But what about ten years from now? (feed me!) But what will they think? (feed me!)…

When fear climbs on your shoulder and starts nattering in your ear, here’s what you do: You stand as a master.You tell Scaredy Cat where you’re going, risks and all, and you convert Scaredy into a champion to help you get there. You say, lovingly but firmly (because ultimately the Scaredy Cat in you just wants some love and you’ve got plenty of it to give,) “Yep, we may fail, it’s possible. This is risky shit. But we’ll still be okay. Because that’s who we are. We’re the kind of people that are okay, no matter what. So remember that invincibility and let’s get to work. There’s a new land to discover and the only way to find it is to keep going – cliffs, cash flow, agony, adulation and all. If you keep your mouth shut and your eyes wide open, we’ll get there sooner. We’re doing this. We’re doing this because we want to. Because this is what it means to do life.”

And then watch what Scaredy Cat does. She’ll look perplexed for a minute. She’ll nuzzle up, as if to say thank you. And then she’ll strut down the street to help you recruit some new business.

Remember the song stray-cat strut? How ’bout the scaredy-cat strut? That could be my theme song.

Because, as follows:

• Pain. Welcome.
• Fear. Hello, baby. I love you so much.
• Disappointment. I know you honey. You’re the meaning in my life. You’re the inspiration.

(Was that a Chicago song? Didja like it? I miss the 80s.)

Don’t feel sorry for me because I’m refusing to jump out of planes or off cliffs or divorce my pain, fear and disappointment. I’m ecstatically happy. Instead of fighting these constants, we’re cuddling. I’m all about the cuddle. You may have noticed.

And we’re all happy and nest-y and loved up, no one has the energy to fight. My three amigos will just hang out on the sofa under the quilt and watch cable. Without me. Because I’m busy doing other things and they’re watching TV, all relaxed and sated by the stroking and popcorn and the fact that we don’t have to fight.

But. Heather Havrilesky. You owe me $720 for a year’s worth of cable THAT I DON’T EVEN WATCH. Fucking Salon.

Ah Salon. I lovehate you so much. Why do you spurn my imaginary advances? We should be together. You LOVE caustic critique and eclectic personal voice. I’m a social critic, dammit, and just look at my caterwauling, cartwheeling prose. I’m Dave Eggers! (I’m so not. Hell.) I’m Heather Havrilesky! (I’m not.)  I’m Kate Harding! (I’m not)  I’m Kelly Diels! (Maybe)

Also. Dear Salon. You haven’t hired me, which is perhaps understandable because I have four readers and they need me. But why haven’t you hired The Bloggess? WTF is wrong with you? I’m going to start an I hate Salon club with The Bloggess. She doesn’t even know it yet, or me, but no matter – remember what happened when William Shatner snubbed her on Twitter? Now imagine two of us joining forces all social media star-wars-ish and vampy. WE WILL BRING YOU DOWN.

Was that abusive? I’m so sorry. Come over here and sit by me on the sofa and we’ll cuddle. It’s a group thing.

_______________________

*re: air miles. I’m going to read Chris Guillebeau’s thingy on how to get some, magically and democratically. I’ll let you know what I think. Hopefully from India.