I have officially been 45 for a week and I feel … the same as before. I don’t know about you, but I find it takes me a while (sometimes months) to come to grips, emotionally, with changes, milestones, and the like. For the time being, 45 is a just a number – one that I rarely think about.
I had a lovely birthday weekend and got lots of quality family time. Our flying visit to Calgary was fun, if a little rushed, and the best part was visiting all our favourite secondhand bookstores. I say “our” but I really mean mine, my daughter’s, and my husband’s; my son is the odd man out in a family of book-lovers. I find it so fascinating because, in many ways, he is so very like me … and then in others (like bookish disposition), he couldn’t be more different. Parenting is, like, the ultimate ‘blind bag’ game where you wait for years and years to see what kind of person your kid ends up being. And if you have more than one, you definitely get to see that nurture is only part of the recipe.
Work this week was intense, as I was covering for my boss who is on holiday (and we are a two-person dream team, so there’s no one else to pick up the slack for us), but I managed to drag myself to the finish line – huzzah! Somehow, and don’t ask me how, I also managed to squeeze every spare minute into finishing a round of edits on my WIP, and sending the manuscript to a couple of my trusted beta readers. I’m tentatively hoping to start a (very slow) rollout of my next query in September. I’m still working on my strategy, and I’ll probably end up making a separate post/update on that soon.
There wasn’t much time for anything else this week, except I did binge Amy Odell’s biography of Gwyneth Paltrow. Here’s my quick review. It reads like a Vanity Fair celebrity profile, which is my favourite flavour of celebrity memoir so that was a plus for me. If you’re interested in 90s and early 2000s gossip and/or celebrity culture nostalgia, the book delivers some juicy tidbits. But here’s the thing: Gwyneth did not collaborate with Odell, and neither did her inner circle (presumably at her direction), so there is actually very little “inside track” information on Gwyneth’s private life since the 2000s. The book offers little insight into her marriage to Chris Martin, and almost nothing on Brad Falchuk. Like, seriously, that man is mentioned maybe a dozen times in total, and I know no more about him now, after reading book, than I did before (which is to say, I know nothing, lol!). So if you’re looking for that, you’re out of luck. I think Odell had better access to pre-2005 sources, so the first half of the book that covers Gwyneth’s early life is much more interesting, from a psychological, as well as gossipy, perspective. The second half focuses primarily on Goop. I found certain aspects of that story fascinating, but after a while it got a bit boring – it’s all, questionable “guru” after questionable guru, gimmicky product after gimmicky product, lather, rinse, repeat.
All told, I enjoyed the book a lot, but I am still hoping for Anne Helen Petersen to do a deep-cut analysis of Gwyneth’s pop culture persona and the intersection of that and 90s celebrity culture.
I’ve been in a real slump lately with thrifting, and I think it’s because I am really starting to see their decline in action. The stores are as full as ever, but there is so much more trash to wade through to find anything remotely quality, which is slowly de-incentivizing me. I have less patience and motivation, and my tolerance for crowds is at an all-time low. My favourite part of thrifting now is the time I spend with my daughter. Her running commentary is priceless. I’m thankful that we’re basically the same size (clothes and shoes), which makes it easy for us to share pieces and make the most of my existing closet as well as the increasingly rare finds.
Fewer new purchases means less closet turnover, which is not a bad thing at this stage of my life. I am a strong believer in the idea that we owe a duty of care to our clothes (and the objects in our life, in general) which requires an investment of time and energy. These days, between work, family, and my all-consuming writing obsession, I simply don’t have the same amount of time or energy to devote to other things, including stuff like taking care of my closet. Less stuff coming in means that my current ‘workload’ remains steady rather than increasing, and that suits me fine.
I also find that, as my creative energies are getting redirected into writing, personal style is becoming less important to me as a creative outlet. That’s not to say that I’ve become a Functional Clothes Wearer overnight, but I have definitely moved closer to the middle of the spectrum between creative and functional. That being said, I always get extra excited about clothes with every seasonal change, so I expect that, come fall, I’ll get a boost of creative inspiration with my outfits.
Have a great weekend!
I shopped with my mom from the late 1980s to the mid 2010s, when the Parkinson’s hit and she lost the endurance. But those were fun days, trying on clothes and giving each other unsolicited feedback. We’d have a nice lunch out and often a cookie or three, as her local mall had A Great American Cookie.
I am also in a busy time at work, as we are in the performance review and promotion panel part of the year. I am not management at the moment, but I volunteered to sit on a promotion panel. The panel is considered corporate service and smiled upon. I feel a deep sense of responsibility deciding on people’s futures. We try to be fair, but someone will always feel like we slighted them. We tell them, it’s no today, but not no forever, and please try again next year.
Congrats on reaching 45! I will be 50 this year, and like, where in the hell did the time go?
Leslie, aka woodrabbit4.0 on Insta.
Hi, Leslie! Nice to “bump” into you here 🙂