Forget what’s next on the horizon. Savor the view now.

Life after 50: Silencing your inner clock and critic to break free from warped scrutiny, bubbles and timelines.

A living alarm clock—that’s what I’ve always felt like, having a fidgety internal hum counting down to the next “what’s next.” My one life to live feels like a jumble of timelines—intersecting ones, sequential ones, and others random and out of place—each competing for my attention, covering up old abandoned or forgotten ones. But ultimately timelines are all unforgiving. There’s no doing-over or real-time catching up. At some point, an end is an end.

For as long as I can remember, that’s how I’ve visualized my day, week, or year. I couldn’t wait to grow up and move through my timelines without being dependent on someone else's. But timelines can rarely be fast-tracked. They always came with new stuff to do and think about. Stuff that often makes no sense. But still, stuff I’ve done and thought about anyway. 

Warped scrutiny and judgment

Body judgment was the first bullshit burden to slow me down. Should I blame them for telling me to care, or me for listening? Guys got the advantage of mostly being ignored—and I was jealous. Yeah, my brothers also faced body judgment coming of age in the ‘90s. Everyone did. And yeah, the standards were unfair for them too. No matter how many egg whites my younger brother drank or bicep curls, push-ups or pull-ups he did, he wasn’t going to have the same buff bulky bod of his Baywatch-looking best friend. 

Still, the scrutiny was so much heavier and warped for girls and women. Moving from one timeline to the next was a lot harder while also feeling watched from every angle, moment by moment, at a time when eyes had nothing better to stare at than girls or young women passing by. 

“God gave me a body I HATE (but can make bearable),” I wrote when I was sixteen. How’d I make my body bearable? Dexatrim. Cigarettes. Jumping up and down a lot. And barely eating. I don’t remember praying much in high school, but I wrote a lot of things like “God please don’t let me eat this week.”

I actually believed my thighs weren’t supposed to touch. And I thought they were supposed to be less than twenty inches in circumference. What the hell was that? I looked and felt way better when I did absolutely nothing to my body. At some point, I feel like I’ll end up paying in health years for all that stay-skinny shit I did as a teen.

How someone looks is never that interesting anyways, especially when it’s yourself. It has nothing to do with actually being sexy or enjoying your body. The same way age doesn’t either. Besides, once you spend time with someone, how can you like the way they look if you don’t like the way they act? I never saw that as being possible. The converse is true too.

“If I like a guy, it’s because I find him interesting. If he has a big heart, then he’ll be good-looking to me,” I wrote when I was 18.

After dating too many guys stuck on themselves in high school, I wanted something different. Meeting my husband while working at home for the developmentally disabled was one of the best places to find someone to share a lifetime with because you got to see the sides to a person that really matter.

Remember, your biological clock is ticking

My menstrual cycle is its own timeline that comes with mood-related timelines. Planning timelines around timelines. But the timeline I’ve been thinking about more recently is the fertility one. Because mine is ending while my daughter’s is starting. And because I recently interviewed the Egg Whisperer and I’m writing a fertility piece for

The Midst

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As a kid, I thought any sex led to pregnancy. And I thought any pregnancy was bad unless you were pretty darn sure it wasn’t going to mess up your career and educational opportunity timelines which felt incredibly bright and first-gen shiny new.

A fertility timeline wasn’t something my mom ever gave any thought to. She had her tubes tied before leaving the hospital at age 26 with baby number four. But it was something I learned about watching a slew of late ‘80s movies that put the ticking biological clock front and center—from Kirstie Alley in Look Who’s Talking to Diane Keaton in Baby Boom. Human reproduction seemed like a one-woman job, unpaid and unsupported like everything else they did. 

The actual biology of fertility or infertility wasn’t really talked about. The focus seemed to be on the “choices” women made—choices that seemed one-sided, classist, and even vindictive in framing. Sure you can be anything you want (which of course was a lie). But if you also want to be a mom, it’s all on you to figure out how to do both (which of course was payback). And then if anything goes wrong, we’ll blame you (the vindictive part was the worst).

The never-ending ‘70s show

The ticking biological clock analogy was actually a vestige of the ‘70s, because everything can be traced back to the 70s, right? It often seems that way. The’70s ended in stalemate, life moved on in a hurry, and now all those same divides, arguments, and passions are being rehashed, making life feel like one big rerun, despite the mind-numbing number of channels.

The term “biological clock” was first referenced by Richard Cohen in a 1978 Washington Post editorial, “The clock is ticking for the career woman.” Cohen knowingly describes a “composite woman” with a “nice figure,” because of course the one he’s imagining should have one.

Cohen argues that a whole cohort of young women were unhappy despite having careers. This, he says he knows because a great many young women had confided in him when he pulls them into off-the-record conversations by saying, “Isn't it interesting. I say, this business about the biological clock? How do you feel about it?” Yeah, that’d get me to spill my guts to him too.

They want babies, Cohen writes, and “sometimes, horribly” no man is even on the horizon as their last fertile days sadly tick away. “There was something about their situation that showed, more or less, that this is where liberation ends,” he concludes, clearly throwing bones to the Phyllis Schlafly leaning readers, abundant in number no doubt. The ones thinking, “Yeah, you’re getting what you deserve for leaving the kitchen.” Blame the women wanting (or needing) a career rather than the culture that expected women to do it all, all alone—dare they try.

What really stood out though was Cohen’s description of 1978 as a time when women “won their fight for equality.” Really? A time when a wife was still commonly treated like property?  When women were starving and smoking their bodies into “less threatening” weakened waifs. When women were denied credit based on sex alone. And when the burgeoning supermom fantasy was setting impossible standards for all women while being based on having a high baseline of privilege and then leveraging it to get even more.

Here’s some scary shit to worry about Gen X—good luck to you.

Making time for baby, good luck

But was it much better for Gen X? Almost 25 years later, we were warned about our clocks in one standout 2002 Time magazine article, “Making Time for a Baby.” Granted, it wasn’t written with the same male chauvinism point of view and the discussion at least included a bit of the biology. But the tone also had a post-9/11 panic about everything lens: Here’s some scary shit to worry about—good luck to you. 

There were no real conversations about parental support or leave. Little coverage for fertility treatment. Discriminatory practices against parents who didn’t have a primary caregiver spouse (meaning almost all women) were the norm. And meanwhile, the costs of kids and parental expectations grew steeper in a world that was feeling less predictable and safe. 

Personally, I was lucky. I met a super nice guy and we had the family we wanted. But that’s exactly why I care. Things shouldn’t depend so much on luck when there are things that can be done to help. Reproductive healthcare can’t be taken for granted. Fertility awareness and options for creating families are important. And reproductive justice and fertility equality matter. And though Gen X is moving out of the reproductive years, I feel like we can help advocate for younger people.

I get that a lot things in life are hard. But why do things so often become harder than they need to be? I have less patience for drama for drama’s sake, information used solely to scare, and blame based on “it’s all on you” bullshit.

There is a way to inform, assist, and support that’s no-not-never perfect—nor enough—but better, still better. So why not do that NOW—that’s what I’m reminding myself as I move into being an older person with less to lose because I’ve already won more than I could have ever imagined.

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Breaking out of the bubble: Cancun and COVID

Over spring break, my son and I joined a group of moms and their sons on a high school senior-year spring break trip to Cancun. No it wasn’t some weird helicopter-parent thing—been there, done that and my kids will remind me of it forever. And I’d still probably do half of it again. 

The boys/men were mostly on their own, mostly doing their own things, which I mostly didn’t ask about, because I’ve mostly given up trying to get my son to tell me anything. But I love the idea of parents marking the milestone of having a child graduate high school, because it’s a transition for us too. 

This was my first plane trip since interviewing for grad school in the ‘90s. It’s not that I fear flying (love it actually). It’s just that it’s so damn expensive. And traveling with little kids really isn’t fun. We drive just far enough before we reach our whiny-kid in a car limit. We go to museums and cheesy, cheapy places. And we tell our kids when you grow up and make the big bucks you can travel wherever you’d like. 

But I did enjoy this splurge. Here’s what I liked best:

All-inclusive trip

NOT having to make dozens of “Is this worth it?” decisions was SO worth it.

Walking on the beach alone

I got to feel like Meggie from The Thorn Birds strolling along the beach in deep contemplation without the harrowing choice between the creepy out-of-reach priest and total jackass husband.

Not feeling cold

My body is not built for Wisconsin weather. I had forgotten what it felt like not to always feel cold. And felt sooo good.

Spending time with fantastic women 

The 2020s is THE best time to be a woman over fifty, which is great news for everyone because older women always bring others along. And these women are doing exactly that.

Being impressed by Gen Z

There are real concerns for young people. But whenever I spend time around them, I’m impressed by how sensible and fair-minded they are. I’m hopeful for the future.

Five days in Planet Hollywood was plenty

This length was perfect. It takes a day or two to unwind. But after five days, another day of resort-y world would’ve started feeling saccharine sickening. I craved real life again.

I came home from Cancun with a handful of Our Lady of Guadalupe statues, a weirdly shaped sunburn on my hand and my first case of COVID. It snowed. I stayed in bed. And googled “covid timeline.” 

It helped knowing what to expect. And things mostly happened as expected. But there was weird stuff too, that’s less common but not uncommon. After the fevers stopped I had numbness and hypersensitivity in my torso for days. And mostly felt like someone whacked me on my back so hard I lost my breath. Interestingly, everyone I tell that to knows how that feels, though no one really remembers how or when they experienced it.

While I lay in bed staring at the ceiling fan I thought how depressing timelines get after fifty—they just do. I’ve never been one of those people desiring to live to a hundred. Still, I look at fifty as being halfway through my adult life (if I’m lucky). 

I’m not fifty yet, but already I’m being inundated with new timelines to worry about and AARP advice—ad nauseam. I can’t imagine spending this second half of life focused on timelines the same way I did in the first. I’m too tired. I’m more bored. And I don’t believe there’s some place, number, or thing that means anything for sure.

I like the idea of letting go of what’s-next thinking at this age. And the idea of letting go in general. I try not to think any more than six months ahead and put long-term things that matter on autopilot whenever possible. 

I want to talk to more people outside of my algorithm bubble. That’s what I like about Substack. I like the randomness of finding writers and love reading about what they’re up to. Even if it’s not something I could do or would do, I love seeing what’s possible.

Basically, I want to have my cake and eat it too. And I want to help others do the same. 

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Favorite listen of the week: A Slight Change of Plans—What Children Can Teach Us About Creativity. The sound of kids playing off in LaLa Land is one of my favorite sounds in the whole wide world. By watching them, I’m relearning to spend more time there too. It’s one of the best ways to get a break free from timelines!

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And check out my story for The Midst, “Does the Biological Clock Still Matter? The Egg Whisperer Weighs in.”

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