The other day, I was thinking of these funny words from Nora Ephron:
“We have a game we play when we wait for tables in restaurants, where you have to write five things that will describe you on paper. When I was [in my twenties], I would have said: aspiring, graduate of Wellesley, daughter, Democrat, single. Ten years later none of the five items found on my list. I was: journalist, female, New Yorker, divorced, funny. Today none of those five things are on my list: author, director, mother, sister, happy.
What might your words be? When I first wrote about this word seven years ago, my children were young, and my words were “writer, friend, mother, sleeper, lover.”
These days, instead I say: “author, friend, mother, traveler, inspired.” First, I started walking a few years ago and I like to walk around every day. And they are “inspired,” I mean TV programs, movies, books, podcasts, and so on. And with social networking sites – like Succession parodies and McSweeney’s posts – it sounds like everyone is talking about culture all the time, and I’m here for that.
Recently, comedian / writer / artist Amy Poehler, 50, said: “I’m just digging this time. I just say to my friend the other day, there has to be another time except as a middle life problem. As everyone likes to say, he has a middle ground problem. I want to rethink some of the things you used to have, like ,,, I don’t know, what you found or did well. Renaissance. Re-nai-sance. ” I agree with that! I mean, winter is dark, and the plague is eternal, and life is always hard, but I’m 42 and I just feel it, I don’t know, if. alone right now.
I want to hear: How would you describe yourself in five words in this chapter of your life? And another quote from Ephron: “I have a feeling that children remember two things – when you were not and when they lost.”
PS Time to be alone, and what inspired you most recently?
