Despite my newfound motivation to make more money, I have less motivation to put up with bullshit along the way. I refer to this phenomenon as The Evolution of Middle Aging. Part of that evolution is waking up with mysterious pain that exists without any backstory of why it hurts other than the collection of nearly five decades of living. But that’s another story.
At a certain point in life, and you’ll know when you get there, you reach your burning-the-candle at both ends quota, which eventually leads to being burnt out. It’ll no longer be a temporary burnt out condition where a little vacation or a catnap clears it up. All the hustling you’re doing to make money, save the world, and everything in between sewn up in the pursuit of happiness turns into “meh, I’ll just let someone else handle that.”
In the beginning of the Middle Ages somewhere around your 40s, that quick turnaround of working like a dog during the day just to regroup and party all night long just fades out. There’s an intermediate step where you power nap in between working and partying, which evolves into power napping after work with no intention of going out. It’s just a part of dessert. Black people refer to it as “the itis,” but that has such a negative connation. I consider it part of work/life balance that people claim doesn’t exist, but that denial of balance is a measure of how toxic someone’s current lifestyle is.
Instead of partying until the wee hours of the morning and returning home, looking like something the cat dragged in, “the wee hours” will accurately describe your automatic wake up time.
Oh, but in my clubbing days…
In college, I danced in clubs where you didn’t need a partner. It was so free, dancing in a group out on the floor until near exhaustion. As often as I went out, I never had a problem with anyone until I was outside of the States. (Side bar: There was an occasion when one of my college friends had pinched me and given me the stink eye because she mistook my talkative nature with flirting with the guy she liked, but she later “forgave” me when she found out he was gay.)
After graduation, I went straight into Peace Corps to teach biology and math at an all-girls high school in Tanzania, which is a part of East Africa for the geographically challenged. We Peace Corps trainees had two and a half months of training before we set out to our final destinations where we’d serve. For those of us who were fresh out of college, it was like College 2.0. Some trainees were drinking pretty much every day, but I, on the other hand, was a good little Southern Baptist girl. I would’ve loved to drink some sweet tea like Mom used to make when I was growing up, but Tanzanian tea wasn’t quite the same; so I ended up drinking more sodas than I ever had in life and even since.
A group of us Peace Corps trainees would go out dancing some weekends. To say that the DJ played an interesting mix would lead one to believe that there was a mix. It was more like a jumble of music without any flow from one song to the next.
I’m not sure, but I think the club owners periodically turned off the ceiling fans just to make everyone hotter and motivated to buy drinks. Whatever the case, this one night, I had my requisite amount of sodas, had danced until my underwear was soggy, adrenaline was at an all-time high and when a prostitute slinked by too slowly for my temperament, I pushed her aside and feigned a straight face as if I were watching the dance floor. I saw her out of my peripheral vision give a hard look at the group of us, then continue slinking by.
Can’t really say what had gotten into me. Wasn’t the alcohol. Couldn’t blame it on the boogie. The best I can describe it was that mistaken belief that nothing really bad could happen to me since I was on an extended vacation at that point. Even in middle school, where secondary hormones bring out the cattiness in young women, I’d never gotten into a fight. Not even after one of my best friends and I parted ways dramatically because she spread lies about me and just itched for a fight. I managed to take the high road and ignore her and her new best friend who tried her damnedest to instigate a fight. I’d just talked my way out of it.
Fast forward ten years from Tanzania to a club in Monterrey, Mexico. I was still a math and science teacher, but not with The Peace Corps. I was no longer living at the volunteer level, but the expat level, so this next confrontation took place in a swanky club in a tony part of town. This was the kind of club that played all the latest songs in English and Spanish with their accompanying videos, stylishly playing out on screens around the interior.
Again, I can’t remember what trigged the other woman to start talking shit to me. I couldn’t even hear what she was saying over the blaring music, but just the way she tossed her head from side to side in that internationally understood woman-with-an-attitude fashion while making direct eye contact with me. I knew it was shit talk.
I stepped closer. “¿Que dijiste?” I asked too loudly. You see, at this point in time, I’d been taking capoeira, a dancing Brazilian martial art; so I knew how to travel a surprisingly long distance in one step and I had very well-defined biceps. The kind of biceps other straight women took notice of.
“¡Disculpa!” she responded with a smile and danced away.
So I guess you could say I talked my way out of that one, albeit aggressively.
But those cat nights are over. When I venture out these days, I don’t want a bunch of foolishness. Whatever I set out to do, even if it’s a social event, I plan to accomplish the mission, return home and that’s that.
Besides, people are crazy. Or on drugs. Did you hear that? Those last two comments were brought to you by slowly turning into my mother. Yet another Middle Aging phenomenon. After nearly five decades of listening to that line of reasoning to explain the bullshit of the world, I figure why not? It’ll be so much easier to file away bullshit into two neat little categories as I ride that wave into Senior Citizen Land while eating dinner during lunch time, going to bed at dinner time, and waking up at midnight to use the bathroom during party time.