My 40s were an awkward stage. Backtrack a little: In my 30s I began to feel legit as a grown-up. (I got through a lot of pain without running to my Mommy. Because now I'm the mommy!) That realization was my passport to adulthood—not losing my virginity or being old enough to drink or vote. It felt empowering. But almost immediately I was "pushing 40" and the menacing shadow of middle age camped just outside my tent. There wasn't time to mourn the loss of youth, it was time to fight off old age!

What happens to a woman in her 50s when she still hasn't learned what it is about her that makes her beautiful, desirable and intriguing? and perhaps an object of envy, or a threat? A woman lacking in that self-knowledge is vulnerable, and not in a good way. She's at risk. She may default to relying on men's approval and attention to be assured of her worth. But men pay attention to a woman in inverse proportion to the signs of her aging. She may compare herself to other women—dewy younger women will leave her cold; brittle older women will break her heart and women close to her age will bring up the acid in her stomach.

In fact it's this obsessive comparison with peers that slingshots a woman into angst the likes of which she hasn't felt since puberty. Friendships erode, self-esteem plummets and sanity skips town.

Fear of seeming stupid holds you back

Our youngest and I had a four-hour long phone call the last time we talked. A small part of it had to do with her not wanting to appear naive should she take a certain course of action in her relationships.

I said, "You and I, we've been valued for our brains more than our looks most of our lives. So I get it. Having people think less of us in that respect cuts close to the bone."

But many women, once we cross into our 50s, don't care what people think of us. That is, of the surface things they associate with us. Of course we care that we're seen as people of integrity, competence, stout-heartedness, all that. It's being the individuals we've grown into that we take pride in, and that hard-earned pride is an armor.

Being thought of as stupid takes many forms.

"Eccentric" was how a young co-worker at CSU Stanislaus once assessed me. Considering she was a graphic designer, and presumably creative, I chose to take that as a compliment 😏 even though I wasn't quite 50 yet.

"So silly, but so me!" was how a potential customer my age reacted to the Titania gown I sewed for our lyrical performance at the Art to Wear show a couple of years ago. She couldn't bring herself to buy it, and her husband talked her out of it with an appeal to the practical: "It's fall, and that looks like spring." As if spring would never come around again...

"Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm" was how my journalism professor nicknamed me, perennially tardy and always cheerful upon arrival.

And then there was "You're stupid," plain and direct, leveled at me by the Kaufman and Broad maintenance troubleshooter to whom I confessed that I'd figured out that the vent over the oven of our new home (28 years ago) had a switch that was "Off" in the middle, "Low" to the left and "High" to the right.

Now that one, when it sank in only after he left, stung. But I was 28, and me-at-50-and-beyond was another lifetime away.

The nice thing about the age I am now is that no one has called me stupid, or any of its derivatives, for a very long time. They call me "ma'am", "older patient" and such, but we can't win everything.

Downsizing my life

"I'm a minimalist."
That's something I never would've said about myself. There was a brief period of rebellion when I wanted minimalists to hush up and quit evangelizing me.

I watched several long preachy videos just now—minimalist content creators have not applied minimalism to their videos. But everything they've cut out/stopped buying I long ago gave up or never got into. I think the dividing line was when I was fired in 2009 and learned quickly how inessential most things and pampering services are apart from food and a roof over your head. Vanity, all is vanity.

Yet I still live in a house full of stuff. It's stuff I bought decades ago, when I wasn't a minimalist. It's time to align my surroundings with my mindset. Two rules I made for myself:

1) I'm gonna have to stop beating myself up for having acquired all this stuff to begin with.

2) I'm gonna have to let it all go without worrying about getting cash for it or finding good homes for it.

Breathe. Let that sh*t go.

At the start of the year a few people wrote what their "word" is for 2020. How silly, I thought. Life delights in messing up your plans.

And then I realized I have a word. It's OPEN. Those two zeroes are wide open. This is my year of emptying out. Except now I can do so without resentment.

Being open also leaves space for better things to enter my life. The trick is to trust that there are indeed better things on the way. Somehow, as trusting as I am, I struggle with this. My default imagining of my life is still painted as a non-minimalist landscape.

But the two biggest changes are already in progress.

1) I don't want to upcycle anymore. It feels almost blasphemous to the upcycling cause to say this out loud. For the last two years I haven't been amassing trunkloads of thrift store clothes and chotchkies in hopes of creating eco-friendly lovely things to sell on etsy. I've stopped caring. Nobody is buying from my shop anyway. My shop turned 10 years old but the last thing I sold was at the Art to Wear show two years ago. It is no longer my responsibility to rescue stuff.

2) I won't define myself as a dance or yoga teacher anymore. Which, in terms of stuff, means I won't be buying more leggings or class props. I mean, egad, the third bedroom that I had emptied out of upcycling stuff eventually filled up with yoga props! And now this stuff must also be decluttered. It never ends!

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There is a third area of life downsizing I'm looking at, and I'm not sure which direction to go. I could flat out decide I'm not ever returning to dancesport training, which would free me to earmark my savings for all the things I had to sacrifice when I could afford only private lessons and nothing else.

First let me observe a moment of Yay me: I have substantial savings now instead of debt. Yup. Yay me! I said I'd get out of debt in 2019 and I did. I've been collecting a small pension from my state worker years for four years, which corresponds to the number of years I took private dance lessons. Ergo, my pension and then some went straight to my former dance teacher every month. NOT ANYMORE! It's all mine now. I cannot think of a more deserving person (and in hindsight, the least deserving of it). I still have all the technique I managed to learn in four years, plus what I continue to hone in group class every Saturday.

For now I'll consider dancesport training a low priority, but I won't bump it out of my life completely. I do like the idea of heading into my 60s and 70s still fit and fierce. I see pictures of my former fellow dance teachers from the studio I quit in 2014...let's just say I've taken better care of myself, and it shows, and cutting out their kapha-imbalanced snide energies was one of the best decluttering decisions ever.

I'm a minimalist, and proud of it.