Aging as a Writer and a Rider

I turned twenty-six this past Wednesday and my first thought upon waking up was that I am only four years away from turning thirty. I'm still "young" by many standards, though those first thoughts of actually aging are a little nerve wracking. For someone like myself it's nerve wracking because being a horseback rider I find aging scary. Aging means not being as mobile as before, not being as quick on your feet, or having the muscle one used to have, aging means losing bone mass, but...aging means gaining wisdom. Losing one's body but gaining wisdom is a difficult thing to grasp mentally. No one would choose one versus the other. Now is there a way to keep one's body and gain wisdom? I believe there is, or there is at least a way to try. There is always a way to try. 

I started doing pilates eight years ago and I initially did it to improve my riding and keep my body looking good, yes some vanity does exist inside me, as it does with most human beings. I am now a certified pilates instructor and I practice myself two to four days a week. I know when I haven't practiced because old injuries start aching, and I get on a horse and I can feel my muscles not working as strongly. The biggest thing I find is that my body doesn't work as connectedly to my mind as I want or need it to. Now I do pilates regularly so that I can keep following my passion that involves handling and riding 1200 pound, four legged, equines, and so that as I age, hopefully I will age gracefully. 

In my opinion, aging gracefully also includes the idea of aging in my mind with increased wisdom and knowledge. As a writer I find myself writing to fit the age group of where I am at in my own life right now. I would love to be the writer that ages, but may not age in my stories. My novels and writing might stay young, though I would like to have the flexibility to write for an older age group as well. Being able to switch from intense wisdom and writing for an adult age, to writing with inspiration for a younger age is something attainable, but to be good at it is something one must work hard at. I love the storylines from younger generation novels and young adult fiction that weave these intricate dramatic romances, fantastical scenes of fantasy elements, and so much more. I find that those types of stories make me feel younger than I am, more alive, more in tune. Maybe if I keep writing to the young and working to write to the old I can keep my young mind, even as I age. 

Like a rosebush that keeps blooming year after year, maybe I can keep my body and mind working together to keep inspiring me and working for me as my years come and go. 

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A dozen roses for my 26th from my man. 

Inner Ice Queen vs. Inspired Me

There are monstrous fat white flakes of white crap falling from the sky right now, and it’s the first day of spring. Not cool mother nature, not cool. Being a native Cali girl I naturally hate the cold.  I transplanted myself willingly (not sure my head was screwed on correctly when I initially made that decision) to the East Coast in 2009, and I still have not grasped the idea that winter is a “nice” season. I don’t think that will ever happen to be honest, I’m generally a cold blooded person already. Not in personality that is, but in body temperature. Though I can have bouts of ice queen personality on occasion. My inner ice queen comes out usually when snow is falling (makes me cold and I hate being cold), when I sit on my couch for too long (I have always been an active person so stationary life does not sit well with me), and when I get irritated enough that I snap (that tends to end badly as my mouth sometimes says things before I can think and tell myself that speaking whatever that may be out loud is not a good plan.) My inner ice queen usually is at peace and willing to just chill in her own little space somewhere deep inside me, but when she does come out it is not pleasant. And winter seems to be her prime season. 

Which brings me back around to it currently being the fist day of spring. Spring to me was always my favorite season because spring means my birthday, daylight savings time (more time to play outside with my ponies), and the approach of summer. The east coast has brought me to a new appreciation-level of springtime though because it means life and birth. I never quite connected spring to that when living in California because things come back to life after summer when the rain starts again. Out here though, spring means connection to life as the weather warms, as the harshness of winter disappears and the persistent chills leave my bones. 

I have had two things stopping me from writing on my novels recently, one of those things has been schoolwork keeping me busy, and another has been a genuine lack of disinterest in the idea of using my brain. For awhile now I’ve been battling with myself internally, wondering why my inner ice queen keeps popping her head out and wondering why I haven’t been able to find the will to write. I love writing, I really do. But I couldn’t figure out what was wrong with me…there had to be something wrong. 

Then spring weather arrived about two weeks ago. 

All of a sudden I have this drive to write. After some thinking, I connected the dots. Winter makes me shut down just like it does to the earth. It shuts down my mind, my pleasant emotions, my drive and passion, everything. All the things that make me write in the first place were shut down by the winter, and as soon as warm weather began to appear I felt refreshed and interested in writing. I saw sun-kissed daffodils popping up from the damp soil, the tulip poplar at the top of my driveway has buds bursting open to reveal pink and frost colored flowers, and slowly little emerald shoots of grass were pushing forth in my fields. The color is finally coming back to the world just as my creativity is coming back to me. 

Then it snowed this weekend. And sleeted. Frozen, white, bone-chilling, stuff. And now my inner ice queen is still standing in my mental doorway, grinning like a loon.

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Spring Crocus Flowers

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Tulip Poplar and Daffodils

Relationships: Short Perspective - Cultivate? Chivalry? Time? Instant?

     Today people find love in many different ways. Some people find love through friends, family connections, random chance meetings, at school or work, online, etc. The ways are endless today versus how it used to be many years ago. I’ve always been fascinated with the way relationships used to come to fruition and exist in previous centuries, the way love used to be seen. It used to be that relationships were only cultivated because the match would be beneficial for the family either in regards to a fortune or a gain of status within society. Relationships were formed based on the idea of furthering one’s life and love was an after thought within a relationship. Marriages were a business transaction in which love either blossomed afterwards, or love was found elsewhere in the shadowy corners of cheating and deceit. And courtship, that was a whole other type of situation that went along with relationship cultivating that fascinates me. This fascination with old mannerisms of relationships was fueled by reading such historical fiction authors as Phillipa Gregory. I have always enjoyed history, but to have the idea of history, relationships and love put into novels that reeled me in and kept me intrigued all the way through, well that just tickled me pink. 

    Living in our modern day when relationships have swung as far the opposite direction as possible on the pendulum from where they used to be, I always find myself looking at people and their relationships. I look at them and some I see as fruitful, meaningful relationships, others I just question from the start….What does that person offer the other emotionally? Mentally? Spiritually? Physically? How does that match thrive despite their obvious distaste for each other? How do they not see the damage they are causing? I question my own relationships from the past and wonder, what was I thinking? Clarity is something that I do not believe some people obtain from an objective viewpoint until they have been through the ugliness. 

    Today relationships are cultivated from a simple “swipe” or “interested to meet you” button on a computer screen, indicating that a person is interested simply based on how you look on a picture on a screen. Other people still keep to the older style of meeting people through their friends, family, school, work, etc. I just wonder, how much of a true chance do the people who meet online have if they are able to create themselves into who they want to be, and relationships are “instant” instead of holding the older style of courtship into account. 

    “Chivalry is dead.” I typically hate to hear that saying because it is dead to a certain extent, but that is the fault of women and men alike in today’s society. We “swipe” instead of “courting.” The flirtations are there, but a large percentage of the the time those flirtations turn sexual quite quickly….both females and males are to blame. If one wants chivalry in their life, they have to live with the idea that a relationship is created over time. Which brings me to the idea of time being a killer or a cultivator of relationships.

    Time may create a relationship, but if that relationship lasts and withstands the tests of time, that means that relationship was continually growing and being cultivated from the first day to the last. Relationships are not a stagnant thing if they are to be fruitful. People think that once they are “Facebook official” in their relationship or they have put a ring on that magical finger that the relationship should be strong. Wrong. A relationship needs constant attention, constant courtship, constant work from both parties in order to keep it alive. If one party falls stagnant, the end is in sight. You can be with someone for years and if time means one party falls stagnant in their part of the relationship then doom is most likely riding up to that door quickly. A stagnant move could be that both parties consistently put the work in to make a house feel like a home, dishes, laundry, yard work, etc. then one party gets lazy and decides they don’t feel like doing their part. That relationship could keep going for awhile, but that stagnant move will begin the root of the end. 

    I believe now that I read and enjoyed romance novels from the past where courtship was part of the story in cultivating “true love” because I lacked that knowledge in my own life for a long time. I know I am only a quarter of a century old, but having the knowledge I have now about relationships makes me look back at the past and realize that I wouldn’t know what I do now, without the mistakes I’ve made in the past.