![A logo for "50 Happens," [a site dedicated to Gen X women with children and grandchildren] [who embrace life's challenges with humor and resilience], [featuring a modern and uplifting design] [that embodies strength and positivity] [with an elegant and playful style] [and a harmonious blend of colors like pink, fuchsia, purple, and blue].](https://50happens.blog/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/img-5uorrxvwartomopcpuhjfjd0.png?w=300)
GenX, I highly recommend MyGenXerLife’s Spotify playlist for walk time. 🐾
Meow 🐱
Life is good
Gen X
Dear Mary
Dear Centenarian Mary,
Congratulations! We made it to the big ten-oh. I hope 2065 is treating us well and that we haven’t run out of money. Seriously, we’ve lived 8 years longer than our financial planner modeled. (I hope I didn’t fuck us by retiring at 58.)
In case you’ve forgotten, 2024 was quite a year. If the United States is now a dictatorship under Baron Trump, it’s not due to lack of effort on our part. We worked hard to try to stop his wretched orange father from overturning democracy.
Hopefully things took a turn for the better in 2025—the year we turned 60. Hopefully. Fingers crossed that we get to go out on a high note.
Love,
Middle-aged Mary
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Roma 🇮🇹
OK, so it’s fantasy Saturday?
I’d be miraculously transported to Rome, with no airports, passports or wait times involved. (Beam me up, Scotty)
I’d spend the morning shopping on the Via del Corso and then head over to Trastevere for the afternoon. I would replace the buttery-soft, knee-length black leather coat that I bought on my semester abroad (which was subsequently stolen in NYC) and also get some new black leather gloves and whatever the heck else I want (it’s a fantasy, right?)
I would have plenty of time to take breaks in outdoor cafés. The weather would be 70 degrees and sunny. My feet would not hurt. My husband would cheerily accompany into every single store and carry my purchases without complaint. The dollar/euro exchange rate would be in my favor.
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Honor Thy Mother
Daily writing prompt
What is your middle name? Does it carry any special meaning/significance?
I’ve posted before about my double name: Mary Sue. Sue is my mother’s name, so I like it. Most of us get our last names from our fathers (because patriarchy), so it’s nice to get your first and/or middle name from your mother, or your mother’s side of the family. We followed that tradition with our kids.
I kept my own last name when I got married (even though it’s much harder than my husband’s to pronounce and spell). This could’ve caused a fight about our kids’ last name, but it didn’t, because I’m a pragmatist and a feminist. 😉
HAPPY INTERNATIONAL WOMEN’S DAY
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Novel lessons
Sometimes I feel guilty that I read mostly fiction books. Typically, I read a couple of memoir-type nonfiction books each year (i.e. Michelle Obama, Anne Lamott, Prince Harry – couldn’t resist!), but I don’t prioritize the big, serious nonfiction bestsellers, like The Persuaders, which I know I should read.
Still, I learn a lot from novels by great writers. (I realize this is not an amazing revelation. Readers of fiction know this already.) Great novelists do so much in-depth research that you end up learning a lot of stuff, while engrossed in the lives of fictional characters.
Yesterday, I finished “Unsheltered” by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Barbara Kingsolver. As with all Kingsolver books, I learned new things about the natural world, but I also learned a few things about Cuba in this one. There’s an endearing character named Tig, a GenZ anti-capitalist who has returned to the US after a year in Cuba. She tells her mother about “the yellow guy” (El Amarillo) in Cuba, which is a government-organized hitchhiking facilitation system. (The facilitators wear yellow/beige uniforms.)
Who knew? I mean, it doesn’t put Cuba on my bucket list or anything, but it’s interesting that they’ve found a way to cut down on all the wasted seats—in all the gas-guzzling vehicles—that are heading to the exact same destinations. American soccer moms could use a yellow guy.
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Are you retired?
Having recently been through a bunch of toxic workplace bullshit that resulted in me resigning my position a couple years earlier than originally planned, I’m not loving the question, “So, are you retired now?”
I mean, yeah, I guess I am. I can afford to stop working for money now. But it does feel unusual and rather lazy, when nearly every other able-bodied person my age is still working full-time.
I know, I know. This is a First World problem that I’m lucky to have.
If I answer unenthusiastically, “yeah, I guess so,” sometimes I get “oh, I only ask because you look too young to be retired,” which is 100% the correct way to recover from asking me the question in the first place. Playing to someone’s vanity, when put your foot in your mouth, can work quite well.
The one question that is truly non-recoverable from, if you ask the wrong woman, is: “when are you due?” Just don’t. Ever.
Keep on Moving Forward
Daily writing prompt
How has a failure, or apparent failure, set you up for later success?
Sometimes failure is just failure. The plays I didn’t get cast in, the rejection from my first-choice college, the math class I dropped because it was too hard, and the fellowship and jobs I didn’t get, are all examples of times I objectively failed.
People talk a lot about “grit and resilience,” usually in the context of blaming today’s parents for being too protective and helicopter-y. Well, failure forces you to build those qualities, even if your parents somehow messed-up.
What other choice do you have in the face of failure? You gotta keep going.
“Keep on Moving Forward” by Emma’s Revolution is my all-time favorite protest song. I think it inspires personal fortitude, as well as strength to keep fighting for a better world.
KEEP ON MOVING FORWARD
© 1984 Pat Humphries
Moving Forward Music, BMI
www.emmasrevolution.com
Gonna keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Keep on moving forward
Never turning back
Never turning back
Gonna keep on moving proudly
Gonna keep on singing loudly
Gonna keep on loving boldly
Gonna reach across our borders
Gonna end the occupations
Gonna stop these wars together
Gonna keep on moving forward
IT’S SUPER TUESDAY in the USA. Don’t waste your right to vote.
Alabama
Alaska
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Maine
Massachusetts
Minnesota
North Carolina
Oklahoma
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
I’d rather laugh with the sinners
Daily writing prompt
You’re writing your autobiography. What’s your opening sentence?
To an obedient Catholic girl growing up in an affluent, sheltered Boston suburb, Billy Joel’s 1978 hit Only the Good Die Young felt like an invitation.
Gadgets (and a brief survey)
I’m assuming nobody wants to hear about how dependent I am on my phone, car and TV. I’m thinking favorite gadgets might be more interesting?
Per Merriam-Webster, a gadget is “an often small mechanical or electronic device with a practical use, but often thought of as a novelty.”
Based on that definition, my top three gadgets du jour are:
My Ember smart mug, which is pictured here. It keeps my coffee warm for a very long time. No need to nuke it* over and over again.
My Oxo citrus squeezer, which is pictured here. I bought it at Whole Foods. It’s the perfect size for juicing limes, specifically.
My Pure Enrichment tabletop humidifier. I like it because it also has a calming blue light. I bought it for $35 at CVS two years ago, kept the receipt, and the company sent me a new one this year when the original developed a slight crack. I like a company that stands behind its products.
*Nuke it means “microwave it” in the above context. My GenZ son thinks that my husband and I made this up and that nobody else in the whole wide world says “nuke it.” If you would kindly let me know whether or not you say “nuke it” when you mean “put it in the microwave oven” and (if comfortable) your approximate age and home country, I would be very grateful. (The results may be used to convince my son that I am not weird.)
TYIA
The College Experience
For me, there was no greater growth experience than college. The college experience is like no other. The sheer number of new people and new ideas you’re exposed to in a short timeframe is bound to change even the most “set in their ways” 18-year old.
I was lucky my parents paid the bills and my college had no core requirements whatsoever, so I could take whatever classes I wanted—from poetry to Russian history. (Amazingly, I didn’t take a single science class.) Throw in my semester abroad, internships, guest speakers, drug experimentation, and a winter trip to the Soviet Union, and it really was a mind-expanding time for me.
It’s sad that the liveaway college experience has become so expensive and debt-producing. It’s not fair. I think the four-year model needs to go. Three years of college is plenty, and would be significantly cheaper. “Uni” – as they call it in the UK – is only three years. I mean, maybe a few select majors (like Engineering) need four years, but everyone else (Liberal Arts, Fine Arts, Business, etc.) could be done in three.
Speaking of the college experience, we went to see One Love, the Bob Marley biopic, based on DanLovesFilm’s recommendation (American critics be damned) and I had fun. There are definitely some weaknesses in the script and I had a hard time understanding the Jamaican/Rastafarian accent, but the music is the music and it’s great. Marley is played by Kingsley Ben-Adir and he’s 🔥
So, GenX: I recommend you have yourself a cocktail or a weed gummy (or both) and go see One Love. You’ll have a good time jamming in your theater seat to one of our key college soundtracks.
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