Welcome to the ThirdAge Carnival!

So, this is my second Carnival for the week. (The first was the Carnival of Computing that I hosted at the Browster Blog yesterday.)

The ThirdAge Carnival celebrates getting to an age where you know who you are and what you want and what life is all about, right? Tscha! What struck me about all of the submissions I received was how much I related to each one, and how much getting past 40 can be great, but it's no magic solution to save us from all of life's confusions, insecurities, and the ongoing need to explore!

So, let's see what those posts were that I related to:

Lately I've been feeling that getting to this age means that I am more exposed to death. The parents and grandparents of me, my friends and my colleagues are ailing and dying. Even friends of friends, people not so much older than I, are dying. I guess I'm not the only one feeling this increasing exposure to loss and grief. ThirdAge blogger Yvonne DiVita writes movingly about how seeing someone's loss today reminds her of a not-so-distant loss in her own family.

Christine Miller also touches my heart by talking about how we all define success in personal ways, and explaining how her own departed "best damn grandma in the world" has made her who she is today.

As we age it's not just people within our own sphere that leave us...icons of our youth begin to leave us too, and we wonder at how much the deaths of strangers can move us, affect us, influence us. Of course, the anniversary of John Lennon's death was on many people's minds this week, but we also lost two different men this week...Richard Pryor and Eugene McCarthy. You can read a post from NOTR on ROFASix about the passing of these two men...and the way the media covered each.

Lest you think I sit around and think about death all day, I don't, Truth is I'm way too busy with my business and the BlogHer organization to brood or to meditate. But several of the submitted posts reminded me that action, action, action without thought, thought, thought can sometimes be counter-productive.

James from Cohesive Integrity has a blog full of reminders to all of us to step back and assess various aspects of our business and our life. This week his topic might not be so popular, since he's asking us to hold ourselves accountable. But it only makes sense, right?

Actually, I know as a closet perfectionist that sometimes I have unrealistically high expectations of both myself and other people. This manifests itself in a variety of ways: I have a somewhat annoying tendency to rush into doing things myself because then I know I'll get them done; I might finish your sentences; I might neglect to ask for help; I might soldier on in silence.

I have a feeling that Evelyn at Crossroads Dispatches is slowly mastering the art of not doing any of that...as she comes to realize that being fiercely interdependent may serve her better than her fierce independence!

And Rinatta reminds me that all of my above annoying perfectionist habits don't serve my relationship too well. Rinatta reminds me to communicate, to slow down, to appreciate, to ask for what I need and want, to deal with not always getting everything I need and want...and to listen!

Of course Marilyn from California Fever reminds me to occasionally wear my short skirts and high heels too! All sage advice, frankly :)

Speaking of listening: Jory ruminates on the fine art of listening at Pause. Jory reminds us that the fine art of listening isn't purely applicable to our personal lives. And when it comes to business, it's not just sales people who need to listen.

I wrote earlier this week about listening to one's body, so another topic I related to shared across multiple submissions was: health.

ThirdAge blogger Dr. Susan waxes philosophical about personal responsibility for our health...inspired by a large balloon. Seriously.

Another ThirdAge blogger, Jacqueline, alerts us (in case we weren't already painfully aware) to the fact that the first Boomers are turning 60 years old next year...but alerts us to something I bet most of us don't know:  1 in 10 people get some form of dementia by the age of 65. With the largest generation heading toward that mark she has some suggestions about what we can do about it.

Finally, thank goodness for Pam from Nerd's Eye View. I went on two East Coast trips this fall and came back sick after both of them. Nerd's Eye View has some advice on how to avoid that long-haul air travel disease...whatever it is.

So, that's it...I learned something from every post submitted. I'd like to leave you with the words of an inspiring speaker that Yvonne saw at a recent conference:

The very first speaker, Sir Ken Robinson, was by far the BEST speaker of the entire conference. The focus of his talk was on creativity and children. The recognition that children are born with innate curiosity and by nature, creativity (he talked of his daughter drawing a picture of God) is not new. Sir Ken remarked that the goal should be to foster and nurture this in adults. Best quote: “Creativity is as important to this century as literacy and numeracy were to earlier ones.” His prediction: we are headed for a revolution- pushed by technology (the Internet) and the aging of Western Society.

Next week's ThirdAge Carnival is at The New Charm School. Send your links to Jennifer by 12/18/05.
Last week's ThirdAge Carnival was at California Fever. Check it out.

Check out other fine carnivals at Truth Laid Bear and BlogCarnival.

Comments

[NOTR]

Typepad has a problem. It is not just your site either. A trackback ping yields the following error message:

Pinging http://www.typepad.com/t/trackback/3848359...
Problem: Server said 'In an effort to combat malicious comment posting by scripts, I've enabled a feature that requires a weblog commenter to wait a short amount of time before being able to post again. Please try to post your comment again in a short while. Thanks for your patience.'

[Yvonne DiVita]

Outstanding job, Elisa. I'm so awed by the many Carnivals in the blogosphere these days. Carnivals seem to be a useful and productive way to 'get the word out,' so to speak. I wonder how it will grow and transform in the coming months. Is this the coming nature of communication on the net? Thanks for your hard work on this one.

[Elisa Camahort]

Thanks Yvonne. And thanks NOTR, I have never seen that error message before. Hmmm. Typepad was acting a little bit funny today. Anyone out there know anything about this message and what to do about it?

[pam]

Just a quick thanks for including me. Also, I wanted to comment that IT WORKED. Or seems to have, so far. I'm usually incapacitated by day three after those long haul flights. Today, while I'm a little jet-lagged, I appear to be all health! Hooray!

[Elisa Camahort]

That's great Pam! And good to know for future reference. I guess I'll try your regimen :)