Oh my Lord I'm Feeling Old!

I had a “God, I’ve aged!” moment this morning. Let me start from the beginning…

Before I seriously immersed myself in my writing cave this past year, I looked young. I went out to a party with my eldest daughter last October and someone asked her, “Who’s your friend?” Of course, we pissed ourselves laughing at that and explained I was her mother. I can’t blame them for thinking how they did. I had my daughter just after I turned eighteen and I was also acting like a younger person by freaking out on the dance floor to House of Pain’s Jump Around. Um, yeah. I love that song.

Anyway, my daughter and I, when she was still at uni, used to go and have our hair and nails done every couple of months. She’s a darling and treated me every time. We’d go together, sitting side by side having our locks chopped then leave the salon hoping no one we knew saw us. The stylist never did our hair the way it was supposed to be—don’t you just hate that? I have mine in a trendy cut, yet they blow-dried it to make me look forty years older. Ugh. Then we’d run to the nail salon and sit like royalty, reading trashy magazines while the lady attended to the acrylics. White tips, square cut…God, I’m drooling at the memory.

During that time I felt so…confident and pampered. They say if the outside of you looks good, you feel good on the inside. I can vouch for that, because now my daughter is working full time as a social worker, and I’m deep inside my cave writing, neither of us have had the time to do the hair and nails days. We talked the other week about feeling a bit poo about ourselves and discussed whether we were vain, whether hair and nails mattered at all. After all, we’re still the same people now we have bitten nails and split ends, but…we don’t feel as “nice”.

So I looked at myself this morning, really looked at myself—something I try not to do because I don’t like what I see (another topic entirely)—and thought: You look old, my dear.

I have wrinkles I didn’t have last year. Grey circles beneath my eyes. Split ends a hairdresser would cuss me out for, not to mention a style that isn’t a style but just hair. And that hair…I haven’t dyed it in a while and I can see by the roots that if I didn’t dye it at all I’d be completely grey. That’s a family thing, that we all go grey early, not age, so I don’t feel so bad about that but…

It frightened me.

And then I thought of how rundown I’ve felt lately and wondered if me not taking time out to make myself feel better has attributed to that. There is something to be said for chasing your dream, that you sacrifice many things, because it’s hard work, you have to remain focused, and you don’t stop even when you get to where you want to be; you still have to keep honing your craft so you get better with every book.

I read a line in a book last night. It went something like this: A writer is known for neglecting their family, holing themselves up in a room alone, and not washing.

I had to smile at that, because, although I try not to neglect my family, I can say that for the past five years I haven’t spent as much time with them as I should. And there are days I stay in my pyjamas… I don’t have an office because if I did, I’d always be in it. My family would never see me. So I write in the living room. I’m there but not “there”. Available if anyone needs me, but for the most part, if I’m writing, I’m left alone.

And then that brings me to whether I need to find more of a balance. Can I continue to write as I do without sacrificing memories? I try and think of things we’ve done as a family that my kids can remember when they’re older, and I fear that all they’ll remember is: Mum sat at the computer all the time…all we ever saw was her back.

So, here are my questions:

How do you feel as you’ve aged? Are you fighting it? Does it scare you?

Do you do the hair and nails thing? I’d go out right now and visit those salons, but due to the economic crisis, I can’t justify spending that kind of money just to make myself feel better. There are bills to pay, blah blah blah.

And if you’re a writer, how do you balance your time? Do you feel you’ve neglected your family or other obligations? Do you wash (lol, sorry, couldn’t resist that one…)?