REINVENTION

Back to the salon today, big change, new piecey haircolor and cut. I like changing my hair every few months; it feels fresh and interests my eyes. Stylists love me because I am pretty much up for anything. So I get something cool and they get to play, all good.

I sat there during the incredibly-complicated color processing and once again read More magazine, that one for old biotches like myself. I don't really know why I torture myself like that, because I am not really so much a fan of its tireless cheer. Every woman in there is smiling and has some great story to tell about something fabulous they did past age 40. Well, good for you, ma'am's. Honestly, good for you. Well, alright, to be fair, they did have a grim article about older women getting AIDS and some adopted woman who found out her bio mom had ties to the Jello-O fortune but didn't get any of the mom's dough. I guess I just never find myself in any of these women or their stories. I am not a relentlessly upbeat entrepreneur who made a million dollars making shoes of of recycled newspaper, nor an adopted HIV + women who has jello thighs and 50 jars of wrinkle cream. I think that was what I read. Sure, why not.

The magazine put a call out a few months ago for articles such as the above, about REAL-LIFE WOMEN LIKE MYSELF who have done something to "reinvent" themselves. The usual struggle-and-triumph deal, an easy write for me, so I thought I would send one in. I waited and waited, and then I let the March deadline pass. Why? Why did I do that? I think I know. For one, they weren't gonna pay me anything. Yes, the exposure would be good, but I think that is cheap not to pay people for their work. Two, they would hold the rights to it completely, including the right to edit it any way they wanted. Well, bah. If it is my story, and my writing, I don't dig that either. But I think the thing that bothered me most was the whole "reinvention" thing.

I was going to write about all the changes I have been through in the last couple of years -- losing a bunch of weight and getting healthy, starting to write and take pictures and make some music again, getting out and seeing shows, etc. There have been so many positive benefits, and they all seem to link together. It occurred to me that I did not in fact reinvent myself at all. I just peeled off the layers of crap to be me again, the me I was since I was born. I did nothing new. I just made things right again. There is nothing heroic in that. I am just sorry that I didn't do it sooner.

So I don't really fit with More Magazine's concept of a fabulous midlife woman maybe. I don't want to be heroic, or annoyingly optimistic, or anything but a person who has a full range of emotions, including GET OFF MY LAWN and I FEEL LIKE DOING NOTHING AT ALL THIS WHOLE F-ING MONTH, HOW ABOUT THAT? I want to be happy and silly and pissed and strong and lame and everything. I don't want to convince anyone that I am better or did better. I would just want to tell people to try to be honest to themselves. If you were born a curmudgeon, OWN IT, BE IT, LIVE IT.

There's room for all kinds of people. And their awesome new hair.