![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Wednesday: Salem
Oct. 16th, 2024 07:34 pmM., Priestess and I walked about the 1 mile loop. I talked about Erikson’s theory of human development, and how ridiculous I found the 40-65 middle adulthood part of that theory. Sure, that’s when R. was doing parenthood, but that’s not a _normal_ time to be doing parenthood. Honestly, the earlier stages are weird too. Further, it’s just strange how central parenting is to adulthood in theories of human development.
Priestess and I went to Salem. We stopped at Artemisia Botanicals and bought a broom. We stopped at Village Silversmiths and bought geodes. We stopped at a shop and got one of the witch’s hats. We also had lunch at Flying Saucer. But before all that, we went to the Satanic Temple. They had an incident since our previous visit and security is significantly greater, but The Satanic Tarot was still there and Priestess got a lot of photos, since that book is impossible to acquire.
Priestess and I talked on the drive about what a theory of human development that was NOT focused on parenting might look like.
I’ll just cut and paste what I wrote down after I got home (there’s nothing here about family of origin — dealing with aging parents and similar — and there probably should be):
18-25: instability
You are technically an adult, but may still be quite dependent on assistance from others in paying the bills and getting your basic needs met. You probably move several times in this time period: out of a parents’ house, in and out of dormitory housing at school. You probably have variable numbers of roommates and/or romantic partners. But hopefully, by the time you reach the end of this period, things are settling down. You are in some kind of stable form of employment, are able to meet your own needs (clean up after yourself, do your own laundry), are living in one place for an entire year, with most of the same people in your immediate living quarters.
If you have children before or during this time frame, your parenting journey will be characterized by a lot of instability, but improve over time. Hopefully.
If you have the time and inclination to review your life in this period, your focus is on how to increase your stability, and do a better job meeting your needs (and the needs of your dependents). If you don’t have the time and inclination, if you have people who love you, they’re trying to help you with your stability and getting your needs met. If none of that applies to you, this is a highly traumatic period in your life.
You may or may not be healthy — chronic health issues can happen at any age. But in this time frame, a lot of people completely ignore the possibility of death, and generally feel immortal, even if they’d rather be dead.
25-40: stabilizing what you do with your time
At the beginning of this phase, you have vivid memories of squalid housing circumstances, crazy romantic partners and/or roommates, cockroaches, hangovers, getting fired from jobs, and similar instability. But hopefully, you finally have some sanity in your immediate surroundings. Your job may not pay much, but perhaps there is room for advancement. Your educational efforts are hopefully paying off. You are either single, and picky, or you are paired off with someone you don’t actively hate. If you had a child in the previous phase, child care is finally stabilizing, and you are no longer terrified of becoming homeless. You may even start to catch your breath, if your kid is in 1st grade or later.
If you did not have a kid in the previous phase, and you have one in this phase, it probably was either planned or at least welcome, and you had some optimism that you could balance career and parenting. You’re wrong of course, and having a kid in this phase will occupy a lot of your time and energy — identifying someone to make a kid with, pairing up, finding appropriate housing / schools, medical issues with you and/or the kid, etc. And having a kid will eat up all spare cash.
If you do not have a kid in this phase, or wait until you are well along, you’ll settle into some long term patterns in how you spend your spare cash / leisure time. You’ll have favorite food you learn to cook, favorite restaurants and bars you like to hang out at, bands you look forward to seeing for the nth time, parks you walk your dog(s), authors you’ve had sign books, artist friends whose work hangs on your walls, etc. You have some specific things you like to do on vacation, and have become knowledgeable about where you want to try those things on future trips to new places.
During this stage, whether or not one has healthy habits, in general one’s health is fairly predictable from week to week, and it’s weird to learn of an age peer dying suddenly of anything at all, or slowly of anything at all.
40-65 Adapting to Change
If you waited until now to pair off and have kids, you are one of the last of your group to pair off. Having kids might become a very difficult problem involving lawyers and/or expensive medical assistance. If you are engaging in life review at this time, your focus is on how to keep your life from completely imploding as you navigate later-in-life reproductive challenges.
If you had a child in your 18-25 range, they are probably either launched, mostly out of the house, or eagerly looking forward to being out of the house. You may be a grandparent. You may be actively raising one or more grandchildren. If you are engaging in life review at this time, your focus is on generational trauma, and how you’ve experienced and/or perpetrated it, and what you can try to do now to disrupt it.
If you don’t have and don’t want kids, you’ve had a lot of time to explore your interests in other people and in activities. You’ve gotten well known in some of those activities, and you might be feeling bitter about some of those relationships if they were episodic. If you are engaging in life review at this point in your life, you may be trying to work out what it is that brings you satisfaction, and how to consciously choose what the engage with and what to avoid, vs. whatever your previous defaults were.
If you had children in the 25-40 range, you probably are able at this point to catch your breath and go back to doing some of the fun things you remember enjoying Before Kids. You’ve changed. The restaurants and bars have changed. The band may or may not be touring. You will be exploring other interests and ways to enjoy your spare time and money. If you are engaging in life review at this time, you are thinking about what you will do when the kids are launched, and whether you want to continue on the path you are on, or trying something different, because you can see the door to try an Act II closing rapidly.
In this phase, the baseline health you took for granted can no longer be taken for granted. Unpleasant medical surprises are affecting people you know and care about and view as age peers — it’s no longer only your parents’ friends receiving terrifying diagnoses or dying. It’s your friends. Or you. You are thinking about what things you control — what you eat, how much you eat, how physically active you are, the risks you take — and trying to make choices that convince you you’re less likely to get really bad news.
65-???
Unless something really odd happened, your kids, if any, are mostly launched. You may still be raising grandkids. If you had children, and that is part of your engagement in life review, you will likely spend time actually talking to friends and others about How Your Parenting Choices Are Turning Out. You will probably have complicated feelings about these choices, even if you present these feelings in a brusque and simple way.
If you did not have children, you’ve probably made peace with the way that you have spent your life. You’ve thought about your relationships, and the jobs and other activities you have engaged in, and while you probably have some regrets, the edges have worn off those regrets, and you are focused very clearly now on ensuring your needs are getting met, and that someone will notice if a medical event happens to you unexpectedly.
You’ve figured out who you can travel with, and you’re identifying the things you want to do before your tolerance for travel evaporates completely. If you’ve thought at times that you’d like to understand something better, or engage more deeply in some subject or activity, you will explore taking classes or joining a group that shares that activity or interest. You are looking for projects that are important to you, and which you want to assist with, even if that assistance does not personally benefit you, and even if the project may not complete until long after your time has passed.
You vote.
If you changed careers (or spouses, or had a second family, etc.), your second act has now lasted about as long as your first act. If you are engaging in life review around this, you may be comparing one to the other, and looking at commonalities and differences, and trying to make sense of your choice and your complicated feelings about that choice.
This is a time when many people look back at Paths Not Taken, and reach out to people from earlier times in their lives. This can range from an interest in genealogy (a Roots Tour), reaching across a long-term rift in the family, reconnecting with coworkers from past jobs / careers, reconnecting with friends from earlier in life you’ve lost touch with. If you are not currently with an exclusive partner, you might reach out to a What If from your past and reconnect to see if there is a spark.
This is also a time when many people decide to try an Act II or III — attain a new educational credential, even embark on a new career.
Reflecting on the course of one’s life is assumed to happen at this point in one’s life. However, reflection on one’s life can happen at any point in the course of a human life, and can be very helpful in terms of learning from one’s experience (and the experiences of those one knows relatively well). Reflecting early preserves the power of time to bend the arc of one’s life. If we notice something good we are doing, and make it a habit in our early adulthood, the benefits can be huge, and last decades. If we notice a bad habit, and work to redirect our choices early in life, that can add decades to our lives. Reflecting on one’s life later in life is still valuable, but the amount of time to enjoy the benefits of informed action based on that reflection diminish with every year.
Priestess and I went to Salem. We stopped at Artemisia Botanicals and bought a broom. We stopped at Village Silversmiths and bought geodes. We stopped at a shop and got one of the witch’s hats. We also had lunch at Flying Saucer. But before all that, we went to the Satanic Temple. They had an incident since our previous visit and security is significantly greater, but The Satanic Tarot was still there and Priestess got a lot of photos, since that book is impossible to acquire.
Priestess and I talked on the drive about what a theory of human development that was NOT focused on parenting might look like.
I’ll just cut and paste what I wrote down after I got home (there’s nothing here about family of origin — dealing with aging parents and similar — and there probably should be):
18-25: instability
You are technically an adult, but may still be quite dependent on assistance from others in paying the bills and getting your basic needs met. You probably move several times in this time period: out of a parents’ house, in and out of dormitory housing at school. You probably have variable numbers of roommates and/or romantic partners. But hopefully, by the time you reach the end of this period, things are settling down. You are in some kind of stable form of employment, are able to meet your own needs (clean up after yourself, do your own laundry), are living in one place for an entire year, with most of the same people in your immediate living quarters.
If you have children before or during this time frame, your parenting journey will be characterized by a lot of instability, but improve over time. Hopefully.
If you have the time and inclination to review your life in this period, your focus is on how to increase your stability, and do a better job meeting your needs (and the needs of your dependents). If you don’t have the time and inclination, if you have people who love you, they’re trying to help you with your stability and getting your needs met. If none of that applies to you, this is a highly traumatic period in your life.
You may or may not be healthy — chronic health issues can happen at any age. But in this time frame, a lot of people completely ignore the possibility of death, and generally feel immortal, even if they’d rather be dead.
25-40: stabilizing what you do with your time
At the beginning of this phase, you have vivid memories of squalid housing circumstances, crazy romantic partners and/or roommates, cockroaches, hangovers, getting fired from jobs, and similar instability. But hopefully, you finally have some sanity in your immediate surroundings. Your job may not pay much, but perhaps there is room for advancement. Your educational efforts are hopefully paying off. You are either single, and picky, or you are paired off with someone you don’t actively hate. If you had a child in the previous phase, child care is finally stabilizing, and you are no longer terrified of becoming homeless. You may even start to catch your breath, if your kid is in 1st grade or later.
If you did not have a kid in the previous phase, and you have one in this phase, it probably was either planned or at least welcome, and you had some optimism that you could balance career and parenting. You’re wrong of course, and having a kid in this phase will occupy a lot of your time and energy — identifying someone to make a kid with, pairing up, finding appropriate housing / schools, medical issues with you and/or the kid, etc. And having a kid will eat up all spare cash.
If you do not have a kid in this phase, or wait until you are well along, you’ll settle into some long term patterns in how you spend your spare cash / leisure time. You’ll have favorite food you learn to cook, favorite restaurants and bars you like to hang out at, bands you look forward to seeing for the nth time, parks you walk your dog(s), authors you’ve had sign books, artist friends whose work hangs on your walls, etc. You have some specific things you like to do on vacation, and have become knowledgeable about where you want to try those things on future trips to new places.
During this stage, whether or not one has healthy habits, in general one’s health is fairly predictable from week to week, and it’s weird to learn of an age peer dying suddenly of anything at all, or slowly of anything at all.
40-65 Adapting to Change
If you waited until now to pair off and have kids, you are one of the last of your group to pair off. Having kids might become a very difficult problem involving lawyers and/or expensive medical assistance. If you are engaging in life review at this time, your focus is on how to keep your life from completely imploding as you navigate later-in-life reproductive challenges.
If you had a child in your 18-25 range, they are probably either launched, mostly out of the house, or eagerly looking forward to being out of the house. You may be a grandparent. You may be actively raising one or more grandchildren. If you are engaging in life review at this time, your focus is on generational trauma, and how you’ve experienced and/or perpetrated it, and what you can try to do now to disrupt it.
If you don’t have and don’t want kids, you’ve had a lot of time to explore your interests in other people and in activities. You’ve gotten well known in some of those activities, and you might be feeling bitter about some of those relationships if they were episodic. If you are engaging in life review at this point in your life, you may be trying to work out what it is that brings you satisfaction, and how to consciously choose what the engage with and what to avoid, vs. whatever your previous defaults were.
If you had children in the 25-40 range, you probably are able at this point to catch your breath and go back to doing some of the fun things you remember enjoying Before Kids. You’ve changed. The restaurants and bars have changed. The band may or may not be touring. You will be exploring other interests and ways to enjoy your spare time and money. If you are engaging in life review at this time, you are thinking about what you will do when the kids are launched, and whether you want to continue on the path you are on, or trying something different, because you can see the door to try an Act II closing rapidly.
In this phase, the baseline health you took for granted can no longer be taken for granted. Unpleasant medical surprises are affecting people you know and care about and view as age peers — it’s no longer only your parents’ friends receiving terrifying diagnoses or dying. It’s your friends. Or you. You are thinking about what things you control — what you eat, how much you eat, how physically active you are, the risks you take — and trying to make choices that convince you you’re less likely to get really bad news.
65-???
Unless something really odd happened, your kids, if any, are mostly launched. You may still be raising grandkids. If you had children, and that is part of your engagement in life review, you will likely spend time actually talking to friends and others about How Your Parenting Choices Are Turning Out. You will probably have complicated feelings about these choices, even if you present these feelings in a brusque and simple way.
If you did not have children, you’ve probably made peace with the way that you have spent your life. You’ve thought about your relationships, and the jobs and other activities you have engaged in, and while you probably have some regrets, the edges have worn off those regrets, and you are focused very clearly now on ensuring your needs are getting met, and that someone will notice if a medical event happens to you unexpectedly.
You’ve figured out who you can travel with, and you’re identifying the things you want to do before your tolerance for travel evaporates completely. If you’ve thought at times that you’d like to understand something better, or engage more deeply in some subject or activity, you will explore taking classes or joining a group that shares that activity or interest. You are looking for projects that are important to you, and which you want to assist with, even if that assistance does not personally benefit you, and even if the project may not complete until long after your time has passed.
You vote.
If you changed careers (or spouses, or had a second family, etc.), your second act has now lasted about as long as your first act. If you are engaging in life review around this, you may be comparing one to the other, and looking at commonalities and differences, and trying to make sense of your choice and your complicated feelings about that choice.
This is a time when many people look back at Paths Not Taken, and reach out to people from earlier times in their lives. This can range from an interest in genealogy (a Roots Tour), reaching across a long-term rift in the family, reconnecting with coworkers from past jobs / careers, reconnecting with friends from earlier in life you’ve lost touch with. If you are not currently with an exclusive partner, you might reach out to a What If from your past and reconnect to see if there is a spark.
This is also a time when many people decide to try an Act II or III — attain a new educational credential, even embark on a new career.
Reflecting on the course of one’s life is assumed to happen at this point in one’s life. However, reflection on one’s life can happen at any point in the course of a human life, and can be very helpful in terms of learning from one’s experience (and the experiences of those one knows relatively well). Reflecting early preserves the power of time to bend the arc of one’s life. If we notice something good we are doing, and make it a habit in our early adulthood, the benefits can be huge, and last decades. If we notice a bad habit, and work to redirect our choices early in life, that can add decades to our lives. Reflecting on one’s life later in life is still valuable, but the amount of time to enjoy the benefits of informed action based on that reflection diminish with every year.