Hi !  Welcome back. The seasons are changing, literally and metaphorically. This week I am thinking and writing about chutzpah, kids, AI, encyclopaedias, marriages, and new adventures - Eve D.❣️

Week in review…

😉 If weeks had themes, this week it would be chutzpah. “The word chutzpah has both a positive and a negative connotation. To the perpetrator of chutzpah it means boldness, assertiveness, a willingness to demand what is due, to defy tradition, to challenge authority, to raise eyebrows. The main benefit of chutzpah is that it can push you to take good risks, in situations where you wouldn’t otherwise.” As a bonus, I finally learnt how to pronounce this word properly (hootspa).

🥚 We just had a four day Easter weekend and we are about to go into a week of so many public holidays that the schools have just given up, and kids have the whole week off. As I’ve said before, these are my favourite type of weeks because the world really slows down to a crawl, and I can catch up on stuff. So I’m looking forward to that.

❄️ What I am not looking forward to is the temperature dropping to almost freezing point next weekend. I am taking out my winter clothes and sorting them. I have a very staple winter uniform, day in and day out. Its key is layers. I wear warm pants, usually over thermal tights, and turtlenecks (on top of at least one other layer). Then a sweater on top of that, and a scarf or a neck warmer. That’s my indoor outfit. Outside, I add layers, gloves and hat. Day in, day out. Boring, but works. Our winters can be brutal (houses are cold), but luckily they don’t last long. Fingers crossed. 🤞 

🧠 Kids and I no longer do an Easter egg hunt, but we do do an Easter Trivia quiz. Rules are simple: I buy a box of 36 marshmallow eggs, and I ask trivia questions. First kid with correct answer gets an egg, and if both get the answer no one gets the egg. It took 60 questions to get rid of all 36 eggs. See below for a funny story on this, and a sample of some of the questions.

👩‍🍳 G and I hosted a lunch on Sunday for four friends, and it was a massive success. The cooking was easy, and the company was on top form. One of the guests brought dessert and although I have no photos (at all!) to show you, let me tell you the ingredients of this “only assembly required” cake: hot cross buns, mascarpone cheese, raspberries, speckled eggs and icing for decoration. G then woke up the next day with a craving for Croque Monsieur and the first restaurant we thought of was one that happened to serve it superbly. So that was a win.

☂️ Because it has been rainy and gloomy the week mostly consisted of: no walking or hiking, no tutoring, sixteen new books added to Kindle (read: one, ha ha), lots of YouTube, lots of self-discovery and introspection, definitely no camping, some self-care (manicure and pedicure), cozy coffees with friends, long phone chats with more friends. And a lot of writing. Who’s complaining?

㊙️ By the way….when I write these “weekly reviews”, it often seems to me as if my life is monotonous and slow…not much excitement week to week. But the truth is that there is so much that happens beneath the surface, shifts that can’t simply be captured in a few lines of text. That’s what growth is. And what life is. And this past week I feel life I’ve had a monumental shift. It can’t - and shouldn’t - be discussed, but it is there, and it is transformative. So two lessons: a) know that the mundane is the necessary ingredient to the extraordinary and b) everyone has a depth to their life that you will never see. Honestly, the trick is simply not to miss your own. #chutzpah

Ice breaker question:

Kids these days…

Zac (14yrs) had to write a “scary story” for English, and while we were casually discussing it it came out that he ….(you know what’s coming, don’t you?)…wrote it wit ChatGPT. I was shocked, and …he was shocked that I was shocked. Zac honestly doesn’t understand why clever use of AI is not a school requirement. As he explained it to me, he did write the story, but he wrote it with AI. They “had a discussion”. They “decided on the theme and the mood”. Zac changed some of the wording, took out what he didn’t like, asked for sentences to be rewritten, did some of the rewriting himself etc, etc. He stands by the fact that he did nothing wrong, because “he is doing school to learn how to write, and this is how I will always be writing”. Also, he called me out and said that he doesn’t understand my hypocrisy: on one hand I push him to use much more AI in his day-to-day (true story) but on the other hand he isn’t allowed to use it to do the boring shit he hates? (#chutzpah)

The sad thing is…he’s right. Zac is actually a really good writer, and I was looking forward to reading his story, and now I realise I will probably never read anything written “just by Zac” again. And such is life.

At this point I should say that Zac is not in a conventional school. He is “homeschooled” but via an online Cambridge system, with tutors and a fixed syllabus, which will allow him to write his A levels, while also allowing him to spend most of his day pursuing stuff that actually interests him (like the AI space, YouTube videos, stock market, world economies, tech launches, billionaire mindsets etc etc). Zac is smart, and has little regard for the school syllabus which he regularly pronounces as “stupid” and “boring” and “old-school”. (He still has a 90% or so average). His biggest gripe is that he has to handwrite all his assignments. He actually motivated the school to give him an exception with this requirement, and they declined. (His response? “Stupid”).

As a parent, I am conflicted. On the one hand, I agree that it is stupid to be learning in an old fashioned way when there is so much exciting opportunity to leap forward. And I think it is ridiculous that he will have to handwrite all his exams, under tremendous time pressure, on subjects that not only have no relevance to his interests, but also have less value to real life than ever before. On the other hand, I do think that some structure is required, that the ability to write well is a pre-requisite to thinking well, and that having a broad knowledge of history, physics, biology, geography etc is useful. But one thing I cannot deny: Zac gets most of his general knowledge about the world from self research that he pursues on his own, and he is much more rounded and versed in world ecosystem than most of his school-going peers, who simply do not have the time to figure out what really interests them.

Speaking of old-school….

One of my trivia questions (see above) was “Without using the Internet, find out when the Magna Carta was signed”.

Now, let me put this into context for you. We were doing the trivia quiz in my TV room that has a set of old-school, leather-bound Encyclopedia Britannica on the shelves. And they’ve been there since 1988. These books pretty much put me through every single school project and assignment I ever had. They were used to settle family disagreements about historical facts, and I distinctly remember pulling out the “H” when my dad told me that one of the top universities in the world was a place named “Harvard”. (It’s how I ended up in Boston). My kids have been staring at them all their lives.

And yet, when tasked when figuring out something about something without online access, my kids were stumped. “Do you want me to guess”? my 23-yr old actuary asked. “Can I ask you questions?” my 14yrs old know-it-all wanted to know. “Do what you need to do. First one with correct answer gets the egg” I said.

“Do you want us to use….books???”
“I don’t know what the Magna Carta is, so how do I know what book to look at?”
“Can I call a friend?”

Eventually, it dawned on them that there is an Encyclopaedia within two feet, but to my shock….that didn’t help. Neither one of them made any effort to pull out the M volume. They had never, ever, ever cracked open a reference book to look for an answer to anything. Ever!!!! I am beginning to acknowledge in fear that they might not even know how words are arranged alphabetically.

But here is the thing (as much as it hurts to say it): so what? It might not be a world I like, or approve of, but it is their world, and they are doing just fine in it. Who am I to judge?

Speaking of writing…

Tonight I am going to publish my first post on my Substack (yay!!!)… About Blooming Time!. It’s list of links to third-party good reads, together with my commentary. Some of the topics covered:

• 101 ways to make friends

• Why libido is a myth

• How to find and be a great romantic partner

• Why the fck is Esther Perel still giving relationship advice?

• What would a woman do (when faced with a passed-out male in a park).

Going forward, I will also be writing regular first person essays, and they are going to be more raw, real and mature than the stuff I write here.

With respect to my About Blooming Time! community: I am doing the smart thing and starting things before I have it all worked out. I’ll figure it out as I go along. (Thanks to Laura for pushing me on this.) So I can’t promise you with precision what you’ll get from the community, or how it’s going to work, but I do know it will have a lot of discussion and opportunities to connect. Might not be for everybody, but the overall theme is that mid-age women need to stand up, roar, and grab life by the throat now. The rest of the world must stand aside, because we’re done taking shit from others. And the best way for us to do that is to work together. My goal is to facilitate this. (#chutzpah)

If you want to subscribe and join, you can do so here (it’s free). I hope you do! You should then get my first post late Saturday or early Sunday. Let me know what you think of it. (Note: target audience is strictly women 45yrs+, but obviously open to anyone).

Who you should marry

This is a great TEDx talk that has received 17 million views since 2011. It’s by Tracy McMillan, who at the time of the talk was in her early 40s and had already been married and divorced three times. She is bubbly, and funny, and unpretentious, and very aware of how horrendous that track record sounds. She tells us that her mother was a prostitute, her father a hardened criminal who had just been released from a 20 year prison sentence. Tracy spent her youth in dozens of foster homes and institutions, and her goal in life was “not to be left behind”. Her first marriage was at 19yrs, to a “wonderful” man, whom she left a few years later. Her second husband was great too, her third a disaster.

Through all this, or maybe after all this, Tracy says she found the one person she should have married from the start. Herself. At first that sounds like a bit of eye-rolling psychobabble, but then you listen to her reasons, and to the oaths she made with herself. And trust me, it all makes sense. You really should listen. 17 million other people have, so just join them 😄 

We should all be like Tracy

After I watched Tracy’s talk (above), I was fascinated by her and went googling. Turns out she is now an Emmy winner for television script writing (including Mad Men) and a relationship coach with her own TV show, podcast etc. She’s also managed to not re-marry 😄 .

But…hold on a second. I have to admit that if I had three failed marriages by the time I was 40 and I didn’t at least have a “successful” fourth, I would never, ever have the audacity to announce to the world that I should be listened to regarding relationship advice. I would walk around seeking advice from those wiser than me. I would probably be drowning in shame.

But not Tracey! 💪 She went deep, learnt her lessons, figured shit out, and felt that she was exactly the right person to give relationship advice because she had made every mistake under the sun, and knows that the actual secret of a good relationship lies deep within ourselves. 17 million people (and counting) agree with her (!!!). I want to be more like Tracey. (#chutzpah)

So, as I was saying earlier….it’s About Blooming Time! we stand up and roar, because we know the shit others would pay good money for. I need to walk my talk.

Hmmm…

You don’t need to die for your family. You need to live for them. 

I’ve been watching…

We watched The Challengers this week, and I (mostly) loved it. It’s about two tennis players who fall for the same girl, and then grow up. It’s a great storyline, extremely well scripted and quite original. There is something about Zendaya that is so appealing. And she knows it! (Nik, my online movie partner Whatsapp’d me during the movie to say he felt like this was “the movie version of Tennis girl”, and once I googled it (click on link)I had to agree 🤣 . Anyway, great movie (although I wasn’t wild about the ending). But watch it!

Thanks for reading!

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