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I am a 42-year-old woman who still hasn't decided whether I want a
child. I've been with my husband for almost 20 years and he is
ambivalent as well, though he says he will support me in my decision. I'm
afraid I'm going to miss what life's all about if I don't do it, but then
I think if I've put it off this long it must not be for me. Oh, and my
doctor wants me to go on Zoloft for depression now, which means putting
off the decision for six months (making conception more unlikely). I
obsess about this; I've thought about it for years and am now seeing a
counselor. What do you think? Ambivalent Dear Ambivalent, It isn't a good idea to conceive and produce a baby as
an experiment, to see if it's what you want, to see if this is what you're
missing in life. Parenthood is a long step into the dark under the best of
circumstances. It is a joyful catastrophe, and one shouldn't enter it except
with prayerful confidence. If, after 20 years with one man, you're still
not sure whether you want to have a child with him, then your mind is
trying to tell your heart no. Of course I could be all wrong about this. Dear Mr. Blue, My boyfriend and I broke up over the weekend. It was really his idea.
We had a long discussion about our future. I'm 30 and he's 25.
He's not looking to get married till he is 30, and I can't wait five
years. So it was decided to part ways. He still wants to remain friends,
and I'm
wondering how long I should wait before we start doing things together.
I think he wanted to spend as much time together as before. That would
be
too difficult for me, plus there is the risk of getting back together,
which I don't want. What do you suggest? Picking Up the Pieces Dear P.P., This is the calmest breakup I've ever heard of. The ones I
know about all involved long letters, buckets of tears, the slamming of
doors, shouting up stairways, some breakage of china and glassware,
phone calls from mutual friends, long lonely walks late at night, bouts of
grim remorse and listening to Chopin nocturnes over and over. You
broke up with this guy in the same spirit as one might return a raincoat to
Nordstrom's or cancel a meeting. You compared long-range plans and
noted the discrepancy and voided the agreement. Every breakup should be
so civil as this. I think you can start doing things with him whenever you
like and do whatever you like whenever you like to do it. But don't get
back together. Wait until someone comes along who is more than a
raincoat, someone who, if you ever had to break up with him, your heart
would break and you'd sit alone in the dark drinking bourbon and listening
to Billie Holiday. Dear Mr. Blue, I'm a graduate student and a teacher. I love my work. Still, I've
always seen myself as a novelist as well. Several times a week, I write
fiction, but as yet it's shapeless. Perhaps this is because I'm afraid
I'd have to give up one dream to have the other. I want the Ph.D. and the
novel too. Is it possible, or am I about to do a shallow dive into a bucket
of hubris? P.S. I am unmarried and childless, so I wouldn't be bothering anyone
but myself. Rewriter Dear Rewriter, Don't give up the ship. Perhaps the novel is still in the
Rummaging & Discovery stage and you haven't come to the real writing
yet. I haven't any idea what you're trying to write, so pardon me if I offer
a slight suggestion. Only a suggestion, based on nothing. A common
problem of writers starting out is overswinging, trying to hit a home run
and impress their old English teacher, Miss Postlethwaite, with a sensitive
and luminous novel about a young woman coming of age and discovering
her talent as a writer. This is not necessarily a novel we readers look
forward to reading. If you're burning the midnight oil to write this novel,
why not make it a novel that is amusing to write and that is constructed on
a strong scaffold of a plot and that is meant to entertain us? Shapelessness
may be a sign that you're trying too hard. (Of course I don't know how
long you've been at this, either.) It's only a suggestion, offered by a man
who recalls his early unpublishable novels only too well. Dear Mr. Blue, I am looking for a woman who's really exceptional: smart, funny, good-looking, horny, loyal and strong. The women I've met so far aren't even
close, but is it wrong to date them anyway, knowing there's no long-term
future? Should I never go out with a woman if I think she's not "the
one"? I don't want to "settle" for someone, but I also don't want to waste
my time looking for perfection if it doesn't exist. Looking Dear Looking, The exceptional women you seek are here in Minnesota.
Smart, funny, good-looking, horny, loyal, strong -- that, plus blond,
describes them to a T. They're all over the place; any man who could
walk four blocks down Nicollet Avenue without falling in love with at
least three women is either clinically depressed, or gay, or blind.
Minnesota produces tall sinewy women who can paddle a canoe, handle an
ax, dance the tango, manage money, write a paper on "Hamlet" and at the
end of the day do things that make a man faint from ecstasy. If you can
settle in Minnesota for a few months, you won't have to settle for
anything less than perfection. If you're looking somewhere else, you're
probably wasting your time. Dear Mr. Blue, I'm a young writer with a pretty good gig at an alternative
newsweekly (I also freelance for a number of larger publications), but I've
got to the point where I don't trust my editor with my work. I know
writers hate editors -- the inverse probably applies in some sense as
well -- but I'm not sure what to do here. The problem is confounded by
the fact that I'm in a great relationship and don't want to leave the
city where I live, even if there are few publishing outlets for writers
here. Your wisdom is appreciated. Stuck Dear Stuck, This weekly paper is not the apex and capstone of your
career; it's only one stop on your trek, and what it has to offer you is
Experience, a precious commodity, including the experience of suffering
under a dense editor. Don't worry about your work. You'll do better work
further along, and then work even better than that. Use your time well and
venture into new realms and subjects, soak up new information, read
widely, look at what you don't know, practice curiosity, learn the art of
rewriting, study Strunk & White's "The Elements of Style" and deal with
this editor. You can learn more from your opponents than from your
allies. | ||
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