4 - Short Takes - Who am I, and Why Should You Listen to this Podcast?

TRANSCRIPT

When I was young, I thought life progressed in a straight line...you’re born, you grow up, you get married, have kids, have a job, then the kids grow up and you grow older, and eventually you die.  A simple, straight-forward, linear progression.

I don’t consider myself young any more, and I’ve learned over the decades that there is very little about life that is simple or straight-forward.  As to that linear progression, I’m thinking it might only apply to my calendar age.

 

Hi, I’m Mary Young. Welcome to the Lessons from Life podcast.  I’m calling today’s episode “Who am I, and why should you listen to this podcast?”  Seriously, why should you take 5-20 minutes out of your busy life and listen to an invisible stranger?

I feel like I should have a compelling answer to that question, and I really don’t. But let’s start with introductions.  I’m Mary Young, and I like to call myself a “rolling stone now happily gathering moss.”   By that, I mean I used to change jobs every 2-3 years, and change housing locations every 6-18 months, but am now finishing up.11 years in the same house, and 13 years in the same job.

I grew up in the mid-west during the 1960s, and still have very strong memories of being told I couldn’t do things I wanted to do because “girls don’t do that.”  I’m old enough to remember when it was mandatory for girls to wear dresses to school, and we couldn’t wear long pants to school unless it was below freezing, and then they were worn *under* our dresses, and we had to take them off when we arrived, and put them in the cloakroom with our coats. 

I watched the original Adam West Batman on TV, and remember when the Brady Bunch and the Partridge Family were brand new shows.  I saw the original Star Wars movies in the theaters, when what is now episode 4 was the only movie.  I’ve lived through bell bottoms, pet rocks, lawn darts, no seatbelt laws and riding bikes with no helmets. 

I still remember Mom telling us to come inside on a hot summer day, and making us watch TV. We could never do that in the middle of the day in the summer time. We were supposed to be outside playing. But Mom said it was history being made, and we needed to see it. 

I was  8 years old, and never paid attention to the news, so I didn’t really understand how incredible it was, as Walter Cronkite told us what was happening, and we heard “...3...2...1...Lift Off.”    A few nights later, my grandma stayed up with us (mom always went to bed early), and we watched more history being made as Neil Armstrong took that last step off the ladder of the Lunar Landing Module and walked on the moon.

Again, at 8 years old, I was just happy to be allowed to stay up late and play cards with Grandma. But as I write these memories today, I’m choking back tears.  I saw history being made.  But you know what? We see history being made every day - we just don’t realize it.  It’s not always something big and flashy like the moon launch...it just is.

Who else am I?  I’m a daughter, but have never been a wife or a mother. Well, not a mother to humans.  I’ve shared my heart and my home with some wonderful dogs over the last 15 years, once I stopped being a rolling stone. 

I have spent most of my life in male-dominated career fields, and it wasn’t until writing this episode that I realized it might have been because of all those “girls don’t do that” messages in my youth. 

 

So that answers the “who am I?” part of the question.  The other part of the question is “Why should you listen to this podcast?”.  Ummm....So I’m not talking to myself?  :)     No, seriously...I would love to give you a compelling answer to that, but I’m not sure I have one.  I can tell you why I’m doing a podcast, and that might be a roundabout way of answering the why should you listen question.

I mentioned at the beginning that as a little girl, I thought life had a very linear progression.  If I’ve learned anything over the last 5 decades, it’s how mistaken I was in that thought.  As an example, I got my associate’s degree AFTER I got my bachelor’s. If life were truly linear, I’d have done it the other way around. 

John Lennon said: “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.”  Truer words were never spoken.  My last semester in college, I didn’t even show up to take the final exam for my “introduction to computers” class, because I knew I was never going to work with computers.  I was going to be an author, and an IBM Selectric typewriter was the highest technology I was ever going to use.  Today, those typewriters are museum pieces, and I teach people how to use my company’s computer system to run their business.  I’ve been working in the computer industry one way or another ever since I left the Air Force over 25 years ago, even though it was never what I had planned. 

I don’t know if you’ve noticed the graphic that goes with the header of this podcast -- it’s a very wiggly line that works its way from start to finish.  That line represents life, and how it really works out for us.   There are set-backs and plateaus, mountains and valleys, roundabouts that make you feel like you’re spinning your wheels, but eventually you make it to the finish line. 

My plans for this podcast are to just reflect on that wiggly line, as I’ve seen it in the last 50+ years.  I call it “Lessons from Life,” even though that sounds pretentious to me, because everything that happens to us, everything we experience, is a lesson, if we let it be one. 

So in my episodes, I’m going to share whatever I’m thinking about, and it may be something that interests you, or it might not.  Sometimes it might be a trip down memory lane. Other times, it may sound like a self-help episode.  But whatever it is, it will be authentic and vulnerable.  And just because one episode doesn’t speak to you doesn’t mean the next one won’t, so please keep listening.  The topics will change from week to week, but the authenticity won’t. 

 

Thanks for listening, and I hope you come back.  Until next time, go make it a great day.