THE FUTURE

I just read an article in the newspaper about two women who wrote about a book about women in the old age. I am 46, not getting younger. True, all the media is full of messages promoting eternal youth, but let's face it, no matter how much exercise, how much hair dye, how much cream you spread over your face, some day, old age will be obvious. Just this week I decided to stop worrying about finding true love. I may have already found it, and several times, for that matter, well, about three times, but that's material for another entry. The fact is, men my age want younger women and men much older than I want women my age and I am definitely NOT interested in them. The last man interested sexually in me was not interested in loving me, and I don't think I can take it any longer, so I decided to start modeling a new Claudia. A non-romantically interested Claudia. I decided to focus on generating money. Reading helped me. And I'm not discussing financial reading here, but good, old Lit. In The Awakening Edna's husband tells her to stop saving money, to stop thinking as a poor person, that money is meant to be spent and should be set to work. Then Virginia Wolf said that in order to write, a woman has to have, besides a room of one's own, money of her own. My looks are not still waning, but eventually they will, so I have come to that age where money starts to matter so much more than finding true love. Besides, there's the daughter factor. I have a child whom I have to be an example to, and it is mortifying to set one, depending on the eyes of a man set on me, that's not what I want for her. I have to grow up into a self-sufficient woman, strong and independent and of course very creative and productive till the end of my days. Some day I will stop dying my hair  -which I just started last year-, someday my arms will get tired of defying gravity and some day there will be real wrinkles all over my face. But I hope one day to see my white hair, the wrinkles around my eyes and under my eyeglasses, smiling in a photograph as the author of just another of many, many books. I don't want to be the old lady who sleeps all day after having retired from 20 years of service. I will be retired, but I'll have a juicy bank account and many stories to write. I hope I'll die with many stories to be told, not because I never wrote them, but because I had so much still to give.