Sunday, April 23, 2017

What Would Triumph Even Look Like?

I roll my eyes a little when I hear people talk about branding as though it were important.  Oh, I suppose it's possible that it IS, but in my life I want to think about principles and contribution and artistry.  I don't want to think about staking a claim on a bit of intellectual or participatory terrain.  I know branding is not the same as marketing, but clearly they are related.  And I want to hang out in the supposedly-loftier realm of ideas.

And yet....

If this blog is to make any sense, and it must before I can commit to it as I feel I should, then it has to be about something.  Carving out a life at mid-life, and using all the pieces of my life as metaphor and path for that?  Could be.  Grace out of chaos?  Replacing shame with power?  Some of those things, all of those things.

I talk about creating and sustaining a triumphant, glorious, meaningful life - beginning, middle, and end.  But I don't even know what that means.  I do know this isn't it.  So, is it branding to say "Yes, thisThis is what I will talk about.  This is what I will explore and reflect on.  This is the path I will walk, and invite people to join me for?"  I suppose that's branding, of a sort.

So, let's think for a minute.  What IS a chatelaine?  And why did this metaphor occur to me for this blog? A chatelaine historically means the wife of the lord of the castle.  However, it came to mean a woman who owns or controls a large house.  It also references the chains worn on the lady-of-
the-manor's belt, with keys, sewing utensils.... the things she needs to manage the life she leads. The keys, etc... were a symbol of power.  This woman, the chatelaine, was quite possibly the only person who could, and did, walk into every room of the castle.  It was her job to do so.  So, she was always a career woman, the chatelaine, and she always had multiple roles.  She needed the right tools for her job.  And young women frequently (probably always) had a difficult time assuming this role and learning its intricacies.  It isn't "natural;"  it has to be learned.

So, I'm that, right?  I have this big house; a career I love; people I love; animals I love; things I want to do, make, write, cook; experiences I want to have; fitness feats I want to be capable of.  Fitness blogs, and there are some that I love, do fitness.  Homemaking blogs, and there are some that I love, do only that -even though in reality, like all of us, those people do a lot of things.  We are taught, especially for the purposes of branding, that focus and issue-specificity are good.  I suppose they are.  But, yawn....

Nobody gets to live like that, or I certainly don't.  Integration of ALL of it, and doing it all myself - as in, without a partner,  is what I have to figure out.  Women have been told, for all of my life at least, that we can't have it all.  Or, more positively perhaps, we can have it all, but not all at the same time.  Indeed, our cultural focus on whether or not women can have it all implies that the answer is no.  If we were just doing it, the question wouldn't keep coming up.

In some ways, this isn't the life I chose.  And yet, I celebrate and choose it now.  But I do not get to say "I can't have it all."  It all has to be done, and it has to be done by me.  I can't just succeed at work, and live in squalor.  I can't succeed at work and home, and be fat and unhealthy (those two things being different) because I didn't make time to work out.  You see the problem.  This chatelaine has to walk everywhere in the metaphorical castle.  And she, by God, gets it done.  I want to be her.

That's my brand.

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