midlifejourney.com

I have a friend, a baby boomer, who loves to play online poker at one of the many online poker websites. His favorite: PokerStars.com. Texas Holdem is his game. And he’s very good. Wins good money. He spends much of his weekends playing free poker online, watching the stars of the World Series Poker play at full tilt. I don’t play poker, but I am fascinated by its popularity, especially among the 20+ crowd who are winning millions of dollars every day, either online or at live poker events. They play against poker professionals twice their age, with decades of experience, and often, come out on top. It begs the question, can a Baby Boomer succeed at online or live poker? What’s turned these young poker players into poker wizards?

While searching for the answer, I came across a book published a couple of years ago, which I think has stumbled onto one explanation: Gadgets, Games and Gizomos for Learning. (Book is available at amazon.com). According to author Karl M. Kapp, it all has to do with video gaming! and the learning experience of those who play them. A short excerpt captures the essence of his explanation:

…I found myself watching a televised poker tournament at 2:00 A.M. Through half-open eyes, I noticed twenty-one year olds playing against fifty-five year olds, the grand masters of poker, and winning. How could that be? Why were these young guys, kids really, winning? How could they hold their own against such experienced and knowledgeable players?

Then the announcer, as if reading my mind, provided the answer: “One of the reasons relatively unknown poker players can defeat thirty-year poker veterans is because of online poker.” What? Did I hear him correctly: online poker? What do you mean? How is that like “real” poker? …

…The announcer explained that online poker allows a gambler to play as many as eight hands at once against unseen but real opponents. The experience of playing so many hands over and over again while receiving almost instant feedback on good or bad bluffs allows twenty-one year olds to gain as much experience in two years as someone who has been playing poker all his life.

Wow! It hit me. Maybe this generation of kids, my kids, my gamer kids, has a different expectation for learning, an expectation for learning, an expectation built on a framework of video games providing instant feedback and constant interaction. A framework augmented by constant access to gadgets and a comfort level with thechonology that boomers and Generation Xers can only imagine.

Do baby boomers have a chance against these poker wizards? Can they even catch up? I don’t know. It takes a great deal of online playing experience—a serious time commitment most boomers just can’t afford.

The Boomer Generation is online BIG TIME. But can they keep up with the technology? Better yet, can they succeed in this highly competitive world of the online community?

If you are Baby Boomer somewhere in the midlife of your years on the planet, you’ve already lived through some pretty major technological advances. Remember 33 LPs? (They are actually coming back as highly prized collector’s items.) Remember the 8-track? Cassettes?…Boom Boxes? (They’re really big now, as well.)

ipods, iPhones, iMacs, Blackberries, Strawberries, Blueberries?—blogging, tweeting— they are just the next variation on what we already have experienced.

So can Boomers do well in this world of hi speed internet? Absolutely. You just have to decide where and how, and in which direction to put your focus. Wisdom and discernment are called for. You can’t grab hold and join every band wagon that comes down the pike. But you can succeed, and do it well, if you find your niche and really work it.

In the last few months the editors of midlifejourney.com have encountered a number of very successful Baby Boomers who are making second or third careers online by blogging, offering membership sites, creating affiliate sites or even joining online sites where they can do very well playing poker.

Here are a few of the successful boomers we have been following:

Jeff Herring who is a master and teacher of internet article marketing.

Stephen Beck who teaches online courses in webinars and membership sites.

Cathy Perkins, the WordPress Wizard.

Dotsie Bregel, founder of BoomerWomenSpeak.com and the National Association of Baby Boomer Women.

There are dozens of other Boomers doing well online. During the next week we will be reviewing the Best of the Baby Boomer Blogs and exploring the question of what it takes to succeed online. Check back.

It’s about this time of life — the middle — that many in the Boomer Generation take stock of their lives, try to focus on what’s happened so far, and begin to consider future possibilities with a certain wisdom that only comes from lived experience. These are the years of midlife memoirs: writing down for yourself, or for others, something about the life you have lived and what significance it has had on who and where you are right now.

Many people journal. Short, simple thoughts, jotted on a page in a book that only the writer reads. There is no thought of publication. For those who want to share their daily musings with the world at large, blogging has become the medium of choice.

But for some, like Patricia Harman, publishing a memoir in the traditional sense (hardcover, published by a major house) is the route to go. “The Blue Cotton Gown, A Midwife’s Memoir,” is a powerful story of her life and work as a midwife in the hard scrabble world of Appalachia. The many women and families she encounters in her practice turn to her for help, and she cares for both their bodies and their spirits.

The stories she retells weave a tale of compassion where the best of self is discovered. Women dealing with life and death choices come to her for help and no matter the cost, she responds. Throughout the memoir, Harmon does not flinch from telling of her own struggles with her career, dealing with financial difficulties, doubts about the future, and her own sudden illness that threatens the medical practice that she and her husband struggle to maintain.

A compelling read! We recommend it!

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A few years Congress passed a law that prevented most companies from using telemarketers to sell their products over the phone. Since then almost all those “during dinner time” phone calls from some XYZ Service have stopped. But calls from non-profit organizations can still get through. I just got another one this morning. I think they love to target the Boomer Generation. We’ve still got some money to spend.

It’s Sunday morning and I am watching Meet the Press. The phone rings and I answer. Immediately this young woman begins reading some pitch to me about the horrors of some strange disease — how many people get this strange disease, about how my small donation can help thousands, and how much would I like to give to their very special, one-time, very important fund-raising campaign?

Duh? First, I have no time for this. I am in the middle of waking up on a Sunday morning. I’m still on my first cup of coffee. Second, I have no clue who this person is, never heard of her very special, one-time, very important fund-raising campaign, in fact I never heard of this strange disease for which she is begging my money.

What to do? How do I respond? I have five different methods I use to respond to such unsolicited phone calls and they range from rude to total passive aggressive.

1. Say nothing and hang up. - This is good, but only for the short term. They will call again.

2. Let them talk on and on, and after their entire pitch is done tell them you can’t hear them and could they repeat the message. After they repeat the pitch, tell them you can’t hear them and ask them to repeat it again. And again, and again. (I once had a telemarketer go through their pitch five times before she got the message and hung up on me.)

3. Let them talk on – Put the phone down and walk away. – This too is good, as you don’t have to listen to the pitch, but has the potential to lock up your phone for a while.

4. When they ask for you by name, tell them you’re a relative and that the person they are calling is dead. That will at least get your name off the list.

5. But the most sensible solution is the best, and one that I use most of the time. When they start in on their pitch, stop them immediately and tell them to take your name off their call list. (By law, they have to honor your request). If you are in any way interested in the cause they are promoting, ask them to send you materials in the mail. But never, and I mean NEVER give a telemarketer any personal information such as your credit card. Remember, this is an unsolicited phone call. This person called you. You have no idea if he or she is who they say they are. They may be a legit representative of the ABC Foundation they represent, or the Police and Fire Retirement Society, but you don’t know that. You could be talking to a fifteen year old kid with a deep voice and a talent for getting people to give over their hard earned money.

My best advice: Be wise. Be careful. Be stingy with your personal information.

As a Baby Boomer trying to juggle a hundred things at once, there are days when I feel like I am running in circles, one concentric circle around another, and another. From the outside it might look as if I am accomplishing a great deal. But it’s not true.

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When you get to the middle of your life — midlife, everything seems to start coming at you all at once. Your children are growing up and it’s time to pay for college. Your parents are getting older, and it’s time to think of them in a new way—with an eye to how you might best care for them if they need help. And then there’s the job you were counting on to last till your retirement — it is no longer satisfying and as far as money is concerned — it seems it will never grow to a level where you can feel comfortable.

How do you find balance in your life once you’ve hit the middle of your life?

Life is constantly changing and shifting, and balance can only be realized by delibrately seeking it. The simplest way to find that moment of balance is to simply stop what you are doing. Just stop. Step back from the reality you are in and take a deep breath. (Don’t worry. The world will continue for a minute or two without you.) Then close your eyes and just breathe.  As you take that deep breath, listen to the sounds around you. It doesn’t matter where you are: sitting on a park bench, standing in a grocery aisle with a push cart in your hands. Just listen for half a minute — 30 seconds. Focus your attention on the now moment in which you are living. Become aware that this stillness in the chaos of your day is a moment of balance you can savor. Just be there and appreciate the fact you are alive and well, and able to just be still. Let your shoulders drop and whatever weight you are carrying slide away for just a moment. Take another deep breath, acknowledge the possibility that life in all its complexity is essentially good — that even the chaos has value and life has a way of working itself out. One more breath, open your eyes, and continue on with whatever you were doing.

It takes a deliberate choice to create these moments of balance in your life but short as they are, moments like this can be very helpful in keeping your life from feeling as if its spinning out of control.

There are many good resources on the internet that you might find helpful in seeking balance in your life. Here are just a few.

• Women and Balance
• Mind Tools
• Center for Balanced Living

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