A CURATED LIFE OF MUSEUM QUALITY

Who wouldn’t want a curated life?

Curated:

carefully chosen and thoughtfully organized or presented

We’d get to skip all of the confusion and misunderstandings and go right to the good stuff.

Sounds good to me, except for a small part. You know that small part?

Say you’re a baby boomer, a Portland baby boomer, maybe a baby boomer blogger.

You have the world at your fingertips, an array of topics to choose from that appeals to a boomer audience.

You tab from retirement, to vacation, to investment, to grandkids with all of the pictures.

That, dear readers, is a well curated list of tagged topics.

Broken down, it looks like this on boomerpdx:

Retirement: Eighty blog posts.

Vacation: Ninety posts.

Investment: Seventy.

Grandkids: Ninety.

I’ll do the math: roughly three hundred and thirty posts on approved topics out of an estimated thirty-eight hundred posts.

Thirty-eight hundred posts on a single blog? Probably a little more, but either way it’s a lot.

Lucky for you I spent twenty years around real curators, museum curators, so I know the drill:

If you’re looking for something and can’t find it, but the out of date documentation says where it last was, keep looking.

Still can’t find it? Then use a similar object to give the audience a sense of the real thing.

Be sure to say it’s not the real thing in the gallery labeling.

 

The Real Thing

When people disagree with a curated life of museum quality, who do they complain to?

Some blame themselves for lacking the sophistication they feel necessary to live a curated life.

Most likely a relative or teacher shared that insight with them and they’ve been haunted ever since.

Call it a cultural crime to kill the hopes of people just trying to figure things out.

Too stupid? Only stupid people call others stupid. It’s a bully’s tactic for them to show how smart they are.

If they succeed they can curate the lives of those they beatdown with their derogatory attitude.

Eventually the feelings turn to, “Just do whatever they say so we don’t have to see their sick, ugly, face or hear that voice spewing God knows what brand of bullshit.”

That’s not a win for you or anyone you know, and you know it.

Eventually you can’t take it anymore and tap-out of the curated life and go it alone.

Welcome aboard, moron, let’s clear a few things up.

 

The Cleaning Crew

When someone decides you’re the problem in order to make themselves look better?

Get the fuck out of here.

When they tell you all of your problems stem from the same source?

Call the foul, bitches.

The game of life, curated or not, has the same rules for all of us.

It’s not up to some self-aggrandizing corn-ball to explain how they’d like things to be, and convince you it’s real.

Your job is to figure it out, check it out, and make corrections along the way.

Build your life one small step at a time, that way when you look back you will see the giant leap you actually made, instead of depending on some kind of mystical mood shifter changing directions every day.

Be someone you’d like too spend time with for starters.

 

Let’s admit it: Things change.

I’m not the first and only baby boomer blogger to notice, and won’t be the last, but how many times have you seen the denial of change?

From feelings to fads, from agreements to new standards, every day has a chance to change things permanently.

Like it or not, you’ve changed from the strutting flamingo of youth, the proud giraffe with your head held high.

Now you feel like putty being molded by a four year old. Why?

Because this is putty molded by a four year old, and you like it, don’t you?

You do, don’t you? Well you’d better.

I like it because I like the artist, and it resembles a flamingo and a giraffe, and their relationship with art will grow.

I wouldn’t like it as much if it was the work of a incompetent sixty or seventy year old who says I’d better like it if I know what’s good for me.

 

The Box Of Life

Start in the small box and you’re got layers of protection as long as you don’t move.

Without the other boxes you are easily stepped on and flattened.

But you grow into the next size, then the next and the next.

(You get the idea …)

When, and if, you get to the big box, you protect the smaller boxes, not throw them all out.

Nurture them through the same process that helped you.

But, as we know, not all boxes are created equal.

Sometimes the big box is damp and smelly and propped up by the smaller boxes who insist everything is fine, just fine.

Eventually all of the boxes in that particular box get damp and smelly.

You need to leave, but you’re just a little box.

 

PS: Curate your life by paying attention to what interests you, along with what influences others, especially in finding a suitable box set to join and grow with.

 

PSS: When you have the chance to be a positive influence, and you do whether you know it or not, keep it simple and treat others as you’d like them to treat you. The smart guys know that decorating in gold starts with the Golden Rule.

Go ahead and get your glow on. That’s living a curated life of museum quality. That’s the show we’re all here for.