Single Working Womens Week – SWWAN

Greetings, SWWAN readers. My apologies for having been away so long. It has been a time of great upheaval and change for me. Now that things have died down to a smaller roar, I’m eager to get back to writing about the wonders of single life.

It has been clear as we’ve grown the numbers of members and readers that we have single women from a multitude of different circumstances. And for most of us, one strong certain common bond is being single in today’s couples-oriented U.S. society. But we also have members from countries as far away as China, Australia, Africa, England and more. It seems likely they must face some of the same issues and that’s why they were attracted to SWWAN.

Interestingly, we had one reader unsubscribe last year because she said, “I’m over 70, employed part-time and taking care of my aged mother. I haven’t read anything here that relates to my situation.” So I guess for her, it wasn’t so much about being single but about the other aspects of her life that she wanted to hear/talk about.

Some SWWANs moms have jobs.  Some are self-employed. Some are ever-single and some are divorced. Some are 40-somethings or baby boomers and older, and some are late 20s or 30-somethings. Some are single moms and some are great aunts or only adult children. The overriding reason SWWAN came into existence was to honor the specific experiences of being a single working woman—the joys, fears, burdens, the struggle and the exhilaration of facing life with mainly only yourself to count on.  It’s an experience that no one can relate to if they haven’t lived it. And many who did live it but have gone on to other circumstances quickly forget the intensity of the single life.

We set SWWAN up originally to do many things, including awarding points for single-life milestones and to collect and eventually publish stories from our readers. We haven’t had the staff and the bandwidth to do all that we wanted. But now I’d like to ask our members and readers to weigh in on what single life is like for you—and the things you’d most like to see us set as goals. I’ll create a short survey and send a link out in the next week or two. Looking forward to hearing from all of you!

Tired of struggling with technology? I’ve been trying to figure out how to email posts from my cell phone to the SWWAN blog since I put it on WordPress, and I just keep getting sidetracked because it seems so complicated. It’s frustrating and kind of embarrassing, since I’m normally pretty with it with technology. Could have something to do with the fact that I’ve just completed a full purge of my household and a move into what I hope will be my last home.

Did you ever keep putting some project off because it required too much prep work? Feel. Overwhelmed when facing some task? What do you do? Sometimes I enlist help–a friend or relative perhaps. When I was married, of course, I’d want to hire someone, but my husband would say he’d do the things I felt too challenged by. But guess what? A lot of times he’d procrastinate worse than I did. I couldn’t figure out why someone would say, no, don’t hire someone,  I can do that and then not do it. When I asked my father about it, he surprised me by suggesting that maybe he just didn’t know how to do it. And here I thought he was doing it to annoy me, and all those times it may have been because he couldn’t admit his ignorance.

Surprisingly sometimes—when it’s over and I’ve got the thing done—it turns out not to have been as complex as I thought it would be. And then I’m sorry I resisted. But mostly I’m just really glad it’s done.

I’m typing this with two thumbs on my tiny cell phone keyboard. Now, if only I knew how to email it to the blog instead of emailing it to myself and then having to transfer it…