Category: Opportunity often arises from adversity

Overcoming Adversity

On Life and Love After 50 eNewsletter

Overcoming Adversity

November 10, 2023

Tom Blake – Columnist

The Dana West Yacht Club, Dana Point, California where Tom’s speech was held on November 7. Photo by Tom Blake
Overcoming Adversity
In the three most recent eNewsletters, I mentioned I’d be making a presentation about the challenges of senior dating on Tuesday, November 7 2023. I was asked to speak by the Business Network Group (BNG) which has its monthly meetings at the Dana West Yacht Club in Dana Point, California, the city in which I’ve lived for 37 years.

Because so many Champs (subscribers to my weekly eNewsletter) contacted me on November 8, the day after my talk, wondering how my presentation went, I decided to describe that rather unique and challenging experience in today’s column.

I started preparing my presentation a month before by attending the BNG October presentation to observe the seating layout of the club and the audio/video setup. I wanted to see if the previous month’s speaker used a PowerPoint presentation. He did, so I decided to do the same. (See the room in the photo above).

I’m not a professional speaker so I needed to prepare my material diligently. I spent hours at home designing and scripting my slides and testing them on my TV screen. Everything worked perfectly. I practiced several times. Plus, I was told an audio-video expert would be at the club to ensure all was in order.
I admit I was a bit nervous, 80 people had RSVP’d, including several Champs. I wanted to make them proud.

I arrived at the yacht club an hour and a half before my talk and connected my laptop to the large TV screen via an HDMI cord. My speech material didn’t appear, only local TV programs.

My friend from my grief share session, Jim Fallon arrived. Jim had agreed to advance the slides on my computer so I could walk among the crowd using a portable microphone. Jim was also puzzled by the big screen not working.

The first guest arrived. He was a Champ, Rick, who lives a mile from me. He said he was a widower. And then another Champ, Regina, arrived. I’ve known her for years. She’s the salt of the earth. I introduced them and they sat adjacent to each other on barstools. They seemed to enjoy chatting; I was pleased.

Back to the PowerPoint crisis. Garrett, the bartender, tried to help with the setup, but it wasn’t working properly. The promised audio/visual person wasn’t there.

When Pat Chiku, the president of BNG, arrived, I told her the big screen setup wasn’t working. She called the a/v man, and he came 16 minutes later. He spent 40 minutes fixing things. When my material appeared on the screen, five of the 22 slides had disappeared. He spent more time trying to recover those.

In the meantime, attendees were coming in. Many wanted to chat with me. I was a mess, concerned about the TV setup, yet wanting to be cordial.
The a/v man finally got the setup working. A huge relief for me. And he left. A few minutes later, as Jim and I were ensuring everything was in order, the system froze. I knew at that time I was going to have to wing it, with no PowerPoint. Luckily, I had made a 4 x 6 card for each slide, with just some words to remind me what to mention.

I knew I would have to overcome this adversity, put it in the rear-view mirror, and fire up and make it happen.

I was pleased when four women, also from Jim and my grief share group arrived and sat in the seats Jim and I had reserved for them at our table. They were Patty, Gina, Michelle and Tracy. In total, there are seven of us who met via grief share and have become pals and do fun social activities together. Only Katie was not there, having other commitments.

Another friend, Champ Mike Stipher, a co-worker with me at the Victoria Station Restaurant chain from the 1970s, arrived. Mike, who has been supportive and a great listener and advisor, during my grief moments over the last 12 months, took a seat at our table as well.

Then Champ Gail sent a text. She was driving from Bishop, in the Sierra Mountains, 5-6 hours away. Her text read, “Stuck in traffic, I will be late.” Oh wow, another thing to worry about. We reserved a chair for her.
And then Champ Lady Hummingbird texted, wanting some directions. I texted that we had saved her a seat. 

Champs kept arriving. Margaret and Jean got good seats. The place was getting full. The first couple still appeared to be enjoying each other.
And then a woman named Erika came in. She had previously paid for three of my books she was getting for her 59-year-old son who had decided to try to find a girlfriend.

I had signed the books for him at home beforehand, knowing time would be of the essence. She had mistakenly come to the club the week before and found it locked. She jokingly told me she had suffered a “senior moment.”

At 6 p.m., Pat introduced me. I thanked her for planning the presentation on a Tuesday night, and not on a Thursday night, so our attendees wouldn’t miss any of The Golden Bachelor program. People laughed.

Earlier in the day, I had gone to a local florist and purchased two long-stemmed red roses that were hidden in a cooler I brought with me. Later, I called Pat and her assistant Candy to the area where all could see them and had Jim remove the roses from the cooler. I presented a rose to each woman ala The Golden Bachelor, as an acknowledgment for their hard work in putting the night together. That got a big round of applause and me hugs from the two women.
Senior Dating – Make A List
The audience participated as I intermingled with the crowd with a microphone in one hand and my slide notes in the other. When I suggested that singles, before starting to date, make a written list of qualities wanted in a mate, one woman shouted out, “At the top of my list, the man must be breathing.” That brought a chuckle from folks.

The ratio of women to men in attendance was an estimated 8 to 1. About the same for people in their 70s and 80s who are trying to date.

When I was talking about first-date etiquette, another Mike, who was seated with three women at a table, very loudly shouted, “The four of us want to know when people should talk about sex.” (I think they’d had a couple of cocktails by then).

I replied, “For heaven’s sake, not on the first date!”

A woman nearby shook her head, and mumbled, “At my age, who needs sex at all?” I decided to avoid any further discussion on the touchy subject of senior sex and switched to the next topic, online dating.

However, the importance of chemistry, i.e., physical attraction, was a topic. More than half the crowd raised their hands when I asked if that was important to them. My grief-share friend Patty called chemistry “zing.”

In the Q&A session at the end, I was surprised that many in attendance were unfamiliar with the acronym “LAT.” I explained that LAT stands for a living apart together relationship and it seems to be emerging more and more among single seniors.

By the end of the evening, it appeared that six people might potentially become three couples. That warmed my heart.

Several people told me I probably did better without the PowerPoint aspect.
Later, Patty texted our 7-member grief share group, saying, “Tom took control through the chaos of the system like a ROCK STAR!!”

Holy cow, I appreciated Patty’s comment.

I was surprised that no one raised the question of whether I had met anyone online or elsewhere whom I was seeing exclusively. But two women privately asked me that question.

I said, “Yes.”

One said, “Is she here tonight incognito?”

I said, “No. She’s not here tonight. She’s a ‘PGF’ and a MFT.”

“What are those?” A woman asked.

I said, “A PGF is a Phantom Girl Friend. An MFT is a Marriage and Family Therapist. She’s ill, caught a virus, and is devastated that she couldn’t be here to meet many of you. There will be another time to meet her when she’s feeling better.”

Here’s a lesson from today’s eNewsletter: Adversity is often the seed of opportunity. It’s what a person does with that opportunity that will determine if he or she will grow and benefit from it. It all depends on how they tackle it.

Thanks for being Champs. You are all special to me. Together, we made it happen on November 7, 2023

Opportunity often arises from adversity

On Life and Love After 50 eNewsletter –  November 27, 2020

by Columnist Thomas P Blake

                          Opportunity often arises from adversity
 
Millions of people worldwide have experienced unthinkable and unavoidable adversity in the year 2020. Of course, Covid-19 is the biggest factor, but natural disasters such as fires, smoke, hurricanes, and flooding have added to the adversity.

Adversity leads to opportunity.
 
People have lost their loved ones, jobs, homes, and social interaction with friends—the list goes on and on. For the most part, adversity has hit seniors the hardest. The death toll is highest among the senior population.
 
However, there is a flicker of hope on the horizon. The vaccines developed so far have been touted to be 90-plus percent effective.
 
Once this adversity is behind us, opportunities will start to arise for individuals. Jobs will become available. In-person family visits will resume. Senior singles will meet dates face-to-face. I’m not trying to paint a rosy or idealistic picture about what has happened to us all in 2020—it’s been a terrible year.
 
In 1994, I learned a valuable lesson about how an opportunity can arise from adversity. On Christmas 1993, I was visiting my 82-year-old mom in Northern California. I didn’t know at that time that my life was about to change dramatically. Adversity was already underway; I just didn’t know about it.  
 
The morning after Christmas, my wife of six years telephoned me at Mom’s to say she had moved out. (She didn’t mention that she had taken what furniture and belongings she wanted).
 
All I could say was, “Where are you living?”
 
“Doesn’t matter,” she replied.
 
And then she said, “Gotta go,” and hung up.
 
I packed my bag and got in the car. I was so surprised and shocked that I started jotting some notes on a pad of paper during the 500-mile drive home. Soon, those notes were transferred to a journal I started writing, attempting to gather my thoughts, figure out what had happened, and plan for the future.
 
Three months later, I was served with divorce papers in front of employees and customers at my deli. Of course, that event was described in the journal. 

                   
Making a 30-foot deli sub was more fun than receiving divorce papers at the same deli

I started to date, thinking mid-life dating would be easy. It wasn’t. I described in detail the dating frustrations and failures in my journal.
 
After five months, the journal had grown to more than 100 pages. I converted it into a short story. I naively queried Playboy, Esquire and the New York Times, thinking those media giants might be interested in a story about a divorced man’s dating woes. They weren’t.
 
Eventually, two women editors of the Dana Point News newspaper agreed to review my material. On July 7, 1994, just six months after my wife’s move-out, my first column was published. I realized that my writing opportunity had grown out of the adversity. I certainly didn’t expect the opportunity would last for 26 years.
 
In June 1998, I met Greta, who had experienced adversity as well. She was a single mom, who had raised four kids. She created her own opportunity by becoming a special education teacher and being such a positive force in her student’s lives.
 
Hopefully, after Covid-19, all of us will be able to get out and about. Seeds of opportunity will pop up here and there. For whom? In what format? When? No one can say. Some Champs have already shared their new-found opportunities with us. In the October 30 eNewsletter, seven Champs were featured with the opportunities they are working on during Covid-19.
 
Wendy Green is a new Champ. She is a single mom who raised two children. Wendy has bounced back from adversity more than once in her life. She reached out to me by finding my articles on the Dana Point Times website.
 
Wendy said, “In March 2020, I was laid off from my job because of Covid. I knew I still had a lot to give, and there were a lot of people from my generation experiencing a sense of loss and in need of inspiration. That is when I decided to start the Hey, Boomer broadcasts. (those broadcasts are scheduled for most Mondays, at 1 p.m. Eastern Time.)”
 
Wendy’s website, http://www.heyboomer.biz also features her weekly blogs. I encourage Champs to sign up and read her sage advice and comments.
 
As we emerge from this unthinkable adversity-filled year, it will be up to us as individuals to recognize our seeds of opportunity and make the best of them, although we may not realize or understand them until months or years later.
 
And as always, I hope you will share them with me and subsequently, all Champs.