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molly.com
Saturday 25 March 2006
Owning My Bitter
It’s been said that we should love for the sake of love, and give for the sake of giving. That the acts of love and giving are fulfilling enough in and of themselves.
I believe this may work for a few rare souls: Saints and gurus perhaps, but mere flesh and bone humans? I really want to know how many people out there really achieve such ideals.
I know I haven’t. The past months, while generally good in terms of how life can be, have found me facing a few facets of my personality and thought patterns that have left me in a state of almost bitterness. I say almost because I’m not there yet, but I feel myself slipping toward a smoke-tinged anger that I’m not sure once full-blown will be salvageable.
So I’m working it out this morning here on my blog, as I sit in my parent’s house overlooking a beautiful silver lake turning pink and blue in a stunning sunrise. Life could be worse, lots worse. And yet, the strain of my journeys, the vulnerabilities of my heart, and the fatigue of my inability to sleep soundly and shut off the rumination from which I often suffer have left me burnt out and angry.
Accolades and acknowledgement
Douglas Bowman, upon hearing someone ask me who the “other 24 most influential women on the Web” were, quipped that I was, in fact, all 25 of the most influential women on the Web. Funny, perhaps, but damned sad that only I could name a handful, and most couldn’t name two.
Friends, supporters and general visitors to this site might not realize that I’ve been in Information Technology and media for a very long time. Far longer than some readers here have been alive, in fact, nearly 20 years. I’m having a rough time lately dealing with Web 2.0 hogwash and watching people I love and respect make successful careers out of canned content, apps that fall short of true innovation, or coming up with “new” ideas that I’d not only thought about 10 or more years ago, but have the published evidence to prove I did.
Whether it’s a gender issue or merely that the popularity of blogs have pushed ideas and people into the spotlight much faster than in the earlier days of my career, one feeling remains with me, and that’s the nagging sense that my contributions to the success of the Web design and development field, the people in it, and the progress of the Web itself are in fact under if downright unacknowledged, accolades or not.
Let me put this into anecdotal form. Recently, I was invited to join the HTML working group at the W3C. The response from most of my colleagues was abject horror, because the WG is problematic and XHTML 2.0 is, to many people’s perspectives, a bad idea.
Why did I say yes, then? One reason is I hope that maybe I can make a difference or help. Another, and most definitely the more selfish but truest reason is due to the fact that I felt I deserved the scientific achievement. I have been studying, writing about, teaching and working to better understand HTML and XHTML for 13 years!
When I saw my friend Sebastian Schnitzenbaumer at the W3C Technical Plenary a few weeks ago and told him the news, he said, “It’s about damned time.” He was the only one who got, immediately, why it made any sense for me to have said yes.
I want to better understand why it took me 32 books before one ever got the broad attention that Zen of CSS Design has gotten. Were they lesser books? Some of them, but not all. Dave Shea himself became a Web designer because of one of my early works, a great story and one that made Zen all the more a gratifying personal achievement. That the influence of my writing has relevance isn’t the question, rather, why I had to work much, much harder at gaining that place in the sun than anyone.
I want to better understand why it took nearly a decade of public speaking for me to be invited as a keynote at a major conference. It’d be one thing if I were a crap speaker, or didn’t have anything worthy of saying. Neither is true. I’m a very skilled and often funny speaker, and I must have content of relevance to say because here I am still in the industry when weaker souls have long run away.
Are these failings part of a personality or behavioral defect on my part? Did I just do things the wrong way? Is it because I’m a woman? Older? Unmarried and therefore status irrelevant? You tell me, because the things I come up with are pretty much all the ingredients of an unpleasantly tart mix.
Wealth and health
Another part of this edge of bitter is my sense that many of my colleagues have done quite well economically where I have not. I’m a 43 year old woman who can’t afford medical insurance, whose business has sat on the brink of bankruptcy since the dot.bomb, who has no savings, no retirement and has a black hole of debt so deep that I wonder if I’ll ever crawl out of it.
In the meantime, I watch colleagues who are less innovative, less well-connected, sometimes less talented, and generally far less generous with their knowledge than I have ever been rake in the money and laugh all the way to the bank, flaunt their VC dollars with reckless pride, and show off the stuff that they’ve “earned” along the way.
In a scenic drive Andy and I took with my folks yesterday, my mother asked why I thought this was. After a moment I listed some of the reasons I felt I was in this position:
- I’ve been a woman on my own with often no business guidance, or very bad business guidance from someone I trusted very much and shouldn’t have
- I’ve often given away my time and knowledge and skills when others would not have
- I’ve often given away my money to people I felt needed it more than I
- I’ve compromised in negotiations when perhaps I shouldn’t have
- I’m fundamentally not a materialist and have a general disdain for money in the first place, rather, I like money for what it can do and not what it can buy
- I have always felt it was more important to benefit others and the Web via my work than myself, believing the Web to be far more important in the long run than my own well being
- I have negotiated relationships to make it easier for other people to achieve great things because I have a philosophical belief that says that’s what you do in this world: You reach behind you and take along others. In those acts of goodness, I forgot an important part of the equation: Me. I gave bounty to other people, took little or nothing for myself, and never in the past asked for some back from the person I helped
I bought into the ideologies of my generation and thought that giving for the sake of giving should be reward enough of its own. If that’s true, and I’m feeling this way, does that make me a bad and selfish human?
Love and family
Due to certain circumstances, I never married or had children. Yet, each of these acts were something I desired because I grew up in a family, while often filled with strife, that ultimately became and remains a tightly knit, loving and supportive place where comfort and strength can be found. I wanted to create that for myself, but I became very ill at a young age, had a series of immature and problematic relationships, and woke up one morning at 40 realizing that I had no home base, no true partner, and was as alone in this world as a woman could be.
Putting aside for a moment that women are often defined by their marital and family status, the fact is I longed for these things. I wanted a home and family in which I could have full participation. I didn’t get it then, and as luck would have it, I met and fell in love with someone who has already been unhappily married, already has a child of his own, and will likely never want those things with me.
Even if things went in such a way that freed these circumstances for us to pursue marriage, I’ll be nearly 50. Fine and good, but so much for a youthful fantasy. And as for the children, he doesn’t want anymore and has flat-out said so. I don’t know that I physically can at this point, and adoption at that late age just doesn’t seem all that sensible now.
This is a sorrow of huge proportions and despite my best problem-solving abilities, do not know how to heal the wounds and fill the empty womb of sorrow I carry with me every day.
What color is the grass again?
I have to reiterate that I understand life could be a lot worse. I know this not just intellectually, but because my life has been a lot worse. I’ve been on the streets, impoverished, in a mental institution, and was bed and house-bound due to illness for the majority of my 20s. I’m not inexperienced in the ways of pain and suffering, nor am I unworldly. I know that in so many ways I’m blessed.
Which is why in some ways the suffering becomes even more entangled. I think “How dare I, who have survived and thrived despite such odds, ask for anything more? What kind of selfish beast am I?”
The fact remains that I feel what I feel, and I’m asking for your insight as to what I can do to rise above this sense of utter failure at being human, this despair born of loss, this sense that had I been a man, or smarter, or more innovative, or thinner and prettier, or fill in the blank, that I wouldn’t be sitting at the edge of a precipice looking down at the sea of bitterness ready to slip off that edge and end up an old, unhappy woman who looks back at her life and berates herself and everyone around her for it not going her way.
I like to think I’m better than the selfish person I appear to be as I express these words and feelings. I like to think that I’ve loved for the sake of love, and given for the sake of giving.
I am neither saint nor guru. I am flesh and blood human and as I take stock in these things today, I am gravely concerned for my well being in my career, in my economic and physical health, in my pursuit of love and home.
Depression is a nasty darkness, and bitterness a pill I don’t want to swallow. I want to stay alive and see what the next adventure brings. I don’t really want to take my life or become bitter. What I want is to figure out how to fix what’s broken, repair the damage done, and feel as though what I have worked for 10 or more hours a day for the past two decades with a handful of days off not only means something to the world, but provides me with some kind of comfort and safety as life moves forward.
Filed under: faith(less)
Posted by: Molly | 07:29 | Comments (80)
Molly I don’t know how you feel about this, but I’m going to pray for you. Life NEVER turns out the way we think it will. I have had the wife and mother thing all my life and there was a point when I planned to go back to school but my husband got a job opportunity that was too good to pass up so that time passed. Children came late in life. I’m 51 and a 5 year stroke survivor. My husband is on dialysis and plans are being made for a transplant this summer. I’ve had a good marriage but multiple compromises because it was the choice I made. We all wonder about the roads not taken as we get older and no matter what our circumstance things look totally different depending on our perspective of the moment. No one is happy all the time. When you gave I’m assuming it made you happy at the time. It is only now that you are comparing yourself to others that it makes you unhappy. I have pity parties from time to time but I have made my choices and there have been moments of indescribable joy too. That’s what life is. The only advice I have for you is don’t get lost in that trap of what might have been or what others are or have. If you make choices that you can live with at the time then you have done well for you and that’s all that really counts. I have children in high school and I wished for them for years but now I wonder if my husband and I will live to see grandchildren – my goal is just to see them through college. We have health insurance but we also have great need for it. We have an income we can survive on but there is great doubt that enjoying each others company in retirement will be a reality. There was a person I was jealous of because she had money, clothes, was thin, and had a husband who supported her in basically anything she did. Then she had a child who nearly died at birth and is who will more than likely need aheart transplant down the line. Would I trade places with her? Not on your life. These are just our realities and the point I guess I’m trying to make is that there is a price with everything. You can’t always change your circumstance but you can always change your attitude towards that circumstance. Have a pity party if you want and it seems like you have plenty of reason but then pick yourself up by the seat of your pants and get on with it. From what little I’ve read you definitely have the resources – brains, humor, guts, and marketable gifts. Get up, get out, and get on with it. I don’t even know you personally and I have faith in you.
Molly,
I wish you the best.
Your 40’s is not too late to have or adopt a child. If you adopt you can make a child so happy.
With all of your talents you can find some activity to make money. Not too late for that either.
Molly, for what it’s worth…
You have long been an inspiration. I’m a web designer whose career tanked with the dot.bomb. After a few years of struggling with unemployment and underemployment I became a paralegal. It’s a living. It helps to be a chameleon in these mercurial economic times.
I still read your site often. You are creative and a good writer, and you continue to inspire my own passion for the web.
None of the things you talk about in your post brings lasting happiness. For example, being a parent has its rewards but many challenges too. You are never as vulnerable as you are when you have a child, because you know if something ever happens to your child you will never be the same. Children grow up. They change. Sometimes they grow away from you. Sometimes they die before you do. There are no guarantees.
There is no point in measuring and defining yourself by external standards. You don’t have to own your bitter either, just let it go.
The poster above who suggested meditation offered some good advice. Life is fleeting – everything is impermanent. Don’t worry. Just be where you are.
you are surrounded by love and respect
http://secretgeek.net/depression_is_easy.asp
Oh, and you gotta watch this:
http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/S/shameless/
It’s right up your street.
There is absolutely nothing wrong with having ads on your site, and I’m sure that they will not be a distraction. It it will help you out, Go for it.
I ran across your essay while in search of your color chart, and thought I would send a quick note of support. I purchased, for the office, “Using HTML 4 Sixth Edition” some years ago and found it to be extremely helpful and easy to understand. I do a little bit of web programming, not a lot, and this book got me going, and keeps me going because I refer to it still fairly regularly. So your efforts have not gone into a great black hole; they have been appreciated.
Being a bit of a financial underachiever, I am unqualified to make any comments about money, but it does irritate me how society worships it so, and defines success in terms of it. If I every bother to point out how Bill Gates breaks the law, I am immediately and soundly refuted with, “You’re just jealous because he’s rich,” and that’s the end of the discussion. I mentioned to someone once that I has a fairly high class ranking in high school and the immediate and astonished comment was why was I not making a six-figure income. Who can explain. And in a “Christian” country too. Hasn’t anyone read the manual? (Of course it is two thousand years old.)
Good luck out there.
Is it me or have a lot of responses to this blog post been edited/removed? Some Spin Doctoring at work here, I think!
I’m not going to say that I can relate. Or to “keep your chin up”.
Instead, I’m going to recommend that you take the time to read this (if you have already, read it again).
Maybe you should read this!
It seems that I am being late, but I’m so behind in my reading that it isn’t funny anymore
Molly you have been a huge inspiration to me and many other women in this world. I look up to you for the way you handle things in tricky situations and I wish that I had half of the writing skills that you have. You are special to me, don’t ever forget it! I’m sure a golden opportunity will come along so that you can fulfill your dreams and goals. Anything is possible as long as you believe in it, that’s what I remind myself every day. A big hug from Geert and me and chin up girl 
Hi! my name is molly as well …wow, i totally see where you are coming from. I mean relationships can really suck and i relate to what you are going through eveyone goes through shit but some more than others. Ive had some crappy experiences in my relationships as well and gone through some major depression mostly because of my family and boyfriends. I find that i just dont understand the opposite sex . They piss me off so much all the time. My ex boyfriend and i Are still friends we were on and off for about a year. I want that whole american dream and stuff but sometimes the crap you have to put up with doesnt make it seem worth it at all. I think its stupid how so many people have double standards for relationships. And being cheated on or ignored is GAY! i hate it that is why i plan on being single for quite a while. god life can realy suck and i agree you dont want to be selfish but sometimes people just want more out of life and its perfectly normal. Hopefully my next life may be better.
Molly, This is my first comment on your blog. I’m very sorry to hear that you are having a hard time and I understand your bitterness. I’m still pretty young, but I know how hard it is being a woman in this business with financial issues. I just want to tell you that you are such an inspiring person. Your achievements have been incredible and I consider you a real role model. I think you seem lovely just how you are and I am absolutely sure that all of your contributions haven’t gone unoticed nor will they ever be forgotten.
Your article touched a lot in me, even though we are on different sides of the gender and generation gap.
You sound like me at 42. The conflict between social and personal goals is a real, and dangerous one. I went to one of those “progressive” mid-60’s colleges and saw the way that people in business make money — by paying less for what they buy and those they employ and paying more for what they sell. My friends and I bought into that critique of society and decided we could not honorably work for corporate America. Some of the more radical and famous of us ended up being stock brokers and marrying Jane Fonda. Others of us chose the helping professions and volunteered and gave away skills that otherwise could have been sold because it seemed wrong to take money for helping others.
Ultimately, I believe we are defined by which side we choose. The world judges us a success if we emphasize the personal goals (and how many Mercedes do you have?)
But if we have any sense of the world as an organism, space shared by the strong and the vulnerable, and if we have any sense that we should make that world a better place, then I don’t think that we can define ourselves in terms of material successes.
Having never met you, I can speak as an expert.
Two sentences sum up your conflict:
(1) I’m having a rough time lately dealing with Web 2.0 hogwash and watching people I love and respect make successful careers out of canned content, apps that fall short of true innovation, or coming up with “new” ideas that I’d not only thought about 10 or more years ago, but have the published evidence to prove I did.
(2) In the meantime, I watch colleagues who are less innovative, less well-connected, sometimes less talented, and generally far less generous with their knowledge than I have ever been rake in the money and laugh all the way to the bank, flaunt their VC dollars with reckless pride, and show off the stuff that they’ve “earned” along the way.
You are creative because you are never satisfied and have no tolerance for the mundane. You are depressed because you are wise enough to analyze anything you have done and find new and creative ways to do it. (Which makes it feel like you didn’t do it right the first time.)
So, if you want to “flaunt … VC dollars with reckless pride, and show off the stuff that [you've] “earned” along the way”, sell canned, stale apps 80% of the time to support your creative self 20% of the time.
But my sense is that “true innovation” and a desire to “spread the word” are key values to you. In that case, you are probably doomed to try to live out your deep-seated beliefs: “It’s been said that we should love for the sake of love, and give for the sake of giving. That the acts of love and giving are fulfilling enough in and of themselves.”
You have control over that choice. Choosing the course of flaunting VC dollars will certainly deal with the bankruptcy and medical insurance. Giving up you desire to control your working world by having you own business will free you up from the slavery of a business. (And given your name recognition, you could probably get some big ad agency to pay you far more than you are worth.)
On the other hand, choosing the personal freedom of setting your own direction and living out your values, will open you up to the vagaries of the world.
The reasons for your failings are not part of a personality or behavioral or gender defect on your part. Other folks with similar “defects” have done well. And folks without these “defects” have suffered like you. While any of these things may seem to have contributed at time, your fundamental problem is that “stuff happens” and the “world is not fair.”
If you want to be angry and depressed, blame the world. (Plus blaming the world means you don’t have to take responsibility.)
If you want to get past that, remember the times that you gave to others instead of selling to others and take credit for that.
[...] Den ukronede dronningen i webstandard-miljet er uten tvil Molly E. Holzschlag. Hun har vrt i gamet i en rrekke, har skrevet en rekke relevante bker, jobber med W3C, er gruppeleder for The Web Standards Project (WaSP), har de rette vennene og deltar som taler p de store konferansene. N m jeg vel innrmme at jeg ikke syns bloggen hennes er den lekreste p nettet, men hun er utvilsomt til stor inspirasjon for mange der ute. [...]
Molly,
Where do I begin? This touched me in such a profound way as a woman of some age – 52! who has worked almost her entire adult life. I know you continue to be an inspiration, and teacher for so many! including my son A.J., who called me so excited after the night he met you in Tucson, and went on….and on….about how brilliant you are. You have made such a difference in your career field, and will continue to do so, I’m sure!
I’m coming out West when the baby is born, and I’d love to meet you.
[...] My previous, recently deleted, blog had a number of posts related to library matters, particularly on the Library 2.0 meme that is going around the biblioblogosphere, but I soon realised that even this esoteric field of human enquiry had more than enough people blogging about it, and with far more dedication and knowledge than I. So I opened it up a bit to include some stuff about digital photography, but I am fairly new to this medium, and I really do think the picture should do the talking, so I kept those posts to a minimum. I had very few, if any, posts about my personal life, and this is basically because my personal life is, well, personal. It’s not that I think any the less of someone when I read about their personal lives in their blogs — Molly Holzschlag has written quite movingly about hers — it’s just that I can’t help but feel like a voyeur when I’m reading that kind of material, so I can’t bring myself to be that public myself. [...]
Hello Molly,
who do everyone speak about depression? Can’t it be just that life sucks? That we don’t like who it has treated us. That we don’t (we just don’t) think it’s joyful with sunsets, friends, hugs, children and stuff like that. I’m not depressed myself, i laugh everyday, i have fun. Still i think life itself sucks, what’s bad in mine will never get better, since it’s in the past, and as we all know, we can only barely forget the past – but never avoid it.
/Tobias (sweden)
There is an interesting book – The Selfish Gene
(This is not from it)
have you ever seen one puppy in a litter stand back and indicate “after you” to the runt or any other puppy? It is because of Ignorance? Is that a deeply considered and researched answer?
Should all the puppies stand back? who would go first? or would they all starve? because the first to go ahead would not be putting others before himself.
Do plants have manners? How does the whole fabric of life (outside of humans) work with such innate ignorance and selfishness?
Human’s are naturally considerate and caring of their pack – as are dogs – but are taught to be even more so sometimes to the detriment of themselves.
They can also be selfish to the extreme – obviously.
Pack/social animals like dogs can seemingly “learn” to be more “considerate” and have better “manners” and “care” more than say: cats.
knee-jerk philanthropy doesn’t “come naturally”
But to anyone who thinks I’m suggesting we all go out and be selfish…
sigh!!…..
Some humans take the training and early reprimands and well-meant guilt trips about sharing and putting others first, pretty deeply. They are disgusted at the idea of selfishness and detest it in themselves and others. They then spend life subconsciously finding ways to punish themselves for this deep secret that maybe they have a very normal amount of selfishness.
Even if they could see some sense in this, many don’t trust themselves that they could handle a normal amount of “selfishness” – they think it will breed and transform them into a monster.
Their life default is to unconsciously put everyone else before themselves on a “soul” and “spiritual” level and that is a kind of very slow suicide.
If every single cell in your body did not have at least a fraction of “selfishness” it would simply not bother.
i ll mett with molly (i hope)
i ll meet oley
good sitee
good blogger
very nice