What's It All About?

So, this is supposed to be Mel's Musings. And, as a professional writer and someone who has never been accused of being quiet or introverted, blogging should be right up my alley. So why, then, have I avoided this forum like the plague? On any given day, my brain is like an RSS newsfeed of chapter titles and topics for that book I'm finally going to write someday (the boring bank manual I wrote ten years ago nothwithstanding). So when I sat down at the computer and actually took a stab at making a list of potential blogging topics, I hit a big wall.

What's up with that??

Maybe it's the fear of the unknown - audience, that is. It feels strangely vulnerable to, well, muse, to who-knows-who out there. I don't have a following - yet. The Girlfriend Factor seems to be getting off the ground finally. It took long enough to get this venture to the launch pad, after all.

Hmmmmm, now there's a topic. What's this Girlfriend Factor thing all about??

An idea that was birthed on - of all things - a girlfriend getaway in New Orleans, where we had gathered in celebration of a friend's 50th birthday, the seeds of what would become The Girlfriend Factor were planted over coffee and The Times-Picayune - as we enjoyed a lazy morning of staying in our pjs until 11 AM. Most of us had spent years "on the road" shepherding senior adult groups around the globe as bank travel club directors and/or tour operators. And, more than once, we had stolen away on what Girlfriend Brenda aptly described as "a boondoggle," meaning a few mental health days disguised as an erstwhile business trip. Why then, we wondered aloud, wouldn't the same group concept we had successfully applied to senior work just as well for girlfriends?

EUREKA!!!

Did I mention that was 2003? It would be four more years and an empty nest later before I would finally "name it and claim it" and breathe life into The Girlfriend Factor. During that time, more than few folks in the travel industry caught wind of this hot new trend (great minds think alike, right?) so I was a little behind the curve.

That "dash" (between 2003-2007) dealt me enough life-altering milestones (turning 50, watching the firstborn graduate college and the baby leave home to begin his own college career) and blows (my dad's death from an ugly two-year battle with degerative dementia, eleven changes of thyroid medication as menopause descended and led to my own 70-pound weight gain in a year as well as deeply personal issues that are just too painful to think about much less pound out on virutal paper) to bury a weaker person. Too much of that time was spent wondering if I had anything left to offer anyone. But, thank God for girlfriends because it was my own army of them that helped me see that we're all in the same boat: we've educated the kids and sent them out into the world to make their own way, we've watched them get married and are welcoming grandchildren (and the cycle begins again!), we've cared for aging parents, we've entered the world of hot-flashes and chronic insomnia and we've looked around and inward and asked ourselves "now what?"

When I think about it, in many ways, the decision to pull The Girlfriend Factor off the back-burner signaled my re-entry into the human race and a realization that "at 51, I'm far from done!"

So here we are - half-way through 2009 - and The Girlfriend Factor is LinkedIn with a sho-nuff website, a page on Facebook, a presence on Twitter (though I still haven't quite figured out why) and sending out e-newsletters with Constant Contact. (Am I wired or what?) And, oh yeah, I finally have a BLOG, along with the whole rest of the world, it seems!

With all those avenues of communication, it should be relatively easy to let girlfriends everywhere know that it's time to be "on the run and havin' fun" (a slogan I pirated years ago from my favorite opera diva - thanks Kacey-Lou!)! I mean, who knew our need for mental health days would be deeper once the kids were out of the house than when they were underfoot? As Wynonna so eloquently points out in those "alli" commercials - "it's time to put ME back on my list."

Why?

Cyndi Lauper said it best........ "Cause girls just wanna have fun!"