I am about to turn 50 and I cannot reconcile that fact in my brain.
I keep thinking it is too soon. I keep thinking about my childhood and all the intervening years as though there are parts of my life that I missed–that someone hit fast forward on until suddenly I am here, 50, and not sure what 50 even is supposed to mean. Then I start thinking about other things. I think about people who’ve been married for 50 years and I realize I will never have that. I mean, its a hard maybe given the advances in technology, but that would certainly require me treating myself better than I have and even still pushing records of age.
I keep thinking I haven’t done the things I said I would. I haven’t written the trilogy of books. They were supposed to be fantasy best sellers but at this point with book two on the way it feels like they will be genre sci-fi …sellers? I haven’t married the girl of my dreams. I’m close. It is going to happen soon. It is not going to happen before I turn 50. I don’t have that dream home. I–we–well, she, has a home. In that I am like my biological father, which I swore never to be like.
There are failures here. There are also moments of being really close to the things I wanted. Through it all there is being a lot older than I really want to be and not understanding what it means to be this old or how to reconcile that with moving forward in life. What happens next? Hell, in five years I will be getting senior discounts. In five years I ought to be retired and taking that next step, whatever it is. I don’t even know what I want it to be, and that is scary. At least I know who I want it to be with, and I am making that part of it happen.
Some Thoughts:
- I am ready to shift into the school year. Yeah, it is already coming up on week 3. I have to get better at settling in mentally even when I am not home. The way our lives are shaped here, we won’t be home until days before the semester begins. We plan it that way. Yet I don’t shift as fast as I need to.