A milestone birthday – thoughts on turning 50

I celebrated a big birthday on Wednesday. The kind of milestone birthday that often causes people to stop and take stock of their lives and pen a “50 Things I Wish I had Known When I Was Younger” kind of list. Or some such nonsense. But don’t worry. I didn’t write that list. I’ve been way too busy to come up with fifty anything, let alone life lessons. Plus, no-one wants to read it anyway.

One of the beautiful things about growing older is that you get to learn stuff you didn’t know before. But you don’t learn these things by reading other people’s list. You learn it by living life.

No matter how many times I read someone’s advice to “Be yourself,” or “The only way to fail is to stop trying,” those words had no impact on my life. It wasn’t until I decided that I was done trying to fit into other people’s molds that I could really be myself. And experiencing and surviving failure is what proved to me that failure is fatal.

Some people learn these lessons early. Some people take a little longer. Some people never learn them. But no one learns them from reading a blog post.

Birthdays have never really bothered me. I lost my sister-in-law when she was only thirty-seven. I know that getting older is not a luxury afforded to everyone and I feel fortunate I get to experience it. I only wish it didn’t all go so fast.

In many ways it feels like yesterday that I turned forty. But when I stopped to think about it, I realized A LOT has happened in the last ten years.

I lost my sister-in-law. My brother, her husband, went through a major surgery. Life suddenly became very uncertain. Before we had a chance to recover from all that,I lost my mom. No matter how old you are, it’s always too soon to lose your mom. I lost my cousin, and many dear friends. There was a lot of sadness.

But there was also joy. I left two careers behind and finally pursued my dream of being a writer. I wrote four manuscripts. I won three short story awards and had a story published in an anthology.

My oldest son graduated high school. moved to Florida, and graduated college. My daughter will graduate high school this year. And my baby is in high school.

I traveled to Nevada, Arizona, Florida, North Carolina, South Carolina, Louisiana, Alaska, Vancouver, Tennessee, Massachusetts, the Bahamas, and Ireland. And of course to New York, New Jersey, and Ohio.

Our family grew by eight legs. We added two Sheepadoodles, first Milo and then Lucy, who have brought me more joy than I ever could have imagined. I never thought I was a dog person, but these two fur babies are my. life. And they make sure that I get outside every day, no matter the weather.

I ran seven half marathons and I am training for number eight.

I survived a Pandemic.

We added a patio to our home, lived through a kitchen renovation, and updated all our flooring.

I’ve gone to more baseball games, tennis matches, football games, and basketball games than I could possibly count.

I saw Metallica (3 times), the Foo Fighters, Taylor Swift, Billy Joel (twice), the Yankees, the Pirates, the Penguins, and the Browns. Admittedly, my music list is a little weak, and that’s something I’ll be working on this decade.

My point in listing all these things is not to brag or point out how much I did. Many people have far more and bigger accomplishments than I do. My point is that life moves so quickly. It’s easy to get caught up in the day to day and lose track of the bigger picture. Even when that bigger picture is a series of amazing events.

I’m not going to lie. I feel like I definitely spent more time focused on the dirty kitchen floor than I did remembering all the epic trips I took in just the last ten years. But as they saying goes, “Life moves fast, if you don’t slow down once in awhile, you might miss it.” I’m never going to be the person who ignores the mess in the kitchen (I’m know myself), but if there’s one lesson I want to take with me into this next decade, it’s too slow down and live more.

I’m super excited for this next stage of my life. A stage that will have three kiddos spreading their wings and include a move down south. A stage that will have more travel, more concerts, and more opportunities to embrace adventure. A stage that will hopefully include a book, and more races, and continued clarity about what matters most to me.

You don’t need to have all these answers when you’re twenty or thirty or forty. Or even fifty. Life keeps moving and changing. And you will too.

Your younger self knew everything they needed to. And tomorrow, your older self will know even more. Juts enjoy the journey.

Off we go!

P.S. This is not the first time I’ve written about living life to the fullest this year. Read about what Hello Kitty taught me here.

P.P.S. My daughter made me an amazing birthday red velvet birthday cake with cheesecake filling and cream cheese frosting. It was good I ate it for breakfast this morning. You can find he recipe here.