About Embracing 53

I conceived of this BLOG initially as a VLOG, a little over a year ago, as an effort to chronicle my journey of discovery as I faced the inevitable of aging alongside my unwillingness to not “go gently into that good night.”  I felt youthful and desired growth and change, and yet, with my age (at that time 52) and responsibilities, I had regularly dustbinned my desires to the necessities of life as a mother, wife, homeowner, high school teacher and yearbook adviser.  

A jarring but positive and sudden awareness of my mortality hit at 52; like the last blip of the sunset just as it disappears at the horizon’s edge, it was a bittersweet awareness of how fleeting is time.  I had always been sensitive to time’s blazing speed, but when you remember your first child’s birth as if it were yesterday, and cannot fathom how he is now taller than you and more wise in some ways, time’s relentlessness feels even more striking.  Life as a mother made time’s speed and purpose accelerate somehow. Every moment with my children became ever more precious, but then my own life and time I placed secondarily.  

It was actually my 15-year-old son who challenged me, in an unexpected way.  I had said something about the 8 years I had to go until retirement. I was thinking “only eight more years,” I can make it.  I have always looked forward to my retirement, not because I don’t like my job — I actually find great purpose there (most days) — but that there are so many other things I want to do.  But he said, “Eight years!? To wait for what you want, that’s a long time. You should do what you want NOW.” He is a teenager, so he doesn’t yet realize how short that eight years will feel overall, but that became the point.  Those eight years will fly by, and I will STILL not have accomplished what I hope for, except more of the same. Of course, he is also not entirely free of free-spirited naivete, and my eye is in part set on the reward of retirement income and the lack of worry that comes with having one.  So, I am not willing to give that up, either, but I do have to figure a way to be creatively productive differently, to free up time for the things I say I want.  

I realized more pointedly that I want to capture every moment that remained of my life, without losing sight or connectedness to the lives of my loved ones, by seizing the dreams that had eluded me for so long.  All my life. There are many stories in there that I will someday get to, but I don’t need to examine my psychological background and patterns of bad behavior at this step.

I had come to an existential precipice.  I was either going to finally reinvent my life somehow or find a way to reach contentment with my life as it was.  

Partial contentment was, in itself, a form of stagnation.   I have a good life. I have a loving (if imperfect and exhausting) family (three boys, ages 15,14, and my late-life miracle baby, 5), a dear and loving husband, a fine (if messy and in need of repair seemingly always) house, a good, fulfilling job (though time-consuming), animals, an expansive yard that offers me space to contemplate and garden and raise chickens.  My life was not dissatisfactory; in fact, by most standards, it was pretty great.    

However, part of me sensed that I was settling for mediocrity or settling for ENOUGH, rather than reaching and pushing for more — for those dreams I had made years before and never accomplished.  Obviously, some of those dreams had changed, but some remained or had evolved. “Doing” life is a trap into which so many people fall — “DOING” the dailies rather than pursuing deeper, more meaningful desires and relationships.  And it is SOOOO hard when your life is consumed by the daily tasks and concerns of raising that family, and doing a good job, and keeping your house maintained and orderly. It seems to take every SINGLE minute. I felt and still feel like, most of the time, I am doing all I can and still hardly making it through the day.  Sometimes, I am exceedingly tired. Sometimes I feel the weight of age.  

However, this site is my place for rejuvenation and commitment.  Embracing 53 will be about two particular parts of being just past the middle:  embracing what is lovely and special about being “of a certain age,” and challenging what we often associate with the “getting older” (I started typing “aging,” and that felt terrible).  It’s about acceptance of the joys and struggles of the place I am in time, and the defiance of my own expectations, of challenging myself to grow where I have felt stagnant.    

I hope you will join me on my journey, pulling ideas from me and (hopefully I will have some) readers, while participating and offering insights that you have.  I am excited and thankful to have this platform so that we may all embrace the joys and challenges of “being 53” (or whatever age you happen to be).   

     At the end of 2017, I happened to be reading a book entitled Creating Your Best Life, which bills itself as “life lists” and it really appealed to the list-maker in me.  At about the same time, I had my journal on my desk at school, and a student asked me if it was a bullet journal, and I didn’t know what that was, so I did some investigation on Pinterest.  These things, the focus on a new kind of list-making, coupled with a way to incorporate that list making with my dreams, goals, and journaling, kind of inspired me. In some way, this new way of looking at my lists and writing catapulted my less-than-focused goal-setting self into action.  The lists in my bullet journal, like my journals themselves, would be permanent…no more throwing away the list at the end of the day…no more ignoring the failure of that list, or success, but being able to goal-set for a month, a year, a life. As 2018 approached, I incorporated some of the principles of the CYBL book into my list making, and the lists were not just day-to-day, but focused on seeking little steps to my bigger goals.  I tried. I was not that successful. But I stayed interested. That spring, I decided to start a VLOG to hold me more accountable, to put my journey “out there” for all who would watch to see, and perhaps join me in that journey, but I was plagued by production difficulties, by my poor talent at editing, and my desire to look decent on camera, and therefore hold off when I didn’t, and when I really needed to be accountable.  

     The infrequency of the VLOG negated it as an accountability tool, and I was still unsuccessful moving on my biggest goals and greatest desires.  I did meet my more achievable goals of home improvements and travel, but the hard ones, the ones at which I have always failed, got put on the back burner over and over again. 

     Those BIG TWO I have honed to this:  health/fitness and creative production.

     Since I was 20 years old, perhaps even younger, I have been plagued by my lack of will or effort here.  I have heard so many times, from self help and diet and fitness experts that it’s not about will power. Or will.  It’s your hormones, the media, false diet claims, whatever. It’s not you. But in being totally honest, I know that mostly, it was and remains me.  Will power is weak in me. Obviously, 

     I am being totally honest on this journey.  I have failed over and over and over again. I  would not be here, writing this BLOG, if I had been successful, unless I had figured out something profound to share.  And I haven’t.  

     I am embracing 53, however.  That is my goal To come to terms with who I am at this stage of my life…as a no longer young person who has gained many

     I am 53.  I have failed over and over again.  I am not very forgiving of myself. This self love thing.  I don’t do it well, nor do I even think it is that necessary.       

My reading of CYBL inspired me in some senses.  It felt too easy, though, and too expansive. The authors ask readers to create 100 dreams — or more.  I don’t even need the 100. I probably could come up with 100, but some of my tasks take a great deal of time, and delving too deeply into all my desires at this point seemed a bit too extravagant.  

     However, what I did do was pen my dreams in categories — family, home improvement, travel dreams, creative endeavors, and personal fitness/health improvement.  I started with the things that were most important — the ones I know if I died without doing them, I would feel regret or at the very least, disappointment.  

From that short list, then, each month, I created a Prioritized To-Do List.  For example, in the bigger category, I had the desire to simplify my life and belongings.  I admit to succumbing to MarieKondo’s book and believing that fewer things would free my mind and set me at ease.  It was true. But there was no way with my schedule to do it all in a few sessions. I did it room by room. So, in my Prioritized To-Do each month, I set out to “tidy” a different area/s.  This sort of defeats the purpose of Kondo’s method…to put everything of one kind in one place, and there is a logic there, that you can always FIND the thing you need because it hasn’t been moved, but I like having a pair of scissors in my office and one in my kitchen.  It’s handy. So I’ll have to rethink KonMarie to fit my needs. But more on that later.  

The idea of putting my bigger dreams to print, then breaking them down into tasks per month.  My Bullet Journal Goals for 2018 inspired me. Here is my page:

I make no pretenses of wisdom here, of offering up to anyone who will read it a path that works.  My goal is to go on a journey, and document it here, and share it with readers, and hopefully, to create a community of those who want to join me or input their own findings of wisdom.  I don’t have it all figured out. But I hope to someday. Sooner rather than later. I sincerely hope you will join me on my journey, hold me accountable, hold yourself accountable, and share your journey with me and my readers.  Let us embrace our growth, our passions, our long-lost goals. I think there are many women silently struggling with similar wants, and I hope we can embark on Embracing Whatever Age together.