The Second Half

It's been a good six months of letting go, making myself space to consider new things. For four months, I have been getting stronger, first walking every morning, then with a renewed commitment to a workout each weekday. I can feel not only my physical strength returning, but also my creativity.

I'm thinking a lot these days about the second half of my life. My mother's family have mostly lived into their eighties and nineties. For my father's family, it's tougher to tell what their natural span might have been, since there were fewer of them, and they were lifelong smokers. It's a fairly strong probability that I have almost as many years left on this planet as I have been here already.

There are some things I want to be different in the second half of my life. I want to be fit and physically active. I want to be well grounded in the place I live and with the people with whom I share my life. I want to dance more. I want many creative outlets. I want to wear pretty clothes. I want to be able to touch people's lives in ways that are direct, personal and meaningful. I want to learn a lot of new things. I want to garden more and grow more of my own food. I want to have more people to cook for (or better yet to cook with). I want less conflict. I want a quiet life.

I'm going to buy one of those big adhesive note flip chart pads, and before I finish new walls in my study, I'm going to create a wall size vision of the second half of my life. I can't wait to get started.