Turning 50

This morning’s email became a catalyst for me to return here. The message I received suggested that wootensovertacos had 4 views and 3 visitors over the last 30 days. I was probably responsible for at least one of those views and it may explain why there were more views than visitors reported if I did it twice. I have no idea how valid this data even is in the age of bots and VPNs that might skew how many people actually came to this site. It would be pretty hard I would think to type the url address by accident in a search and come here unintentionally so I took these metrics to heart and decided I should add some content today in case the 2 other of you among my friends and family happen to stop by again sometime. Feel free to comment next time even if just to say “hi” as it might inspire me to write something about you.

I hit a pretty big milestone in the time between my last post and today’s: I celebrated my 50th birthday just a couple of weeks ago. Well, actually it was a 100th birthday celebration but more on that later. I’ve been in quite a pensive mood because of it even more so than my normal levels and it had quite an impact on my coming to grips with this one. We start out life having quite a number of birthday milestones that we celebrate. There’s emphasis placed on the 1st one pretty universally along with some others that are also emphasized either personally, culturally, or legally for what achieving them now means to the individual: turning 10 hitting double digits; turning 13 to become a teenager, turning 15 and celebrating Quinceañera, turning 16 to drive, turning 18 to vote, turning 21 to drink (legally in the US at least); etc. Once we get passed our 20th one, most of the emphasis then shifts to just the ones that bring with them a change in the tens column.

We have called out turning 30, 40, and now 50 with a certain degree of acknowledgement similar to those ones on the frontend of my journey which is a similar experience I suspect for most people. You don’t really see any special cards in the grocery store for turning 49 now do you? None of the previous decade changing ones really bothered me all that much to be honest; however, when I started thinking about the ones in my future after this one, it did put me in a bit of malaise as it really is all kind of downhill from here. There isn’t much fanfare for turning 60, 70, or even 80 beyond what you might personally experience. The 100 one does still maintain a little more universal celebration potential but in part due to the fact that not many of us will actually see that one. I certainly do not expect to make it.

So what’s the deal with the 100th celebration? Believe it or not, my wife is actually a mere 8 hours younger than me. We weren’t born on the same exact day as my evening arrival falls on the day before her early morning one the following day. She thought it was cool when we first met but after years of always having mine come first no matter what we try to do to celebrate them together, she probably would have run the other way the second she learned this fact and found someone with a birthday in a different season altogether from hers. Be that as it may, we embraced our mutual turning 50 and added them together and celebrated them jointly as 100 this year. Partly as a gesture to unify our celebration with a little novel twist but also because of what I have already said in my honest expectation that I would not get to see 100 on my own otherwise. Her genes give her a more realistic shot as she has longevity on her side but we thought we should take this opportunity while it was here and our 100th celebration was born.

Turning 50 for me might best be defined as the point where my “Check Engine” light seems to just want to stay on now. Whether it is because I am finally having to close out my tab for the exuberances of my youth or it’s just that point where things are going to crop up from time to time, a lot of parts of my body just seem to hurt now for one reason or another. I’ve even had to replace a major part already because of wear and tear. I also have noticed that my recall is not as sharp as it once was struggling from time to time with answers that used to roll off my tongue with ease. I’m trying to keep up with the preventative maintenance aspects as much as possible and have already addressed the couple of ones specifically associated with age 50 through a colonoscopy and shingles vaccine. What a far contrast 50 is when compared to turning 40 which had no such things to address with it.

I’ve decided to embrace this milestone as more of a process than a single event and wanted to deemphasize the birthday itself from this day forward and be more mindful of all the days in the lap around the sun. I was reading an article late last year and the concept of aging was addressed in it. I latched on to what was prescribed as the author’s unique way to achieve both a creativity benefit for the mind as well as a single marker that would commemorate each passing day. It was simple in concept: write a haiku for each day. I have already started this at the beginning of the year so I have something for all of the days already prior to this blog post. I thought what I would do is share them here one month at a time as this year progresses as part of celebrating turning 50. I’ll add other posts as the inspiration strikes me but maybe this will at least produce 12 more posts if nothing else for the two of you who might come back. Here’s to celebrating my 50th with you.