Happy Birthday to Me

Today I turned 41. I don't quite know how I feel about it. There's a part of me that's doing the whole "midlife" thing: "Oh, my god, my life is half over, I need to hurry up and do whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing!" Then there's another part of me going, "I don't think I can do another twenty years of this, much less forty!"

Then there's the part that's saying, "It's just a number, babe. Let's get some nachos, and finish watching Doctor Who."

I think I'm liking that voice the best. The fact is, I've been old a lot longer than the calendar says. My body's been failing me since I was eleven years old, my soul was grown up long before my body had caught up, and my brain... well, let's just not go there. If I'm already old, I might as well just kick back and enjoy the ride. Might get a few laughs out of it.

I've never been serious about keeping a blog before. I've had this one as a placeholder since, gosh, 2002, and never really posted to it. I never could understand the logic of having a blog. Oh, the blog idea itself was fine. But for me? I didn't think I had anybody who would be interested in reading it. I don't have enough friends to make the effort worthwhile.

But, instead of having a typical midlife crisis, I'm having more in the way of a midlife realization. I'm discovering that, much to my surprise, I DO have friends. A lot more than I originally thought. I'm not quite sure how it happened; I've never thought of myself as a particularly likeable person.

Maybe I was wrong. Then again, maybe my friends are just as strange as I am. I can live with that.

Another realization: my writing. Everybody knows, I started writing stories when I was eight years old, back when dinosaurs roamed the earth (yep, you guessed it, 1974). All I have ever wanted, ever ever ever, was to earn my living as a writer, to write novels and short stories and what have you. I spent thirty years of my life teaching myself how to do it. I studied, and I worked, and I wrote every damned day and.....

And I don't have what it takes to be a professional. I lack one major tool, that can't be learned by practice, or from books, or in classes. I lack TALENT.

But, as one of my friends pointed out, that doesn't make me any less a writer. I'm not a writer because that's how I earn my living. I'm a writer because that's what I do. I could work at McDonald's, and still be a writer. I've heard that sort of argument before, and always discounted it.

Then I realized he was right. And I discovered that I enjoyed writing a hell of a lot more, when I wasn't obsessing over "selling," or "succeeding." Just do it for the same reason I started, way back in 1974, lying on the floor of my bedroom, with a pencil and a composition notebook. Just do it because I loved it.

I can live with that, too.

I've got friends I didn't know I had, I've got a passion that I can enjoy again, I've got a family that is becoming more and more wonderful every day. I've got a husband I love more and more every day. I've got another ten or twenty or maybe even thirty years to look forward to.

I guess turning 41 ain't so bad after all. Now, where are those nachos....