You at 42.

No one blogs anymore.  If they do, they're an influencer or social media maven or whatever else you want to call it. Newsletters delivered straight to your inbox seem to be more the thing now-a-days, which is all find and well and good, though I find it ironic that no one seems to actually email each other anymore either.  It's all texting, all the time.

(I will save my thoughts on how personally I'm far better at staying organized and on top of emails versus text messages; that's another post for another day.)

What I came here to say on this quiet Sunday morning after too many months away was just a simple hello and offer up a quick thought. Hi there.

I turned 42 last month.

I find I'm not quite as propelled to put too much of my life out into the online world as I used to be. This is partly age related, partly because the internet has become far less innocent in recent years, and mostly because the world seems to spin so fast and time is elastic and days whip by so quickly anymore I can barely keep track of what year we're living in.

The morning of the start of my 42nd birthday I woke, as is my annual tradition, at 6:39am.  That's my last minute to bid farewell to a year that is closing - goodbye 41 - and as the clock shifts to 6:40am, I greet my own personal new year.  Welcome 42.  

As many know, I always set a rhyme for my years. This started as a silly joke in my twenties but has become catching, another organic tradition that grows until you can't imagine not doing. 42? The year of YOU.  I'm particularly pleased with this one as it works in a variety of ways - I can say it to a loved one, meaning I want more time with them in the coming year, or I can flip it inward, reminding myself to take care of me in whatever fashion that entails.

I settled on another word that morning of my birthday as well.  It doesn't rhyme with anything, it has nothing to do with this specific birth-year celebration. It's more about where I find I am in my life right now, what I find I am thinking about more than ever before.

Notice.

Life moves so fast, things are ever changing, and before we blink we have all moved toward the next shiny thing.  But I don't want to move so fast I miss the things that matter the most. This season of autumn, when the leaves change, the light is fleeting, and the earth itself is shifting on its axis, noticing feels particularly important to me. The little things are the big things.  It's as simple and difficult as that.