Halfway to Ninety.

Well.

Just under a month ago I turned 45.  So here I sit, squarely in my mid-40s.  Wowza. It just happened so fast, you know? I tell myself that numbers, when you're alive, can - and should - only go up.  One direction.  

The 40's feel different from my 30's in ways that I did not anticipate and yet also can't fully articulate.  But then again, I guess I don't really know what I expected my 40's to be like, because...well, I've never been here before.  Throw in an international pandemic and political turmoil the first few years of this new personal decade and sometimes it feels very much like I'm walking in completely uncharted waters.  Seemingly overnight there's an entire generation (and then some) behind me!  For so much of your early life you're the youngest and then one day, you're suddenly not.  Rationally I understand how this all works of course, but it feels like literally overnight I am mid-career, mid-life, and there is an entire generation of people behind me who are actually old enough to be in the work force! And not as child labor!  It makes my head spin.  I'm saying nothing new; I realize I'm not the first person to have these shocking realizations at mid-life.  Still, it's the first time through for me and I continue to just be blindsided by how fast the days and the years zoom along even as I do my very best to slow time down. 

******

Real talk - sometimes I feel so old!  The 90's are back in a big, big way and the amount of times I catch myself saying "I had an outfit just like that when I was 15" astounds me.  Or I'll walk through the Gap or Target and marvel at the mannequins because suddenly I feel as if I've entered a Time Machine and it's 1994.

People. Cassette tapes are back.

Last weekend, some friends were visiting NYC with their kids and we went to dinner at a spot near Times Square.  At the restaurant, the waitstaff also sang Broadway tunes during dinner.  Our waitress, who was lovely, sang a number and then after, when she came back to check on our table, I found myself turning into the woman on those insurance commercials as I'm asking her where and what she majored in while in college and where she's from, and after she politely answered me and walked away, I laughed with my friends about how ancient I sound.  Again, I ask. How did that happen so fast?!

******

One of my closest friends from college lives in Chicago.  Last year - or was it 2022? (See? Time!) He texted me a photo of a phrase someone had pasted up onto a lamppost, near a street he walks his dog by daily.

"Everything can still happen."

It's become a mantra between the two of us and occasionally, particularly when one of us is feeling down or defeated, we'll text each other that phrase.  

When my friend sent the initial picture, he followed it up with this: "Maybe someday, this won't be true.  But right now, it still is." 

******

Often I feel like I'm rushing all the time or hurrying to the next thing on the to-do list only to check off more never-ending items.  You cross one thing off, 400 more get added.  So maybe part of the challenge of mid-life too is holding onto the things you value the most, letting go of the rest.  This is not to say I plan on just skipping out on the bills due or my 9 to 5 (adios paying rent! I've had enough of you!) but I also feel the need to work harder than ever to carve out time for the best stuff I've worked so hard to experience and make a part of my little world.

There's not enough time to do it all. 

Yet all of my life, I've wanted to do it all.

One of the things I work the hardest at now is making time for the all that really matters.

There are roads ahead of me yet and I don't know how they'll unfold.  I am proud of the life I've built for myself.  I've certainly made some mistakes and there are a few things I'd change if I could.  But there are also things that were absolutely the right decision and worked out just the way - even better than - I'd hoped.  

And that's sort of how I think about this time of my life, my mid-life.  Suddenly far enough down certain paths in my decision tree of life that I know how some things have worked out - for better or for worse.  But...and I tell myself this especially when I am veering toward mid-life panic...

There is a lot that can still happen. Everything, in fact.