Yesterday was it, my big 50 and I'm still here today. (Probably because I didn't try to party like I'm anything less than 50). I had a wonderful day, starting with breakfast at my favorite place, Waffle House. I'm a total sucker for waffles and cheez hashbrowns.
Me, my waffle, one of my fav. men, and one crabby dude behind me
I started preparing for yesterday two years ago, on my 48th birthday. It was not my best birthday (in fact, it sucked) but it started the ball rolling for a heap of changes in my life. That day started this blog with my first post "I'm Not Supposed To Be Having This Much Fun." Whether I'm supposed to or not, I'm still having a lot of fun. In the past two years I started this blog, wrote and published a novel and jumped out of a perfectly good airplane attached to one very cute Brazilian; all things I never would have dreamed of doing at one (low) point in my life. And I'm not done yet. I'm working on a second novel and I have my appointment scheduled for my tattoo. The party continues. But more important than these wild (at least for me) actions are the fears I am conquering with each one - fear of heights, fear of rejection, fear of making mistakes, fear of what others will say, fear that I'm actually a moron and everyone just forgot to tell me. There's still more, lurking in the darker recesses of my mind, but I'm slowly coaxing them all out, naming them, taming them. Last night my brother asked if I was ever going to grow up. I told him, "No. What kind of fun would that be?" But the reality is that I am growing up and all my crazy is part of that process. To me a mature, evolved person is not one who sits home, having given in to fears and given up on crazy dreams. A truly mature soul knows that the odds are not in their favor, that others won't approve or will think they are crazy, that there can be negative outcomes; then they go ahead and do it anyway. Because they (I) know that a life avoiding all the pain and risk isn't really living. That's my report from this side of 50.
