MY Next Thirty Years

     I was very attached to my old blog. I go looking back through it every once in awhile, just to reminisce. It's a great way of remembering what sometimes seems like other lives I've lived. Today I checked again as I was trying to set this one up, and I was actually startled to realize that I started that blog ten years ago. 2008. I kept it going, on and off, until 2014.  No wonder it seems like its from another lifetime. When I began that, my kids were 13, 15, 17 and 19.  That's CRAZY! I was still ten years away from retirement. I feel like ten years ago, I was almost an entirely different person. I've done a lot of growing - some painful, some awkward, some willing, much unwilling but necessary, much good, in the past ten years. I've missed writing for the last few years, and I decided it might be time again for that. Everyone tells me this is "my time" now, to do what I want.  Although I still feel a mighty obligation to work, more than not, I can also acknowledge that I do have way more 'free choice' time now than I have ever had before in my life. Since I'm not really sure how I want to, or will, fill that time, yet, I thought maybe I should at the very least, return to words. They have always been my solid ground, my bedrock, my home base to which I can return when the moorings might be a bit loose. I don't know that they are. They might be. Or they might not. But by putting words down, I can check them and see, and gain some new perspective on my future in the meantime. Some of the words to the Tim McGraw song, "My Next Thirty Years" come to mind tonight:

I think I’ll take a moment, celebrate my age

The ending of an era and the turning of a page

Now it’s time to focus in on where I go from here

Lord have mercy on my next thirty years