Back home in South Carolina! Yup, completed the five hour drive back from Atlanta, and now we are settled back in after being gone for about 4 and a half days. Loved the model train convention, love traveling, but it is good to be home. I will be content to be here for at least a day or two before I get wanderlust again. But not traveling for the foreseeable future. Next scheduled trip isn’t until September I believe.
Now, as for today’s assignment, I am asked to tell you about what I am looking forward to. Does “looking forward to” have to mean that I am excited? That I am happy about what is coming? I looked it up online, and one definition of the phrases says, “to wait or hope for, especially with pleasure.” Screw that “with pleasure” part. The thing is, in just a few more days I shall reach… fifty. Yes, it will be my birthday and I will be clawing my way over the half-century divide. Sigh. I must admit that I am having a bit of trouble with this milestone. I keep reflecting on how old I am, all the things I wanted to do, all the things I haven’t gotten done, and that sort of thing. I know it is self inflicted misery, but still.
I suppose it is natural for us all to take stock at some point – an inventory of the past and the future. And it would be equally natural for most of us to be unsatisfied with where we are or what we have done. Seems many people do that when they hit forty. But forty really didn’t hit me that hard. OK, I had a bit of a mid-life crisis if you include that buying of the Harley Davidson, but that was quickly taken care of by a few trips to the hospital. No, fifty is bugging me for some reason. Mid-life is one thing, but old is something else entirely. I keep having visions of myself as Milton Waddams from “Office Space”. This is not a good thing.
Honestly though, I don’t know what I am whining about. I have a good job, great friends, and a fantastic family. I get to play with my trains and British cars at my leisure, and other than the normal aches and pains in the joints, my health is pretty good. I could have it a lot worse! A whole lot worse. But, I still fret. I worry about the passage of time and how it seems to keep speeding up on me.
Or, as Frank Turner would say, “I keep losing days …”
