Seasoned readers may have noticed a slowdown hereabouts in the last couple of months. This isn't the usual progression of bloggers in this sphere going hell-for-leather at a transition goal and then dropping everything like a hot potato when they consider themselves "done", instead it's a mark of how much I have going on at the moment. I'm holding down three jobs at once, a full-time electronic design contract, writing technical articles, and servicing my own electronic business. The good news is that this means I have some money coming in and I should achieve my immediate aim of having a year's reserve in hand should everything dry up, but the bad news is that it's left precious little time for anything else. This isn't the only thing that's suffered, there are several other projects that have gone on hiatus as a result. No doubt when the contract is over things will return to normal.
In a few months I'll have another birthday. Not a particularly special one, but a point at which the feeling of an inexorable slope towards 50 becomes palpable. This isn't something that I find welcome, I have no need to hang onto some wild and crazy youth but I can't escape a disappointment that there is so much I have not managed to do. I've written of my need for a family in the past, now that is hanging over me in an ever more pressing way. Ten years ago when I was married to someone who turned out in the end never to have wanted a family in the first place there was always a sense that it might have happened tomorrow, now I can't escape the feeling that tomorrow is here and nothing has been done. Where the last twenty years have gone and what I have to show for them is a mystery.
Staying alive I guess, an achievement in itself.
Jenny, 50 has long vanished into my past and much bigger numbers are looming. How I wish I was at the point you have reached when I was your age.
ReplyDeleteI stopped updating my blog when I reached the point that I no longer felt that anything I had to say on it was relevant to what had gone before.
ReplyDeleteI know that I'm not "done" by any stretch. There are still things I need to do, its just that right now there is no real rush to do them as there are far more important things going on in my life.
Chances are I'll blog again at some point, however, right now I'm exploring other things like Medium as a place to write while exploring photography and doing more with burlesque.
50 is rapidly approaching for me, less than a year to go. I have no idea what I'm going to do to celebrate it. My 40th was a meal out with my partner and son. This time I'm hoping to do something a bit more, maybe a party with friends and a trip to Silverstone to have a race experience. My original plan of doing the Marathon De Sables has vanished, doing an Ironman when I'm 50 is still just about on the cards. One thing I am looking forward to is starting my second half century the way that my first half should have started.
I was staying near Oxford for a couple of days on my way back from Norfolk, and considered contacting you, but it would have been little more than a rushed hello, and I left it for a future date. I see now that I might in fact have have been an unwelcome distraction!
ReplyDeleteI am another person who never wanted a family. It's really hard to understand the yearning you and others have for one. That said, I am very sorry that you remain thwarted.
50 is a milestone age, but it most certainly isn't the end of all hope! Nor is 60. And having seen both of those birthdays come and go, I feel very optimistic about 70 now.
Lucy
Oh to be 50 again! Actually for me it was a pivotal year as that was when I started this strange journey we are on, it is a point when there is a great urge to look at your live where you have been and where you are going. I can empathise with the busyness, I have been hard at it myself, but financial I still feel like I'm swimming up hill, so it sounds to me like you have managed a great achievement.
ReplyDeletePerhaps I'm not as old as I could be then, thanks :)
ReplyDeleteThe family thing is something I'll never evade though :(