We Canadian babies born in 1967 are known as “Centennial Projects”, coming into this world in the year of our country’s 100th birthday.

I’m not sure if it’s because of this, but when I turned 50 a couple of years ago, the number 100 entered my mind – as a “goal”, a target per se. I have a tendency towards melancholy on the eve of any birthday but the night before my fiftieth I had a good cry to boot, knowing that youth and young adulthood and even middle age were now behind me.

I woke up the next day, already 50 years old, all my life having recognized that the turn happens in the middle of the night – I was a four-o’clock-in-the-morning-baby. The first thought (well, the first one after acknowledging that I wasn’t dead yet) was: “I have every intention of living to be a healthy 100-year-old. So yeah, I’m only halfway there!”

Think about it! What can I get done in another 50 years? Omigoodness…I could actually read all my favorite books again. I can travel to far-flung places like Egypt and Moosejaw. I can eat anything I want…well anything without dairy or gluten or other inflammatory, cancer-causing, dementia-inducing properties. (Right?) I can choose to watch an entire season of Friends in one sitting on Netflix…OR NOT. Because what’s that they say about fashion? If you lived through it the first time, you shouldn’t repeat it? Yeah, same goes for me with Friends. Been there, done that.

The point is, I want to look back and remember all the good things and even mull over what the bad things cost me or taught me. But I don’t want getting older to be a death sentence where I stop trying new things, stop growing, stop learning. If anything, getting older has hammered home that what won’t kill me will only make me stronger (or, at the very least, won’t kill me), that with great risk, sometimes comes great reward (sometimes hard knocks just learn you real good for next time) and above all you are alive until you are dead. So dammit, keep on swimming, Dory. (Which reminds me, I never did see Finding Nemo 2. THAT goes on the to-do list!)

And so, this blog. Before I turned 50, I said I was gonna start a blog. I had a false start (my not-so-famous one-post blog) and it has taken another two years to start again. Life is too short not to do the thing that I’ve been wanting to do, which is write. Or more specifically, put my writing out there. You know, use my outside voice. You can listen if you want to. It might get loud.