A Celebration of a Milestone

It's odd to feel older, because age is basically just a number and within the exact truth, a birthday is actually celebrating the achievement of living until the end of a year. You don't get to celebrate your year-one birthday at birth, it's only celebrated at the culmination of year one and the beginning of year two. Continuing with that rationale, celebrating your 50th is actually celebrating the completion of your 50th, and so on, and so on. Today I'm celebrating one of those "milestone" years, and I'm not all that happy about it. 

True milestone birthdays actually don't come around that often. You
celebrate your first, of course, and the start of your teenage years.
Often you celebrate age 18 and 21 because you have increased
legal rights. Thirty is a celebration milestone, an age of
responsibility. That is followed by ages 50 and 65. Everything
after that, 80, 90 and 100 seem incremental and
rather incidental. 

Celebrating birthdays has always been hot/cold for me. I enjoy the freebies - a free cupcake from a favorite baker which I'll take advantage of today, the free bagel with cream cheese that I had yesterday, and the nice dinners that DH usually makes to celebrate. But, it also means I'm a year older, my body is wearing out sooner (although the gym and I are trying to forestall that for as long as possible) and deadlines that we have are getting closer and closer. 

I want to travel to Egypt. It's been a goal of mine since I was
eight years old. My cousin has been to Europe several times,
even lived there for a school year. My goal has always
been the desert sands and stone monuments of Egypt. 

Our goal is retirement - a career shift, in essence. I want to have a life away from being at the shop 5-6 days a week, and I want to be able to work on my own art or crafts or writing in the mornings and spend the rest of the day with DH. We want to travel, something we haven't been able to do together for decades (the last vacation we were able to take together was in 1994), and basically we want a life. 

Since I'll be in that part of the world, it would be stunning to
drop by Petra, Jordan at the same time. Of course, I want a
really extensive tour of Egypt, so there may be no time, but
wouldn't Petra be marvelous? 

Since I plan on living until age 85 (longer would be a bonus, but I will be sorely disappointed with a lesser amount of years), I will have some time to play, but energy is harder to come by when you're older, and extensive traveling will become more and more difficult. The several trips abroad I had been hoping for a decade ago are settling into one or two. Even though there are many places in the world that I want to see in person, I am a realist. It's more than doubtful that I will actually get to most of them. 

I also would love to travel through Portugal via river
cruise. We both love Portuguese wines, and it would
be a good chance to kick back and relax for a while. 

But that's OK because today I'm celebrating the day and the possibilities that this upcoming year holds for me. It will be a year of extreme changes, and I'm focused at achieving those changes and moving along with life as it is offered to me. At least, that's the goal. Have a wonderful weekend and I'll be back on Monday. Enjoy the day!