I turned 50 this past August.

I felt great. Life was good.

I decided it was time to sit down and come up with a plan to live life better, with more vision and clarity. More purpose. More I meant to do that. Less what the [wonderment word] is happening here?

Life has laughed at me for the past couple of months.

I was mostly prepared for the beginning-of-school-serious-illness that happens every year like clockwork. I can’t avoid it. My immune system can’t handle the germs that come home. Please, I beg of you, keep your sick child home.

A couple of weeks after that, I still felt bad, like I couldn’t shake the super bad cold/flu/whatever it was. I was unusually fatigued and felt weak and nauseous. I was a tad concerned that something serious was happening. I was even about to get doctors involved. I finally figured out that it was the vitamins I had started taking during that time that were making me feel so horrible. Be forewarned, if you start taking a vitamin supplement and start feeling like the most wretched creature on earth — yes! it is the vitamins. Stop taking them.

Then there was a little doodad of information we received. Good news all-in-all, but how we found out, or more specifically, how we didn’t find out and when, really put a damper on it all. If the point was to hurt us, then one must consider the mission a great success. The realization of how things actually are has hit me especially hard. I am still struggling. So many emotions I didn’t know were inside me. I’m not used to the intensity of feelings I’ve been experiencing and the ambivalence that has followed in its wake.

Take heart folks, I’ll figure out how to hurdle it. Some way. Some day. In the meantime, I’m on a calming trend with spotty spikes of sad feelings, which has freed up some space and time to get back to thinking about the other thoughts I was thinking before all that happened.

Fifty is a weird age, isn’t it? Have you been there yet? The number got my attention and I started pondering time—including the fun thought that I’ve got 21 years until I reach the age at which my mother died. At the rate life flies by these days, that’s right around the corner. Just a little step away. Truly uplifting. But it’s these thoughts that make me want to live with more purpose, more focus, more direction, more intent, more joy. Less reaction, less waiting around, less feeling stuck.

I think I still want to write, but I have gotten lazy with it over the past couple of years. Should I really be doing this? If so, should I write whatever I want or are certain topics better than others? Should I plan it all out or just throw things out there for the fun of it? Should I reach for the stars, shed my inhibitions and attempt to write an actual story? So many questions. Along with everything else, I simply need to find a path — whether to continue or move on to something else.

So cheers to 50 and all it brings to my table. May I find some solid purpose and stop flitting through life waiting for the other shoe to drop. May I not think only, but also do. May I find the dreams God has put in me to give me a future and a hope. May I walk in them.