Fuck It I'm 50

And my site is all blurry this morning, it’s like there’s a very smoky forest fire in my house. Thank goodness for the ability to increase font size. Now if this isn’t an odd glimpse into the future.

The funny things are I have only just started wearing contacts and this is the first time I forgot I had them in, and of course I wanted to wake up with the clearest vision of my life this morning…oh how many ways can we sabotage ourselves, let me count the ways. So maybe I need to take this as a sign, something to pay attention to here on the first day of my 50^th year: pay close attention, be more clear in my actions and in the way I execute them. Also to be thankful for the gifts at hand and be willing to go off path if the circumstances push me that way. To make a clearer point of that I had planned to open the hateful, (though I am sure I will come to love them) AARP letter that arrived, as I was told it would right before my 50^th birthday, and write a response to what’s inside that letter. But I can’t, because I can’t read anything smaller than 200 point type right now, (don’t worry the irony is not lost on me).  And on the second point, I am going to take a moment to be thankful. My roommate Laurie just brought me a big hot fresh cup of coffee, a little cupcake with a single candle and a luscious gardenia floating gracefully in an elegant black bowl of water. She is now getting dressed to walk my dog Lefty who just woke up with me and is now curled near my desk in her little bed. And this is after having spent a wonderful evening with one of my dearest and most loved friends Virginia who is herself soon turning 74 and goes so gracefully before me. I am soon having coffee with Megan and then going to the beach, the gym and shopping at Ross for new school clothes because I start teaching next week, a job I love to do. And on top of all this love from friends and family and having great work I get to be an artist…

But I need to digress and share a few birthday greetings that have come in as I have typed this:

From Scott MacLeod:

“…okay it’s Tuesday morning where is my present beeotch??”  Sent via email.

“Happy Birthday, etc” sung to me at 4am by my boyfriend Lee in Vancouver. I’ve never heard him sing before. Left in voice mail.

“For all those folks that just say “Oh it’s just a number” carry a taser”, paraphrase from phone conversation I just had with age-old friend Dale Hoyt who turns 50 soon too.

And finally from another very dear friend of many years, in many ways my soul buddy, Martin, excerpted from an email:

“…Now I know when we were mad young people we did not even expect to be around on this day, I thought 35 was going to be about it for me.

But here we are heading for the golden stately bit, where we get to see experience, where we get to see how we turned out, how it all turned out…”

So what am I trying to say here? I am blessed and I need to keep my vision clear. I am heading into a year that I have high hopes for and a ton of momentum around. I look forward to sharing it with you.

On a practical note, let me know if you do not want to be mentioned in these daily musings.

Love to you all, and come to my party tonight! It is also Anh’s birthday today too, my beloved birthday brother who has helped me to create FUCK IT I’M 50! Thank you Anh!