The Countdown To 50: Day 1

Annual Thanksgiving field walk - I was three years old.

My 50th birthday is coming up this weekend. 

But honestly -- if a woman doesn't get a party, does she really turn 50? I think I get to stay 49 until we get to celebrate. After all, I've been looking forward to my 50th birthday party since Dwayne threw me a surprise party for my 40th! 

But times are very different now. No one gets a proper birthday party, let alone a surprise one with thirty friends. We will celebrate in our isolation, with takeaway Chinese food and cherry cheesecake, and I will mark this milestone birthday in my own way, with photos and little essays of who I was and who I am now. 

In lieu of getting to do that in a book of essays -- the one I'd love to sell entitled "The Girl In the Red Wool Dress". Yes, she who stands in that stump waving wildflowers. 

In a collection of essays, that photo represents the happy, fearless little girl who insisted on wearing that dress for a year because it's what she wanted to do. On this blog, today, that photo tells me that I've always been a country girl, always been at home in the field, in the woods, with the tall grass and the even taller trees. 

The field in that photo is located in Coboconk, Ontario, where my mother's family had their cottages. These days, I walk around a field in northern Nova Scotia. And lately, while I've been tromping my muddy field, I've been thinking about the coming decade. Fifty to sixty. (Seriously, it shocks me to look at those numbers. They seem like they should still be years away.) I asked myself, "Sara, what do you really want to do in the next decade?" As in, what have you always wanted to do that you need to do now? 

And the answer came back, clearly and gently: "Publish more books."

I even dug around a little more. "Really? That's it?"

Yep. That's it. I have enough books half-written, half-edited, ready to go that I could be busy for the whole next decade. I'm a little disappointed, to be honest, or perhaps just surprised that publishing books still comes up as the one-and-only dream. I thought maybe my subconscious, when given total freedom, would say something like, "Get a degree in psychology! Get a Master degree!" But it didn't, and even writing that doesn't result in any kind of ping of interest or twinge of regret. 

I'm perfectly happy roaming my field, picking flowers, wearing the same clothes every day and writing stories. 

Here's the thing: I have no idea if I CAN publish more books. Who knows what the future will be like for any of us, let alone writers and publishers? But right now, I'm not worried about it. That's been the unexpected side effect of this pandemic quarantine: All my anxiety about the future is gone. Poof! Blown away like dandelion seeds. Because there's nothing I can do right now, and no clue as to how publishing will shake out in the future, I've calmed right down. I feel no need to strive, to struggle, to plan, to agonize, or even wonder 'What if?' 

I've been a freelance writer and wannabe author for 25 years, so to be suddenly free of the angst and agony, and the feeling of failure, is a strange state of mind to possess. This freedom is great but I know it won't last. 

And here's the other thing: I trust that quiet voice that says, "Publish more books. Keep writing." I trust whatever it tells me because it's true and real and doesn't lead me down the wrong path. It's never been wrong, even in the days when I didn't recognize it or listen to it. That essay I published here (and on Facebook) on Saturday? I hadn't planned, EVER, to jump into the debate about gun control but as I sat at the table drinking my morning coffee, that essay came to me fully formed and demanding to be written. It swelled up in me like a separate entity I needed to birth, to put into the world to be read by others. I knew better than to resist, even though publishing that scared the crap out of me -- you know what the anti-gun control fanatics are like. But I trust that voice, and hey, I'm about to turn 50 and now I'm really too old to be doing anything other than what it tells me. 

Older, okay, but also, thankfully, wiser.