Half a Century old, and completely happy about it!

In 8 days I will be turning 50, and seriously, I could not be happier about it. Why? Happy about being 50? How can I be happy about that? Easy! First off, it is better than not having made it to 50 to celebrate turning 50! Lord knows I have done some really stupid stuff as a younger person that by rights really should have snuffed my lights out a long time ago. Secondly, it's my birthday! I was raised in a family that acknowledged and celebrated every birthday. I have always held the belief that your birthday is that one day the God gives to YOU. It is not anyone else's. You might share a birthday but it is yours to celebrate as you wish, and in my family there was always some sort of celebration!

But it is more than that for me. Turning 50 is just a number to me. I know a bunch of people who are 50. A majority of them say it all goes downhill after that, or it just gets worse after that. I don't believe them. Or rather, I refuse to believe them. I don't feel 50. I certainly don't ACT 50! I am probably in as good of shape as I have ever been. I have no aches or pains. I can do as much, and sometimes probably more, than most fit 20 and 30 year olds. I am not bragging, I am just stating how I feel. I like where I am in life. I am happy. (I've always been happy though.) I have a great family. My wife, kids, parents and siblings, nieces and nephews, cousins and extended family, are people that I look forward to spending time with. We are the ones who are the loudest group in a room, the ones that take over a dance floor, and the ones that walk away from a family gathering with faces hurting from laughing too much. We sincerely enjoy each others company. (We, like all families have have problems and issues that we must deal with, but we work together as best we can to help each other.) I have dozens, no, hundreds of friends. (Some of them are the most solid people who have ever walked the earth and together with them I know we could survive an apocalypse.) I truly look forward to spending time with my friends and go out of my way to find ways to do that. I have a job that I absolutely love. I look forward to getting up to go to work. I own my own home. I have (or will soon) a party garage. (In my family, garages are where the parties are supposed to happen.) I have more than I need and I am now in a position where I can start to give back. I could go on but suffice it to say, I am happy with the way things are.

So it took 50 years to get here. So what. At least I am here. If there is some advice I can give to my son and daughter, (and to my German son, Wolf) it would be this: Make life happen FOR you, not to you. Keep what you want forward in your mind. Think about it. Talk about it. Make it your intention to have it come to reality. Do what you want to do. If you can't right do it right now, or you can't get it, make it, or find it, (whatever "it" is...) right now, keep thinking about it and work at it. It will happen. But here's the trick. What you want is not what you need. You need a job. You need your health, your need education, you need family, friends, a stable environment. Make those needs a reality first before working on the things you want. The things you want will not just happen, but with you needs met, constant attention, hard work with progressive movement forward and an intention to see what you want become a reality, it will happen. And do it now. Do not wait until later. The longer you wait for the future, the shorter it will be.

So with the last few days of my 49th year, I think I will think on things and maybe put "pen to paper" in an electronic sense and post them to my blog.