I am 36 today.

It has me in a thoughtful mood, because I am now the age my mother was when she had me.

It is a milestone, but not one of the loaded decade milestones.

My life is in a good place right now. I like my job and where I live. I’m engaged and will be getting married in September. Things are crazy now, but in a couple weeks when things get back to normal I’ll have time for writing and gardening.

I’m in a good place, and it is the first time in a while that I have been able to look forward a couple/few years and have some sense of where I will be.

And where I want to be.

 

So, here goes.

 

In five years, I want to be happily settled with Rob, with one or two too many projects percolating.

I want to be writing regularly, and submitting regularly. I would like to have been published – ideally a novel, but I’ll take some short stories!

I want to have a garden, but have it set up so that it doesn’t eat all my free time in the summer.

I want to travel a couple times a year, but do it little enough that it’s still fun.

I want to continue to balance my day job with writing and my hobbies. It is stimulating and interesting, and I think my life would be less without it.

 

There are some major things I’m not sure about.

My mom had me at 36. At this point it is highly unlikely that I’ll have a kid at 36. Will I have kids at all? I’m ambivalent. I think I could be very happy with kids, or very happy without kids. I’m not sure how that will fall out yet.

Regardless, I hope that the next thirty-six years will be as interesting and generally happy as my first thirty-six – and that even if I don’t have children, I will have something to show for my time when I’m seventy-two.