Last week, it occurred to me that December 10th would be 100 days until my 50th Birthday, G-d Willing (hereinafter GW…and I will be using it, because I don’t take it for granted). When I was younger I used to countdown to my birthday like nobody’s business. My friends who have known me for many years remember the days of ‘This is my last 1st of the month being X years old’ or ‘This is my last Saturday before turning Y’.  This was so much a part of who I was that when a friend once travelled back from Australia on my birthday, he had to tell me how he had lived ‘my dream’, because due to the time zone changes he basically lived through my birthday for over 24 hours, LOL!

Somewhere in my twenties, I stopped all of this countdown business. I realize that ‘somewhere in my twenties’ is a lot older than when most people stop counting down to their birthday, at least ‘out loud’… but it came from a place.  I have appreciated, from a very young age, that it was a blessing to ‘make it’ to another year, and I felt grateful. I also generally liked to have an excuse to celebrate and truthfully, I think I had a touch of FOMO before FOMO was a thing…I didn’t want to miss out on appreciating the last Saturday of being 14 or 15 or 20….

While at no point did I become the person to dread my birthday, somewhere along the way, I lost my veritable excitement for it. I still appreciate ‘making it’ another year- As my friend Cheryl says: ‘It beats the alternative’. For the last few years, I have tried to make it a point to still celebrate, not only my birthday but other milestones…because life gets crazy and we often forget to celebrate the good stuff. I have missed out on celebrating a lot of good stuff, and truthfully, I regret it.

Last year I had been planning to do something extra special to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of the launch of montrealmom.com, but the date passed by without even an acknowledgement in a blog post. It was partly because I was still in my ‘year of mourning’ for my Mom, Z”L and it wouldn’t have felt right to have a big celebration, so in my mind, I tabled the celebration to the spring or summer. That said, an acknowledgement on the blog would not have felt wrong in any way , even in my year of mourning- that part was just due to letting life get in the way.  I could have taken the time to sit at my computer and type something up about how it has been 10 years and I was hoping to celebrate in a more exciting way in spring or summer.  I could have, but I didn’t. And then COVID happened…and well, I would certainly not be hosting any gathering after that, even in spring or summer.

I have no idea what the state of the world will be at the time of my 50th birthday, but I know that I certainly can’t plan a wonderful get-together this far in advance. What I can do, however, is celebrate the small, everyday stuff and enjoy the journey to 50 🙂 I had the idea that I would do so by sharing at least one thought, or photo, or blog post – just something- sometimes smaller and sometimes bigger, every day until my 50th Birthday. It may be on the blog, Instagram, Facebook or all of the above. It may be a full-fledged post or simply a snippet in a story, but it will be SOMETHING.  I am hoping that these will be posts filled with fun, but there may be times that I am feeling less-than-giddy, and that may come through…not because I want to complain or be a downer, but because that’s life…and sometimes we have to take a breath and acknowledge the lousy stuff before we can get back into our groove. Also, if I have learned nothing else in the last half century, I have learned that we all need a little ‘lousy’ in order to understand and appreciate how lucky we are to have so much good in our lives. Another thing that I have learned over the years is that the journey is the destination.

I had planned to start this little ‘journey’ yesterday because it would have been cool to start with ‘100 days to go’, but alas, life is busy and by the time I realized I hadn’t yet gotten to it, it was after midnight.  That’s ok, I am starting today with 99 days to go 🙂

So here it is, This is my first post: 99 days to 50. We may not be able to celebrate with a big party with all my loved ones, but we can definitely enjoy the journey and another thing I have learned to appreciate over the last half century is that ‘The Journey is the Destination’. 

Wishing you all a fabulous weekend!

Stay safe 🙂

Tanya