It’s no surprise to me that I have returned to this blog at least once a week, tried to finish a post draft, saw something shiny and wandered away. All the conversation around distractability and it never landed with me until my life slowed down. I finally graduated with my MFA. The diploma hangs on the wall and stares balefully at me. What now? It carries less cachet than my 55+ Defensive Driving Certificate, which at least gives me an auto insurance discount. I resigned from a nonprofit board and my email box stopped filling up. Always a helpful little hen, I go days without being needed. It is, in a word, unsettling.

Time. I have both more and less of an incentive to be judicious with it. Sometimes I look back to my shoulder-padded business suits for that stridency, that focus, that magical list of daily, weekly, annual goals. And then I take a nap. These are my glory days – still cognitively “with it” and physically capable, but not entangled in commitments and tasks. Some of my glory day is me staring morosely out the window wondering what the hell I’m doing. This is, I’ve been repeatedly told, part and parcel of the menopausal dance. And when I stop sweating, I will really give that a good think. Until then, I’m a quick change artist. I’m hot-I’m-cold-I’m-hot-I’m cold.

I have long believed in the magical point in one’s life when you truly can stop caring about things that have occupied your cranium for decades. Like my waistline. After my punch card hit the requisite number of hot flashes, I assumed I’d be free of all that body image dysfunction. Instead, I’m doubling down, getting back into running. Dragging my ass through various weight training routines. It feels different. Less I want to look attractive and more I’d like to not drop dead quite yet. One would assume that mortality would be a bigger motivator, but it’s not. The story is going to have the same ending no matter what I do.

Letting go. I think about that a lot. At this age, there has been a lot of hardening of perception, habit, belief. I am partially fossilized. The chickens of bad habit have come home to roost and I find it hard to get worked up about the impending doom that will surely result. I’m starting to let go of the culture around me. As a writer and someone who likes one-on-one conversation, I’ve always held onto the notion that I should have some vague idea of what the kids around me are into. In the age of information and unending venues of entertainment, we end up reciting TV plots and books synopses at each other in a desperate scramble to find common ground. Turns out, if I don’t know something, I can read up on it in a millisecond and nod my head knowingly when someone talks endlessly about Ted Lasso. They’re only fortunate that I don’t wax on about my latest read – likely a book written 30 years ago.

I was listening to new music on Spotify and in an instant, understood my grandfather. He used to make mix tapes of music from the 1940s and 50s. He never thought any music was better. If coming-of-age music is what one holds onto, I’ve been hobbled by coming of age in the 1980s. Nobody will ever be able to logically explain to me either Styx’s Mr. Roboto or Eddie Grant’s Electric Avenue. After drunk dancing through my 20s to Madonna and Morris Day, I have never once wanted a mix CD/playlist of any of that music.

There’s so many things to let go of at once, streaming out of my brain, right along with my estrogen. Self-definition should, in theory, become trickier. No one needs me to manage anything. The baby bird has toppled out of the nest and flown with great aplomb into her own life. I’m such a cliche at this point, that no one would be surprised if I ran off to India to Eat, Pray, Love my way out of my 50s. However, I like my spouse and if I went to any warmer climate, I’d have a hot flash and self-combust. Poof. Ashes to ashes.