Member-only story
Writers Plan and God Laughs
I am too busy checking watchduty.org to write every day.
Thirty-five days before my fifty-fifth birthday, I decided to launch a daily writing practice to document the last thirty-five days until I turned fifty-five. I wrote an ode to perimenopause, and how life was like an uphill hike. I wrote how much our family has changed and how I hate running but love my son. I shared my take on Hanukkah and White Elephants and how, in the end, it is all about love. I wrote about my first New Year’s miracle and my panic when my daughter did not come home on New Year’s Eve and how it turned out that she was fine and her phone was dead and they were both safely tucked away at a friend’s house. I was in a pretty good writing groove.
Then wildfires tore across Los Angeles.
Five Years Earlier
The last time I had committed to a regular writing practice in anticipation of a ‘big’ birthday had been my fiftieth. I’d launched a fiftieth birthday blog to recount my midlife journey: empty nesting, perimenopause, my newfound freedom, my return to Yoga, and what it was like having more time and less kids around. At least, that was the plan.
I’d rented a large house in Temecula and was taking a group of girlfriends away for wine tasting to kick off my fiftieth. I ordered…
