I turn 50 tomorrow.

I’m excited for this next decade.

I’m healthy and active and living a pretty fantastic life. Which wasn’t true even 10 short years ago. A lot has changed and I am ready to enter a new decade as healthy and active as I have ever been!

I remember when I was diagnosed with Type 2 Diabetes — and my numbers were shockingly bad — the off-hand comment from the Doctor was ‘you won’t make it to 50 if you don’t change your ways.’ I know it was a randomly selected number chosen to simply scare me into action. It didn’t work for about 8 years. In your 30’s – 50 seems a long, long ways away.  (It isn’t. 🙂 )

Yet, I will admit that number stuck in my head and has been a sort of ‘destination’ for a the last 7 years or so as I worked to get healthy.

So, yeah – there is some pretty nifty satisfaction in reaching 50 years old and being in good health.

Healthy. Happy. Non-diabetic. Living a life I could never have imagined had I stayed 400 pounds and dependent on insulin.  Assuming I’d made it this far the realities are that if I was still Type 2 Diabetic, I would likely be missing digits or limbs or be dealing with failing kidneys or far, far worse….

Flip to the other side of the potential coin? I will admit that there is some wistfulness as I wonder what life could have been like had I heeded that warning in my 30’s and bought myself another whole decade of this healthier version of my life.

Yet, that’s not my story.

I have no regrets.

I’ve learned and loved and lived the best I could once I decided I was going to change things. The saying ‘when you know better, do better’ resonates deeply with me.  Regret is a wasted emotion. I eventually learned better and I’m doing better.

So tomorrow is a day to celebrate simply being alive.  I’m going for a bike ride with my friend Cat, we should hit the halfway point up by Mt. Bachelor/Elk Lake for an open water swim with Spencer sometime before noon.  Then Cat and I will bike back home.  Hopefully gathering some Bend-area folks for a guacamole-only dinner. 🙂    My sappy/mushy point of view on this celebration/journey/adventure; bike 50, swim and leave the last 50 years of the old me in the lake, walk out with the new me ready to live the next 50 with gusto and then bike 50 home.

That’s the plan. 🙂

I wonder what the next 50 years will hold in store for me? What I’ll get to do? How I’ll choose to embrace each of the remaining days I get?

I’m honestly just glad to be alive, to give it a go and see where life takes me in this next decade or two or five.

#lifeisgood