Shocking Thought

I was just reflecting on my upcoming birthday in May--the 19th to be specific--which is a very special one. I'll be turning 50! Many people recoil in horror from the thought of turning 50, but for me it is a most welcome milestone. I feel like I'm finally a safe distance away from the emotion torture that was life as a teenager/young adult!

50 doesn't seem so old, either, when I balance it against my grandmother's age. She'll be turning 100 next year. So, I feel like I'm starting out fresh with another 50 years to go...and I'm starting out knowing SO much more than I did beginning the first 50! I'm bound to forget some of what I know by the time I'm done...but all in all, I'm excited about the potential that I'm bringing with me into my second half-century.

I've been contemplating my 50th for some time now, so that's not the shocking thought. I've been working up to it, one year at a time, right out in the open, in plain print on my driver's license if you do a little math.

The shocking thought is that May is also the 14th anniversary of when we purchased this house. We bought the farm ground behind it a year and a half later. So I would have gotten my first sheep about 12 years ago.

And that means that I've been farming for ONE QUARTER of my life!

It's hard to wrap my mind around that. I feel like I just started.

People ask, "Have you always farmed? Did you grow up on a farm?" and I say "No, I've just been farming a few years."

Trust me there are days I feel like I've "always" farmed...or at least have been doing [insert laborious, repetitive, or frustrating task du jour] "forever". There are also days when I feel like I'm brand new at all this, in the dark, clueless, etc.

I suspect there will always be both kinds of days.

But now I have a concrete measure of how long I've been farming. From now on, it will be "a quarter of my life."

Until I reach some age when it will be a third of my life. But I will have to remember some algebra from w-a-y-y-y-y back in the olden days to figure out how to calculate when that year will be!