Tomorrow is my birthday. I’m in my sixth decade, and as I sit here at the computer wondering how to define this point in my life, I realize I’m okay with it all.

First of all, I have family. My heart goes out to those missing theirs, and I see on Facebook several of my fans who have lost spouses in the last two years. A day doesn’t go by that I do not silently wish them well. That’s an adaptation I do not look forward to. Maybe I won’t have to.

I am not blind, however, to the fact that sometimes folks look at me as an older woman first before they see what I’m about. Especially in person. Everyone does it to a certain degree, making preliminary assumptions about someone due to their years, hair color, and lines around their eyes. I fight hard not to do that, and I work hard to avoid judging others. I can control me. I cannot control them.

I avoid saying the word retirement. I retired from another profession that served me well, and few people realize that. But that’s okay. I am the sum total of my past, and what you see today is fine with me.

As many of you know, I work out at a strength gym, something I started earlier this year. My lovely son is a trainer, and he is proud his mother attempts to stay fit…getting fitter. It’s a way of giving my middle finger to Father Time, I guess, and to be honest, it makes people respect me more. I wear my leggings and tank tee to the coffee shop when checking on my books or grabbing a coffee. Frankly, I started doing that to promote the gym, as a walking billboard for it since I know a few folks around here, but the respect I’ve received has utterly amazed and thrilled me.

But more so than appearance, more importantly, being healthier helps me think, gives me ideas, fleshes out my days with more energy. My posture is better. My thinking clearer.

My writing is near and dear and precious. Becoming more adept at  wordsmithing thrills me more than just about anything in the world. Someone thanking me for my books is the ultimate high. For that moment I am not just an old woman.

One of the most important aspects of becoming older for a writer is gathering the depth, breadth, and history of stories. That time has leant itself to me in the form of more sentences, more vocabulary, and more books. I have this incredibly deep well of material to mesh into stories and years of practice to do it with.

That said, I didn’t start writing my stories until age 44. I didn’t publish until age 52. I thought I was old both times. Now here I am, living the life I want to live. I’m not a New York Times Bestselling author, but I am a happy one still paving her life, dictating how to live it to my satisfaction.

There are lots of worries in becoming and remaining a writer. It’s not an simple profession, despite what non-writers may envision. But it can be an incredibly gratifying one, mirroring you to the world so that they aren’t so quick to interpret you through only appearance. Being a writer can make you seem oh so wise, not only to others but to yourself as well, and self-esteem is very important.

“People ask: “Would you or would you not like to be young again?” Of course, it is really one of those foolish questions that never should be asked, because there is no real answer. You cannot be young again. You cannot unroll that snowball. There is no “you” except through your life you have lived. But apart from that, when you rise from what somebody calls “the banquet of life,” would you want to sit down to it again? When you have climbed the hill, and the view is just breaking, do you want to reclimb it? A thousand times no! Anyone who honestly wants to be young again has never lived, only imagined, only masqueraded. Of course, if you never eat, you keep your appetite for dinner.”

~Jane Ellen Harrison – great classics scholar and linguist, September 9, 1850–April 15, 1928.