Celebrated another trip around the sun and shamelessly posted the best selfie I could take in a GenX group, along with dozens of fellow Geminis. I don’t recall seeing so many birthday posts over the year and of course it would be all us Geminis who crave attention and affirmations of aging well. I’m not sorry.

Overall, we GenXers look damn good for our age and proud of it. We are a youthful generation prideful of our(sometimes) tough upbringing and hard work ethic and the generational phenomenons we look back on with unbridled nostalgia. This morning there was a post about your first car and was that a trip down memory lane.

It seems like more and more there are remnants of the past that spark joy. Memories of Big Wheels and ribboned barrettes and rotary wall telephones and playing outside with the neighborhood kids. At this middle age it feels fun to remember those days. I belong to my hometown’s FB page and it, too, has made me (I can’t believe I’m saying this) proud of my birthplace. I love the old black and white photos of my town and the memories people post there.

There’s so much I want to hold onto, remember, learn. Not like in high school when we were all like, oh God, I can’t wait to get away from this [expletive] town. I wonder if the nostalgia I feel now is a sign that I’m old, or a genuine appreciation for where I came from. Maybe both.

Definitely at that age where I need a good push to get going with anything that isn’t work-related and requires leaving the house. I think about how long it takes to get there, what it will require of me, and – most importantly – how long do we have to be there? I admit it, I like being at home. I also cannot recall the last time I didn’t want to go somewhere, went anyway, and wasn’t really happy I went. It usually involves an I-told-you-so from my husband.

There’s a lot to be said for living your life in such a way that at the end you will exit with few regrets. There’s also a meme circulating about living your life in such a way that when people go through your belongings, there will be a lot of  “the fuck is this? the fuck is that?” I don’t know about that but it sounds like a worthwhile endeavor, a GOAL, if you will.

Kind of like an elevated eggshells-in-your-pockets sort of thing. (A friend found eggshells in her son’s pockets once and was all, WTF?) Fun story – my mom found a vibrator in a box of my grandmother’s things. She – and my cousin who was there at the time – was all, ewww! I thought it was hilarious.

Hey, we have to be creative with what we leave behind, especially because we’re not famous and won’t ever have our dirty laundry splashed across the pages of People magazine. Not like Jerry Lee Lewis – who married his 13-year-old cousin when he was like 27 and still married to his second wife, accidentally shot his bass player in the chest while watching TV in his living room, drove his Lincoln Continental into the gates at Graceland waving a pistol and demanding to see Elvis, and spent decades in and out of rehabs and hospitals. A life well lived? Well, at least a life recorded in the black and white pages of rock-n-roll history.

I’m spending a lot of time thinking about what’s important to me, the people I share my life with, the things I keep and those I throw away, where I want to be. It’s an odd place to be – assessing the current situation and imagining where I see myself in ten years. To “pool” or not to “pool?” We almost had one two years ago, signed the contract, and then there was an issue with location, and gross incompetence from the county. Todd asks me every now and then what I think.

I think about moving. I can’t yet see what that looks like. I think about the dreams I’ve had – and how we could make them real. One is really, really expensive. The other might be too. Right now I just want to travel and see places – reignite the bug my mom planted in me decades ago with places an 11-year-old wouldn’t truly appreciate for another 30 years or so.

I don’t necessarily feel like time is running out, but I am consciously aware that I’ve lived more than half of my life and I don’t want to waste what I have left.