Forty, Really?

Forty, it's such an innocuous number, until you start thinking of it as an age. It's so shocking to be on the threshold of forty.
My husband turned 40 a couple of weeks ago and took it pretty hard. I think that I will also take it hard in the three years,
three months and two weeks that it will take me to reach that age.

I seem to be at a stage in life when you really start to think about "what have I done?"," Have I made a difference in the world"?
I don't know the answer to that question right now. I just kind of see myself as a mom and just a mom. I've never had a
job that I would call a career, just a bunch of dead end jobs.

I guess that raising healthy, happy, non homicidal children would be considered important, but, I just want more out
of my life. Is this wrong?

I don't know the answer to that question either. Don't get me wrong I love my children and staying home with my daughter
has been a wonderful experience. I wouldn't change one minute of it for anything, but, she's getting older and so am I.
When she starts school will I be too old to have a career? I kind of think so, because you know what? In three years,
three months and two weeks I'm going to be forty!!!

All of your young life that is so old! So is it not old now just because I'm knocking on the door? I don't know. Are you figuring
out that there are obviously a lot of things that I don't know?

My twenty year high school reunion is coming up next year and I would like to be able to go and say "this" is what I've done
with my life, but, I'm running out of time to figure out what "this" is. I could whip out the old baby pictures and show them off.
It is however, a little embarrassing to show that at that time I will have a sixteen year old and a four year old, that's another
story all together.

I just have to trust myself to figure out my life at some point. When is the cutoff for that? I really don't like those people who
say I knew what I wanted to do with my life from the time I was five. Well, great for you, but for the rest of us losers, we're still
trying to figure it out at three years, three months, and two weeks from forty.