Since starting this blog earlier this month, I’ve given a lot of thought to what it means to be “middle-aged”. Because I am assuming that I will live to be one hundred years old, fifty is the middle age I have chosen for myself. But because the average life expectancy of the “White American Female” is closer to about eighty-one years of age, one could say that I reached middle-age a decade ago.

Nevertheless, I feel very much in the “middle” of my life, trying to figure out what to keep and what to discard; I am both literally and figuratively, emotionally and physically, at a crossroads between youth and old age.

Perhaps because of that intense focus on the “middle”, or perhaps because it was merely serendipitous, my day seemed to be revolve around the middle of everything and everyone.

This morning I had a conversation with a colleague who is sending her son on one of my study abroad programs in Europe, and was going straight from the meeting we were both attending to the airport to put him on the plane. Her son is middle child, and has an attitude towards risk and adventure that is exactly mid-way between that of her oldest son and her youngest.

Mid-day I attended a workshop about retirement, where I was optimistically hoping they would tell me I was closer than I thought to that magic day where I get to sleep in and spend the day taking classes, long walks with my dog(s) and finally getting around to writing to that novel I’ve been thinking about writing for so very long. Nope, what he said leaned more towards waiting till you are seventy to maximize your social security benefits. I’ve been at my current job for twenty years this month, and if I don’t retire till I’m seventy, well, that’s twenty years more. Catch my drift?

Later, I went back to the office and was delighted to hear that my husband has booked a trip for us to Istanbul, which is known as a city that lies smack dab, you guessed it, in the “middle” between Europe and Asia.

When I was telling a colleague about my upcoming trip, our talk turned to some of our friends and colleagues with whom we work, who never seem to take vacations. I stated that I was just too old now to work year round without a break — I really need that time off both mentally and physically. My colleague responded, “Oh c’mon, you’re not that old”, to which I replied, “True, but I’m not so young either.” I’m pretty much…say it with me…right there in the middle.

I won’t continue, but you get the drift. The theme ran right through my drive home, so I decided to go write about it, but there again, I feel somewhat torn between writing this piece and going downstairs to make a nice health, nutritious dinner for my husband and I. Guess I’ll have to just keep on working to find the middle ground.