Neither Julie and Julia, nor Spice and Spirit

Every time I am approaching a birthday, I think about the goals I'd love to achieve, first by the birthday, and then--when it passes without achieving so much as an extra load of laundry folded--by the next one.

This year, my husband turned 50. And it occurred to me that that meant that in two years, I'd be 50 too. I--who feel (cliche/triteness alert) like I'm just a couple of years out of college, who remembers what it was like in grad school when the woman cashing my check asked, "Are you an undergraduate?" and I felt like, "Hello, I'm 30, I've earned these years!"--am approaching 50. As in, even with good luck and good health, we can assume that my life is more than half over. Gulp.

But right now, I don't care about how much is left. I just want to make sure I'm not letting the years I've got pass by without so much as a major issue tackled, a long-dreamed-of mini-adventure unpursued...or, on a smaller scale, a NIA class unexplored or a bad eating habit unexamined.

When I mentioned on Facebook, the new public square, that I was contemplating some kind of "100 weeks" project for the two years leading up to my 50th birthday (I figured, 50 weeks a year with two weeks for vacation), I got some modest encouragement. A friend jokingly suggested I cook my way through the Lubavitcher kosher cookbook, Spice and Spirit. (I did love Julie and Julia in both book and movie form, but I wasn't looking for a random yet pleasurable project to give my life meaning. I was looking for a chance to slowly shape--and even reshape--my life by taking care of what's already, at least in theory, on my plate.)

So, here's the scoop. I'll be recording here things I want to work on (not all of them, but some of them; some will as usual be between me and my therapist, others between me and my imaginary journal--kind of like an imaginary friend, but without the funny name and the place at the dinner table) as they occur to me. As both my mother and my boss (hi Jon!) will probably be reading this, there won't be TMI, or at least, not too much TMI. And I'll be talking about how the work is going, if at all, and how I feel about that. 

I warn you--some of this might be just a little too prosaic. (Fancy talk for "boring".)

I promise nothing systematic, although there may be some of that. I promise not to lie, though I don't promise to tell the whole truth. I promise to publicly be a person in progress. For now, that's about it.

For starters, the things I'm thinking about tonight go something like this:

Never regret, always learn. (Wish I could come up with a catchy acronym for that.)

Eat only food that I enjoy. (That means, if it's not what I want, put it down and find something I do actually want, even if it requires the carbon footprint of a Yeti.)

Bed by 11:00 pm. (Whoops--please ignore the time this is posted.)

Drink a lot of water--seltzer, lemon-enhanced, whatever, but hydrate.

That's enough for one night.