49

I turned 49 yesterday. I don't have issues with this (should I?), the last year I will have in my 40s. It has been a decent decade and I kind of hope I send it out with a bang.

I did have some angst leading up to my birthday, however. Midway through my mother's 49th year she learned she had breast cancer, which she died from at only 52. I know I'm not my mother--I don't have her circumstances (a previous and nearly fatal cancer at 24, pesticide exposure in her youth) but her experience haunts me. I guess I'm just realizing at this age that I think I have so much more time. Time to create art, time to learn more, time to watch my kids develop as adults, time to further my career. I wonder if after my mom's first cancer, she might have been living on tenterhooks, wondering when the other shoe would drop. I'll never know, though.

But here I am at 49 and I will choose to continue living like I've got another decade at least to live with abandon. Maybe the decade after that I'll get a little more serious and start getting my affairs in order. Or maybe not.

But also... I am angry at myself for not keeping up with this project. I started thinking too much about the images, my plans for the images, my failings at trying new techniques. I've got to let that go and finish this up. While we planned on 52 images in a year, I got uptight about deadlines. Jane says this is our project and we make up the rules--so if 52 images takes longer than a calendar year, then that's what we do. I like this. I love this, in fact. So I'm going to shed my issues about not doing this "right" and focus on creating some images that continue to be reflective of me and the 49 years I've got under my belt.