I had twelve college websites open on my laptop. I was looking at tour dates, open houses, weekends we were free, driving distances, and my calendar. How many schools could we visit without spending every weekend this fall on the road? Meanwhile, on my phone, I was starting to plan our family trip to Portugal for the kids’ graduation. I had saved screenshots of places to visit, restaurant recommendations, hotels, travel blogs, and notes about how to balance rest and adventure for our family of four.
This is what I do. I plan things. Actually, I don’t just plan things. I make projects out of them. I think my entire life has been one very long project made up of hundreds of smaller ones. And I have loved almost every minute of it.
Long before I could open twenty tabs on a laptop or ask AI to compare hotels for me, there were binders, notebooks, and accordion files. When I was planning my wedding, I had a collection of pages I had torn from magazines. Dresses. Flowers. Venues. Ideas. I ate, slept, drank, and lived wedding planning. It consumed me.
Years later, when I decided to go back to graduate school, the binder became a spreadsheet. Research on programs, accreditation, cost per credit, instructional delivery format, requirements, and length of program. There were columns for everything, not a detail forgotten.
When we traveled to Europe last year and visited three countries, I planned that trip for months. Flights. Trains. Bus routes. Airbnb’s. Hotels. Restaurants. Potential daily itineraries became matrices that brought me sheer joy. Give me something to research, and my brain comes alive. I have always been like this. College was a project. Degrees were projects. My career became one. Graduate school. Certifications. Building a house. Raising children. Birthday parties. Vacations. College searches. There was almost always something ahead of me that I was figuring out with meticulous detail. In my world, the challenge and excitement live in planning and the details.
One of the biggest projects of my life was losing weight. Even that began with research. I studied different surgeries, outcomes, surgeons, complication rates, and patient experiences. I read reviews, and I joined online groups. I talked to people who had already had surgeries and discussed outcomes. Then came eight or nine specialists and months of appointments before I was even approved. After surgery came another couple of years of learning an entirely different way of eating and caring for my body. Protein. Portions. Movement. New routines. A different relationship with food.
That particular project changed much more than my body. Losing the weight changed the way I move through the world. It changed my confidence and how I feel getting dressed, walking down the street, getting into a car, entering a room. It felt almost like peeling back layers I had carried for years and discovering parts of myself underneath them that I hadn’t fully known were there. That one deserves its own story someday.
But even with something that significant, I didn’t reach the end and think, There. Now I’m finished. I have never really thought that way. Maybe because I rarely doubt that I will finish something once I decide to do it. I am headstrong and determined once I commit to a project. I don’t tend to celebrate my own accomplishments for very long. I’m pleased, and I’m proud in my own way. But then there is usually another idea waiting. For me, the excitement has often lived as much in the pursuit as in the result. The research. The possibilities. The anticipation. The problem-solving. That feeling when new idea grabs hold of me, and my brain starts running.
Years ago, that energy could become almost frenetic. I could stay awake for half the night researching because I suddenly needed to know everything. Discovering all the options, each specific detail, and every possible way something could be done. Once I was interested, I could become completely consumed. There was something magnetic about that energy. And exhausting.
I still have plenty of energy and excitement. I’m building The Midlife Becoming now. I’m writing every week. I am learning about social media, business, digital products, audiences, analytics, branding, and things I never expected to care about. I’m still in graduate school, and I’m planning a trip to Portugal. Along with planning college visits for Michael. I’m already thinking about retirement and what I might do with all that freedom when it finally arrives.
Retirement fascinates me because I don’t want to stop doing all the things I love. I want to continue to work and do purposeful work. I want to create, learn, travel, and have adventures. What I want most is the freedom to decide exactly what I choose to do and the time to do it.
That part of me hasn’t changed. But I have.
I am much less frantic now. I am more grounded, and more willing to slow down, stop, and reflect. And strangely, I have fallen completely in love with slow mornings. This new love is relatively new for me. For most of my adult life, sleeping late or doing nothing in the morning came with a little voice reminding me of everything I could be accomplishing. There was always laundry, breakfast, a walk, or another thing I should be checking off the list. There was always something that needed attention for the kids. Somewhere somebody needed to be.
I have always loved sleep, but once I became a mother, I rarely let myself stay in bed just because my body wanted to. There was always something to do. This past year, after knee surgery, I suddenly had seven weeks when I didn’t have to be anywhere. I couldn’t rush, and for once, there really wasn’t anything I was supposed to be doing. And I liked it. Maybe that was my first little taste of what retirement is like.
Now, especially in the summer, I love waking up and knowing I have nowhere I need to be for a while. I make coffee. I stretch. I water my flowers. I putter around in my pajamas. Nash follows me around. On cooler mornings, I sit outside on the deck with my coffee. Sometimes a car passes, someone walks a dog past, but otherwise it’s quiet. Nothing particularly interesting happens, and that is exactly what I love about it. Some days I don’t get out of my pajamas at all. There was a time when I probably would have considered that a wasted day, and I would hear my mother’s voice in my head saying so. Now I know that sometimes those are the days I need.
I think I’ve finally learned enough about myself to recognize the difference between doing something because it matters and doing something because I am uncomfortable doing nothing. That may be one of the biggest changes. Don’t get me wrong, I still love a plan. But I’m getting better at leaving some spaces blank for self-care.
Even when we travel, I typically want every day mapped out. Now some of my favorite memories come from wandering around a city with no particular destination in mind. Finding a little museum we didn’t know was there. Walking into a bookstore and staying for an hour, or stopping at a coffee shop because it looked inviting and having a pastry while we watched people walk past. Bob and I have even started taking Sunday drives. We joke that we are becoming old people because we now find it exciting to drive around in the fall with the windows open. We love it. We find farm stands, roadside restaurants, coffee shops, and places we didn’t know existed. There is no itinerary and nothing to accomplish. We just go, spend time together, and that feels like a very different way of moving through life.
It sounds cliché, but I used to be so focused on the destination. Now I notice much more of what happens along the way.
A friend and I having brunch at a local café and losing two hours talking about our children and our lives. Riding my bike and smelling the ocean. Walking down to the bay to watch the sunset. Lying beside the water, listening to the birds and the waves, feeling the sun on my skin and tasting salt on my lips. Walking through the farmers market and getting ridiculously excited about bread and flowers. Hours spent working in my garden. Doing my daughter’s laundry while she is home and feeling happy simply because I get to do it. These moments fill me with contentment and, fulfillment.
These aren’t things I would have ever put on a list of accomplishments. They are also becoming some of the things I value most these days.
I don’t think I am less ambitious. I’m still motivated, and I will always be a hustler. I’m a lifelong dreamer. Maybe a more practical dreamer, because I can imagine something one minute and start researching how to make it happen five minutes later. But I don’t feel the same need to turn everything into an achievement anymore. I don’t feel pulled to make everything perfect. I don’t need every plan to go exactly as expected.
And I don’t need to work myself into the ground to prove that something matters or to show others I am capable. I’ve become much better at asking whether there is another way to get things done. A shortcut. A workaround. A smarter path.
Some of this is what I call wisdom. I know when and how I work best now, and I have learned, the hard way at times, when my body needs rest and what settles me. I know what fills me back up, and when my mind has had enough. I am finally learning how to work with myself rather than constantly demanding more from myself.
Maybe that is what growing older has given me. The discernment to make these choices that align closely with me. I still have lists of things I want to do, places I want to see, and things I want to learn. I continue to think about work I want to create. I hope there are grandchildren someday and more family dinners, trips, adventures, and experiences I haven’t even thought of yet.
There will probably always be another project. I’m okay with that. I like that part of myself. But I also know now that I have more years behind me than I have ahead of me. I don’t say that sadly, but it makes me pay attention. To the people I love. To connection. To the small moments when I feel completely alive or peaceful or grounded. To the mornings when there is nowhere to go. To the cup of coffee in my hand. To my daughter being home right now. To Bob beside me on one of our drives. To Nash curled up nearby. To the ocean. To bread and flowers and sunsets and all the ordinary things I once might have hurried past because I was thinking about what came next.
I am still planning, still dreaming, still working toward something. I probably always will be because that is who I am. I have decided I don’t want to rush through these beautiful, ordinary moments to get there anymore.
There will always be a next thing. I am finally learning that the life I am living now doesn’t have to wait its turn.
