Aging Gracelessly

Sheesh. My icon, my hero, my favorite singer, songwriter, poet and odd duck, Bob Dylan turned 70 on May 24th. I am sure you read all about this stunning event in Rolling Stone and a host of other magazines.
Since it's all about me, here, I have to tell you that this realization that Mr. Dylan is 70 somehow both magnified and trivialized my own birthday, which was Tuesday. I mean, who am I? I'm just me, and I am 55. Bob Dylan is Bob Dylan and he is important and after a lifetime of some surely hard living, he is still going strong at 70.
So my own birthday is both a milestone and just another step along a dark corridor. But I am starting to see the home stretch, to imagine the light at the end of a tunnel: you know the one where you show up every day for 30 years and then get a cake and then you are retired. If you make it. If you can survive every last minute that was wrung from your existence by a job you really just have to go to, if you don't drop in the traces and just keel over, or go out in a blaze of glory with a tragic car wreck on your morning commute, or slowly dwindle away from a cancer caused by too much stress and exposure to copier fumes.

So this little tiny light at the end of the tunnel represents the transition between 'have to' and 'want to'.

If Bob Dylan can turn 70, so can I, a concept which is both scary and liberating at the same time. I'm not 70 now, but I have often wondered if I would make it to the magic 58. What's so different about 58, you may ask? 58 doesn't seem a particularly important birthday, nor does 55. They are both between 50, surely a milestone birthday and 60 which sometimes borders on seeming dodderingly old. And I don't believe 60 is old. My mom died at 58 and I will be 58 when I can retire from my drudging civil servant job. So the thought that maybe, if I play my cards right, say the right incantations, don't tempt fate, behave myself and stay home, stay sober and stay safe, pray to the right gods, eat the right foods, drink the right water, take the correct vitamins, exercise, get enough sleep, do good works,... maybe I can get a reprieve from death for a few more years after.
If I can make it to 70 I will have lived longer than both my parents who died relatively young. If Dylan can make it to 70 and still be relevant and inspiring, maybe I can too. Perhaps I can become relevant to myself.

What am I saying? I am saying that it is possible to have a whole other life after retirement. I believe, I believe, I believe...

The life I want to live. Marsha Sinetar urged us to "Do What You Want- The Money Will Follow" and I have been struggling to do that around my job for the last 30+ years. It has been hard, the years of child rearing and working full time take their toll. Now I have enchanting grandchildren who are the apples of my eye, the reason for my existence, the closure of the full circle of my life.

Now I feel that I can finally start reaching for that brass ring: it's tantalizingly close. I want to become the artist I have always secretly hoped is inside of me. I want to transform my life. I want to matter more to myself than I do now. Stop thinking of myself as a servant and drudge and start imagining the person I want to be, who is locked inside, waiting for liberation. The creative type, the artist, or at least artisan, the crafter, the happy person I am on the cusp of becoming.
But having said all that, what if I fail at being creative? What if I just sleep in every morning and putter around all day for the rest of my life? If that's all there is, if I can't do better than that, then I might as well either keep working or just pack it in.