A strange thing happened to me when I turned sixty – I was okay about it!  All the messages I’d absorbed up until then, seemed to imply that I would have an existential crisis due to no longer being young.  Upon pondering this non-crisis phenomenon, I realised that what I felt was that I had ‘arrived’.  In some ways, I feel for the first time that I actually have a better understanding of what went on during my journey to this point in my life, and what’s going on now.  I sucked at being young, mostly because I was plagued by high anxiety and low self-esteem.  These joy-suckers gradually diminished as time went by, so getting older wasn’t bad for me.  There seemed to be a trade-off between the bidding of adieu to youth, and the pleasure of being more at peace with myself.  It turns out that many things which deliver fun, fulfilment, and joie de vivre are still on the agenda, regardless of age.  We do these things differently, to be sure, but they’re still there for the taking.  So, where do we go, what do we do during those veiled years between the 50/60 age bracket, and when we suddenly reappear as the elderly?  How do I feel and think about things looking back, and looking forward?  This is a whole new journey for me in unknown territory, where the previously-known role models no longer exist.  A couple of things I can say I’ve now discovered, is that I just don’t sweat about the things I used to sweat about.  I’ve become stroppier and mouthier, too, and my life-view is clearer.  This blog is me speaking up and speaking out about anything and everything from my eyrie of sixty and onwards.