Turning 50: Rethinking the Perfect Day

As you age, your wants and needs change. Your abilities change. Your surroundings, in terms of both people and places, may change. Also, you change. Caroline, the author of this post revisiting the ingredients of her perfect day, has seen a number of changes in herself and her life since first conjuring up what a perfect day might look like after retiring.

I can also tell you from my own experience that the vision of a perfect day and the reality of how I end up spending my days don’t always align very well, but I can say that it’s easier to come closer to a perfect day when there’s no job taking up most of it!

Rethinking the Perfect Day

Arrow

Both Scott and I turned 50 this year. Neither of us are into celebrating birthdays, and we are still in the midst of a pandemic, so we didn’t throw a big party or anything else extraordinary. I also wasn’t anticipating a mid-life crisis or other inflection point.

Working more was a welcome distraction during lockdown but I want to do something different than what I had been doing before. If not traveling more, what would be the focus of our 50’s?

Five years ago, I participated in a blog challenge, where you write 10 days in a row. The organizer of the challenge posted prompts, and everyone in the challenge wrote on that same topic. Day 3 happened to be about “Visualizing Your Perfect Day.”

My original “Perfect Day”

My Perfect Day is not scheduled or routine, so I’m definitely not going to make this a time log – with 5:00 am doing this and 5:30 am doing that….Instead, I know my Perfect Day includes these essential elements: – Pancakes  – Piano – Exercise – Meditation – Journaling – Beach – Movies and shows

I started with pancakes because I cook them for my youngest once a week. Pancakes, to me, represents the cooking and baking at home activity with the family and for the family. When I’m doing that, it feels like a big expanse of time, even though it’s usually just an hour, sometimes even less.

SWIPE UP NOW TO READ MORE

Budget Skiing and Other Oxymorons

MORE STORIES

Public Versus Private School for Your Kids