Is it September already?

It's amazing how fast your life goes by as you get older. Maybe it's just because you notice it more because you know that most of your life is now behind you. I look in the mirror and I wonder who this person is who is looking back at me. I used to be 16 years old; I am still 16 years old somewhere, but I don't have the young face (and body) that I had as I wandered the streets of Vancouver in search of entertainment and adventure. I never thought I would live past 40. Don't know why, and yet here I am. Way past 40. On the way to neverneverland. There's a quiet panic deep inside that tells me I better get a move on if I want to do all the things I hope to do before the final curtain call. 

What is a life, anyway? Is it a banner of accomplishments? Is it stealing beautiful, quiet moments in a busy, chaotic world? Is it the ability to breathe and listen and dream? Is it getting the house vacuumed, the bills paid, the grocery list completed? Right now, for me, it's watching my kitten Denali playing, exploring, and learning what his world is all about. It's me trying to stay awake until bedtime so I can get eight hours sleep before the early alarm clock bellows and forces me to open my eyes in the darkness. It's me wishing I had the mental energy to edit my first novel stored on my computer's hard drive. It's me missing my Border Collie, Sully, and the walks we used to take together in any out-of-the-way place I could find. It's me daydreaming about the teenage girl I was in West Vancouver and wondering where that adventurous spirit went. Is that what life is all about? Moments etched into the very cells of your existence? I read about people who climb dangerous mountains like K2, travel to exotic places like Borneo and Nepal with just a pack on their backs, jump out of airplanes and free float thousands of feet above land, hike through tangled forests in search of a mythical animal, invent things like computers and the software to go with it that make it easy for me to write and publish this little blog in a few minutes. And I am none of those people. Part of me wants to be like them, yet I am not.

Just last week, 64-year-old Diana Nyad finally accomplished her dream of swimming from Cuba to Key West without a shark cage. In the moments after stepping onto land, she said that it's never too late to go after your dream. I like that. I like that she proved it. It gives me hope for me.