Reinventing your life

Reading my friend's latest blog entry, I was filled with a feeling of enthusiasm and excitement, much like I felt when I was planning moving across the ocean (either way). He's (and of course you know who you are!) reinventing his life in a way.. don't know if he'd call it that, but he certainly has been willing to act on it, from living several years in Thailand, to leaving the friendly confines of Chicago and tackling Los Angeles. One could say its midlife (40 something?!) but it really needn't be linked to a 'crisis'. For me its about coming into your own, feeling and living your creativity and taking risks that may have eluded you when you were younger. Yes there are certain risks we take more readily when young, and then there are the ones that come with life experience, and I am now starting to feel what life experience really means.

In many ways I have reinvented myself from 'artist' at university, to secretary, to real estate appraiser, to Buddhist, traveller, expat, writer, mother.. you get the idea. We all change, but some choose a complete 360 at some point in life, and why the hell not, I mean, praise to those who discover their life passion and stick to it, but I just cannot envision 70 or so years of the same old, same old. And life is a process. I've just come across a new book called Thinking About Tommorrow by Susan Crandell, which is about women who are reinventing their lives in midlife. She says its not a trend but a revolution, a generational movement not unlike great social movements of the 20th century. I'm not quite midlife, as in 40's yet, but I feel like I have lived quite alot.

My husband has invented himself many times over and is currently working on a book about his experiences. We are also trying to expand his business as a stonemason, to encorporate property development, building as it were, on my skills in real estate as well. Its all been a slow, organic development for us, and I like that, the idea of earth energy which is slow, following rhythms and being patient, instead of trying to force things into being before their time. I do like to make things happen, and that's a function of control, but I have learned that allowing things to develop is equally important, and equally rewarding.