36th Trip Around the Sun

It is just days away, my 36th birthday. This sure isn't how I had pictured life at 36. It isn't that I had specific ambitions for 36. It was, that I knew how the outcome at 45 was supposed to look. So unobtainable now. I struggle between seeing where I am now as a failure or a grand new adventure. The end of the story is now unwritten. The last chapter still unfinished as a new has begun. I have said it before and it bears repeating, what is good is so good, but it came at such an expense. How do you feel such joy and such grief at the same time? They say that there is a reason the windshield is bigger than the rear view mirror... they say, they say so much, they have so many words, none that bring me peace as I finish out this last trip around the sun...