It’s my birthday month, and I’ll be the first to acknowledge that I’ve been a bit down. Forty three is nothing grand, like forty was or like forty-five or fifty might be. It just sounds old and blah. I’m feeling a bit old and blah these days. I’m not one to be okay with living in a state of old and blah, so I’ve been ramping my mind up to making some big changes. And I hate change. Can you hear the internal battle I’m having with myself?

I am forcing myself to embrace change to help me out of this state of yuck. The specifics are a bit foggy, but I’m mostly looking at where I spend my time and money. I’ve heard that those things reflect where your heart is, so I’m doing a little self-assessment and trying to decide what needs to change. And I’m planning some travel. It’s been three years since I last left the country. Going to Africa was a transformative experience for me. I’m not planning to head back there, but I am planning another physical adventure in a foreign land. Having something along those lines on my calendar may give me just the boost I need. My big trip won’t happen until late next year though.

In the meantime, I’m thinking about a conversation I had with a classmate at my twenty-year high school reunion almost five years ago. My friend David challenged me to make myself into a writer by profession before our twenty-fifth reunion. That deadline is up in May, and I’m not there. I’m not even close because, for the last two years, I haven’t focused my time on that effort. I think that’s at the heart of my struggle right now. I know why I haven’t written, but knowing the why doesn’t necessarily make the end result more palatable. I get it, but I don’t like it.

I now have less than five months to do what I previously had five years to do. In my professional life, I abhor procrastination. People who let things sit until the last minute and then work in a mad frenzy drive me crazy. And as I’ve gotten older, I have less and less patience for people who drive me crazy. In this moment, I’m driving myself crazy. So what do I do?

That gets me back to the changes I’ve been thinking about, which are still hazy.

The good news is that I’m on it. I’m not okay with the current state of things. I’ve identified one of the main things that I believe is at the source of my current dissatisfaction, namely that I don’t write as much as I want to. I’m working on identifying the others. And I’m working towards a plan.

I will not turn 43 without a plan for making 43 a kick-ass year. I just won’t do it. With that little piece of certainty driving me, I’m confident that this stuff that’s brewing in me will get me out of this funk. So from where I stand, things are already looking up.