Halfway Thru NaBloPoMo and Midpoint Musings

This local cemetery has burials dating form the late 1700’s to the 1800’s and is located near Branchfield, Connecticut just north of Weir Farm National Historic Site. I walked to this cemetery from the barn of the north side of the Wier House. It is located just outside the boundaries of the National Historic Site.
Copyright by WyoJones. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

I suck at math, even with a calculator. But when a month is 30 days long and this is day 15, that’s half, right? So I’m halfway through my NaBloPoMo blog challenge through BlogHer. This got me thinking about halfway points.

My thoughts immediately jumped to turning 50, which shows my math skills. Because I have no clue if I’ll live to be 100, so it’s not a halfway point unless I do live long (with or without the prospering). But 50 feels like a midpoint, even though it’s probably not. There’s some gravitas to being 50, though most of it seems centered around my tush (which is another midpoint. Well, sort of. Gravity is not my friend.) But I did manage to live for a whole, half century. So it felt mid-point-ish.

Looking back at my life by 50%, I had no clue what was coming. So much joy and lot of hard stuff. I was still in my twenties (barely). If someone told me what would happen, I wouldn’t have believed them. Getting old wasn’t even on my mind. Now I get spam about funeral plans and reading glasses. Reading glasses? Yeah, I need my brain to be misfiring a lot more before I buy anything from a spam email, let alone reading glasses.

I like getting halfway through a book when I’m writing, but I have the same problem with my novels that I have with my age. I don’t know what is halfway until I’m finished. Is that profound? Or sad? Fifty-fifty? Yeah, that was sad. Sorry.

One of the hardest milestones for me and my son was when we hit the halfway point in his chemotherapy. First we looked back and went, wow, we made it to the halfway point. Then we looked at hard it was to get there, looked ahead at how hard it would be to go the distance and went, crap.

Conclusion from that? Sometimes it’s not good to look back at the mid point. Save that for when you’re almost there. Or at 75%.

You are now half way thru this blog post.

Other mid-points I’m not so thrilled about:

•    Halfway through a fun visit (it feels more than half over)
•    Halfway through a doctor visit (feels like too much time left to get through)
•    Halfway through a movie (I usually need to go to the bathroom about then)
•    Halfway through any grade in school (I didn’t love school)
•    Halfway through a computer program loading (really, only halfway???)

Mid points I like:
•    Halfway through a good book
•    Halfway TO a visit (anticipation is fun, except if it involves flying and the TSA, then it goes into the above list)
•    This blogging challenge, because I have written 15 blog post and now I’m pretty sure I can write 15 more.
•    Halfway home (hey, I’m a hermit and I like landmarks. Makes it feel like the time goes faster.)
•    Halfway through a fun movie when I don’t have to go to the bathroom (It’s happen once or twice. Okay, just once.)
•    Halfway through a computer program loading (LOL)

I’m probably more than halfway through my career as a novelist, though I don’t much like writing that. It’s not so much denial. I know now that I won’t live forever. (Grin) But the math—if I did it right—is against me. I’ve got thirty years of writing behind me, give or take when I actually started calling myself an author. I might have thirty more ahead. Kind of depends on my brain’s wiring and other things I can’t control. I know I’ve got more than 13 books left in me, if I just have the years left to get them written down.

I guess the lesson for today, if we need one, is that if we spend too much time looking back, or too much time looking ahead, we might miss the right now. Once the time is gone, we can’t get it back. So how do you feel about mid-points? 50%? Being halfway to or away from something? Comments are welcome and rewarded by entrance into my monthly drawing for an AnaBanana gift basket (worth $50 this month in honor of NaBloPoMo). Winner will be announced the first post of December.

Perilously yours,

When Pauline isn’t mulling midpoints, she is trying to write her way to both midpoints and finish lines. She’s done it 13 times and is hoping to make it to lucky 14. To find out more about her and her books, pop over to her website. Or check the navigation bar of this blog. 🙂

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