{"id":632,"date":"2016-08-17T21:58:27","date_gmt":"2016-08-17T21:58:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/?p=632"},"modified":"2019-02-11T22:03:55","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T22:03:55","slug":"some-thoughts-on-turning-50","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/some-thoughts-on-turning-50\/","title":{"rendered":"some thoughts on turning 50"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\"><figure class=\"alignright is-resized\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/01\/helen_2.jpg\" alt=\"Helen 50\" class=\"wp-image-285\" width=\"300\" height=\"450\"\/><\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n<p>a few weeks ago, an extraordinary thing happened to me: i turned 50 years old. it&#8217;s bizarre to have reached this age, when i don&#8217;t &#8220;feel&#8221; it &#8211; but what&#8217;s 50 supposed to &#8220;feel&#8221; like, anyway? when i was a child, 50 was something impossibly distant and old, older even than my parents (and my parents were old in comparison to my friends&#8217; parents), something that i simply could not conceive of ever being. 50 belonged to people who came from another time (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=lKuc3faQAEs\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\" aria-label=\" (opens in a new tab)\">another planet<\/a>?), a time that was not and never could be mine. and yet: inexorably, time marches on and here we are &#8211; i have existed on this planet, in this form, for half a century. today&#8217;s children must look at me as something impossibly old, from a time they can only imagine. <br> <br> at the same time as i want to shout, &#8220;i don&#8217;t feel 50!&#8221;, and wonder whether a mistake of 10 years has been made with my birth date, i find myself enjoying the sense of perspective as i look back over the last half century. it&#8217;s filled with amazing adventures and achievements as well as, naturally, a few disasters and disappointments; but generally i&#8217;ve been incredibly fortunate. for some unknown reason, i&#8217;ve never been one to follow well-trodden paths or approach conventional milestones in the expected order. rather, my life has been somewhat haphazard and serendipitous, with huge amounts of learning along the way. i hope that&#8217;s how the next half century will continue to unfold.<br> <br> ageing is deeply personal, even though it happens to all of us, no matter how old or young we get to, and it&#8217;s happening all the time, just like life &#8211; in fact, it is life. hitting 50 brings an interesting new perspective to it. i think this next phase is going to be fun!  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>a few weeks ago, an extraordinary thing happened to me: i turned 50 years old. it&#8217;s bizarre to have reached this age, when i don&#8217;t<span class=\"read-more-link\"><a class=\"read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/some-thoughts-on-turning-50\/\">Read More<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":285,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-632","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=632"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":636,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632\/revisions\/636"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.creative-catalyst.com\/expect\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}