Sweet Spot

I read Buechner first thing and, as usual, I’m enchanted with the way he dances with words. I’ll never be able to write like him, but that’s okay. I was never meant to.

According to developmental psychologist Erik Erikson’s stages of human psychological developmental, I’m in late adulthood. I found it jarring, and somehow hard to digest, when I realized I’m no longer categorized as middle-aged. I wore my middle-aged-ness comfortably. Good things happened when I caught the stride of being me.

Now, some days sixty seems like the new forty and other days it feels more like eighty.

Late adulthood, according to Erikson, is a time of wisdom when our work shifts from the output of something to the inner work of contemplation and rumination. This is good news for one like me who ponders and scribbles words (and still expects to output something). Maybe I’m coming into my sweet spot.

So, on this chilly September morning I’ll return to my writing desk and I might even light a pumpkin pie scented candle in honour of the ordinary occasion of planting myself in the chair and doing the late adulthood, sweet torture work of ruminating and writing.