Nifty Fifty Blogfest

Today, my Nifty Fifty Blogfest contest is taking place! So far 12 people are taking part, each writing a blog post involving the theme 'fifty'. I've read a few of the entries so far, and they're really creative and interesting. It's nice to see that everyone has interpreted the theme in their own way, so there's lots of diversity. For the rest of the day I'll be heading over to the participant's blogs to check out their entries, comment on their posts and start the judging. If you haven't entered yet it's not too late, you have until midnight tonight (Saturday) as I won't be posting the winner until Sunday or Monday.



Anyway, I decided to follow suit and take part as well, so today I'm writing a letter to my future self, aged 50 years.


Letter to my fifty year-old self


Dear fifty year-old me,
                            I can hardly imagine being fifty years old, it seems a whole world away. But I'm sure I'll be there before I know it and it will seem like all this happened only yesturday. I have a lot of hopes for you. I hope that you are still with the man you love and that you're growing old together like a couple of kids. I hope you still believe in love and think it's the most important thing in the world. I hope you had children and enjoyed watching them grow up and that you're looking forward to grandchildren. If that didn't happen for you I hope you didn't take it too hard. You have a lot of love to give and I know you'll make a difference somehow. I hope you are still in touch with your old friends, but hopefully you will have lots of new friends by now too. You've probably lost a few peope you loved along the way, but remember they will always be with you. Whatever the situation, I know you're happy if you have lots of family and pets around you.

I hope that you enjoy the job that you're doing. If you don't, it's time to get out now- life's too short to be stuck in a job you hate. Hopefully you found a way to involve writing in your career and you're free to be creative in what you do. Maybe you have a book published, but if not, it's still not too late. Never give up on being a writer, not even after you retire. If you still enjoy writing then your time isn't wasted. But if writing isn't fun for you anymore, I hope you've found something that is and you're throwing all your energy into that.

I hope you're still active-that you still like going for walks and bike rides and that you still do a wide range of hobbies. You need to start taking care of yourself more than you used to. I hope you eat better than I do and that you're looking after your body and your mind. Knowing you the way I do, you're probably struggling with the idea of getting old. You've probably got some wrinkles and grey hairs by now and probably a very different figure than the one I have now. You probably don't like what you see in the mirror some days. You probably look back on photos of me and miss the way you were. But even then you weren't happy with yourself. You worried about your weight and your problem skin. I hope you can see now that the worries you had were so unimportant in the great scheme of things. Aging happens to everyone and you have to come to terms with it.

I hope you've grown a lot wiser and learnt from your past mistakes, but I hope you haven't changed completely. I hope you still know who who are and are proud of that and that you never give up on your dreams. Here's to the next fifty years!

Lots of love, twenty one year-old me.
xxx


Good luck to everyone taking part today and I hope you all enjoy checking out the other entries.