Firstly, this is a message for anyone who reads this who took the time and the effort and the kindness to send me a message on my birthday and especially to those who bought me gifts which are all extremely thoughtful and incredibly generous.
One of the gifts I got was from my wife.
She gets these calendars each year which have cartoon horse sketches on them (I don’t know the name of the artist) and she has a diary that’s the same and they’re quite well known in the equine world.
It turned out this year she got two and so she gave one to me.
I’m not too fussed about cartoon horses myself.
When I opened it though there were some entries written into it and she explained to me that this was the calendar she thought we could put 50 things I would do this year, in the year that I was 50.
I know this is not a new concept at all and many people have done extraordinary things (50 marathons in your 50th year or 50 triathlons etc) and this will not be so grand.
It’s really creating 50 memories and doing 50 wonderful things with people I love and that are special to me throughout the year.
The first thing was going out for lunch on my birthday with Alison and Grace and then the family dinner that we had at home that day.
I’ll always remember that and when people ask me what I did on my 50th birthday I’ll say that I took football training for the Mustangs and then went to the pub with my family.
There were about 20 other things in the calendar ranging from 2 nights away with my wife at a cottage in Lincolnshire, to tickets for Coldplay and the rest of it I get to decide and negotiate and put in so that when I get to the end of the year I should have notes (and hopefully photographs) from the 50 things I did.
This is perhaps about the most special gift that I could have gotten because as I’ve got older I’ve realised that memories are never made in the future and they’re never made in the past, they’re only ever made right now.
The other thing about memories is that they put a flag in the sand of where you are and where you were at that time and time slows down because you’ve created the memories.
I’ve realised for long periods in my 30’s I didn’t seem to be creating any significant memories because I was just so terribly busy with work and a young family and trying to keep it all together, that even when I went on holiday I had really special times which creating memories in my mind.
I realised after that, that it was experiences both negative and positive that are the things that slow your life down, make time pass less frantically and are perhaps the most important things in the world.
These can be free or really inexpensive and can range, for me, from seeing a band at Rock City or a film at the cinema with Stuart Reekie or a cafe stop on the bike with Louis or Simon or kindness from a patient at work.
And so, I’ll mark these down and write them down and then probably talk about them here (because this is a stream of consciousness that references my life). Later on, if I ever reach the blessed position of being old and infirm and in my chair unable to move, I’ll look back at this and look back at this year and see what I managed to do.
Blog Post Number - 2969
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