Ever wonder what happens to a middle-aged hummingbird when it gets old? I spent the best years of my life as a middle-aged hummingbird traveling the world -- Israel, China, Taiwan, Macau, Bali, Korea -- and those were only the places that I stayed long enough to live and teach. In 2006, I published a book, Memoirs of a Middle-aged Hummingbird.
During 2005, when I was writing the book, I relived those years through the details of the journals and letters. Sights, faces, smells, tastes, and experiences returned to me in vibrant, overwhelming profusion. My past and present blurred until daily chores and activities became burdensome, annoying distractions from writing. The present dimmed, my past took over, and the future went blank.
Wanting to write the book was my motivation for getting a computer and hiring someone to teach me Microsoft Word. Learning the computer skills of writing and then publishing the book through iUniverse, setting up a website for the book at www.zimatravels.com and local speaking engagements kept me busy after the book was published.
Eventually, although engaged in a variety of regular activities and daily exercise, I began to feel stuck. I had paid homage to my unusual and interesting past with the book, spent over a year doing a blog with mostly excerpts from my book on a travel website (can be accessed from www.zimatravels.com) , and did some domestic travel, but my sense of a future remained mired in the unknown. What would come next?
I spent too much time worrying about my health and money, my money and my health. Although I have no major medical problems, I fell twice in two years, breaking the left kneecap the first time and the right kneecap this past summer. I see daily exercising as damage control for aging rather than actually physically progressing in anything. I failed Weight Watchers. I lost 10 lbs. in the first four months, and then spent 3 years going up and down a few lbs. I have become discouraged fighting food every day.
At last, I'm beginning to sense a shift in my state of inertia. It's not really a long term plan, but it feels like some forward momentum is starting. I contacted a family that had shown interest in renting out my home for 6 weeks in the spring. If that plan succeeds, I'll have enough money for airfare back to Asia where I want to see several friends in China, Taiwan, and Singapore. I also plan to go to Bali -- perhaps my favorite place in the world. But more about that later when going is assured.
And I've decided to begin this blog, trying to make sense of these so-called "golden years," which seem rather tarnished to me. What to do with the time I have left? How to make them, if not as exciting and fascinating as my middle-aged years, at least meaningful and interesting? It's a question I believe many seniors face when mortality is creeping up and our lives are winding down.
My death has already been arranged -- cremation, ashes to the sea to keep traveling the world as I loved to do. But it's the in between time, between now and then, that I'm curious about. I am an older version of that middle-aged hummingbird with feet planted firmly in mid-air who hovers, drinks deeply, and then flits away, perhaps to return. I'm still an independent creature who likes to live life intensely. And, I still like to wander, wonder, and write.
I invite you to follow me on my senior hummingbird geographical, physical, emotional, and spiritual journeys to come.
Very nice ...
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