Yikes. Give me time by myself, alone with my thoughts, add in a couple of glasses of wine and beware. 

I've been pondering lots of things lately. It would seem I am surrounded by people re-inventing themselves. My neighbors joined Weight Watchers and lost a lot of weight and started working out at the gym. I checked out what was okay for WW and I tried some of things that were okay to eat.  Hmm. Okay to eat maybe for people who don't have any taste buds or who don't care what kind of stuff they put into their bodies. No fats whatsoever are allowed. Not even fats that are actually good for your body.  Somehow I don't think it is "healthy." Some of the breads taste like cardboard. Why bother for a few less fat calories? I guess I don't get it. Okay. I do, but I don't. Rick and I did the South Beach Diet things years ago and although it worked for me, I love food too much to get too bogged down in the what-to-eat vs the what-not-to-eats. Another friend drinks only whey shakes during the day. Yes, she's lost weight (and was not overweight at all to begin with) but really? I would love to lose three pounds. Maybe four, but life is too short to limit oneself to such extreme measures at my age. Moderation is the key. And accepting yourself for who you are, and accepting your body for what it is at any age is a good thing. Our society today places too much emphasis on what we look like.

Besides, I have my own diet: the 3 Dog Diet. If you haven't heard of it before this, well you have now. Take a handful of anything. It can be junk food, good food, whatever, it doesn't really matter. Take the portion you just took for yourself and divide it between yourself and three eager dogs. There you have it — the 3 Dog Diet. Another version is order a hamburger (or any other alternative nasty fast food object) and eat all but the last three bites, thereby dividing it between three dogs' mouths. Voilà: instant diet!

My sister shared with me yesterday that she is contemplating, well, something major for changing her life up.

And me? Nothing as lofty as either of the aforementioned things.          

And therein lies the question: is there something wrong with me that I have no goals to set, no burning desire to do or be something? Am I just complacent? Or am I just lazy?  Or even worse, afraid? I don't know the answer to that. I only know that I don't feel a need at this time in my life to "fix things" and hopefully that is okay.  Somehow it seems other than okay to just sit back and enjoy life without having some lofty goal in sight. Is it okay to be at a place in life where you don't feel the need to improve or reinvent while everyone around you seems to be doing just that?

Maybe it's because I've challenged myself a lot throughout my life so far. Living in three different European countries, where at the time English was not widely spoken, was a pretty good challenge. Not only linguistically, but just day to day life.  Heck, even moving to New Jersey from Colorado was challenging in the fact that it was different. Culturally speaking, I might as well be living in a different country with the additional perk of still speaking the same language. Well, at least most of the time. But that's a subject for a different blog entry in the future. But you get my drift here.

I've led a full life filled with plenty of travel and challenges and right now I feel like I don't mind coasting along with the flow. Will I regret the coasting? Maybe, but I don't think so. I'm just not that kind of person. Getting to know the "real" you and being comfortable with that, to me, is what it's all about. I might be wrong in someone else's eyes, but for now, I think I'm who I am supposed to be. Am I perfect? No. But I think I can live with that.

But should I? Am I missing something?

Photo: Broken: A dejected chair on the porch of one of the old houses at Long Pond Ironworks.