So why, you may be wondering, is this post titled “Quinceañera?”
If you are familiar with Latin American cultures, you have heard of “Quinceañera”—or, perhaps, been part of one. Basically, it’s a “coming of age” party for a girl who’s turned fifteen years old. I guess you could say it’s a Hispanic version of “Sweet Sixteen,” one year earlier.
Of course, I am not writing this post because I’ve turned fifteen. When I was that age, it never would have occurred to me that I was in midlife, or any other particular stage of life. I probably was as self-absorbed as (or possibly even more self-absorbed than) other kids of that same age. Now I realize that it, like much about adolescence that is denigrated (“oh, that’s so adolescent!”) is actually normal: Kids are trying to figure out a lot of things as their bodies are changing in ways for which they’re unprepared. In my case, my solipsism had to do with those things and, ironically, something I was trying to avoid—and wouldn’t make any attempt to resolve until decades later, when I realized that I was in midlife but would soon be at the end if I didn’t resolve it.
The resolution of that conflict became part of the basis of a blog I started two years before this one: Transwoman Times. Writing it led me to start Midlife Cycling: Someone who read TT noticed that some of my posts were about cycling and suggested that I start a blog specifically about cycling.
So, on this date in 2010–fifteen years ago—I wrote the first of 4754 posts I’ve written on this blog. Back then, I had no idea of how long I would keep up this blog: Would I run out of things to say? Do I have undiagnosed ADHD that would distract me from this and cause me to start another blog, or some other project? Or would I stop “fooling myself,” as some might say, with the notion that I’m in the middle of my life as long as I don’t know when I’m going to die and finally admit that I’m old?
The answer to that last question is an emphatic “NO!” As long as I can ride, I am not “too old” for, well, anything—including a Quinceañera, if only for this blog.
So, I thank all of you who have been reading—and following me as I cycle through my midlife and this blog’s Quinceañera!
