to better articulate...

This month has flown by!  I thought when I got to be the "venerable" age of 40 I'd be on the way to being ...sooooo mature...soooooo grounded...knowing who I am...and having accomplishments coming out my ears.  Well, I'll be 40 in a few weeks and I'm looking at my life and saying, "Holy Sh__! those 20 years flew by."  I feel a bit ripped off...and......scared?  It's led to some re-evaluation on my part.  Course it seems I'm always in the mode of re-evaluation but this is more.. this focusing on myself..what I've made with my life...who I'm becoming...saying to myself that the "buck stops with me" for the things I want to keep and enlarge in my life.  And the buck stops with me when it comes to the things I need to let go.  And, really, for the first time in my life.. realizing that I have the say, the ONLY say, in what I want for my life... who I want to be.  See.. nobody can really do anything about me..but me.  And in the end, people might care about the choices I make..feel bad for the choices I make, but my choices are all about me..no one else.  I'm just a bit chargined that it's taken me until 40 to come to this.  But it's highly empowering to realize that the center of my life is me.  That's not being selfish.  It's realizing that the choices I make are for me and about me.  I might be able to have influence with other people, and they might have influence with me, but everything I choose to do, the responsibility of the outcome of that choice, rests on me.  I've made so many choices for other people and based from fear.  My 40's will be the decade to live more true to me.