Self-made deadlines are funny, aren’t they? 

I’m always a bit behind my own deadlines. As I rang in 1990, for instance, my friend and I decided that 1990 would the year. The year things would happen. We’d figure it all out. We’d our acheive goals. We’d find love. True love. Yeah, man. It was going to happen.

1990 wasn’t the year. Not at all. Not for either of us. 

It turned out 1991 was the year. Nothing major happened, and I didn’t figure it all out.  I did, however, achieve a goal (straight As in college), and I found love. True love. January 2011 was the 20th anniversary of our first kiss. I gave my husband another one to mark the occasion. Two decades of love is something to celebrate.

So maybe when I celebrated my 40th birthday in September and silently noted that I’d missed my deadline, I should have told myself to cheer up, as my arbitrary deadlines are often a bit elastic.

A new poem of mine, Fury, went live on Zouch Magazine today. This is the first time that my work has been published with a byline (other than newsletters, other byline-free work, and my own blog), and though it didn’t happen before I turned 40, it happened, which is really the point, anyway.

Please check it out at Zouch Magazine (http://zouchmagazine.com/poetry-fury/), and if you like it, like it, share it, and get the word out that 40 isn’t the end, it’s a beginning for this girl.