The Big Five-O

So I turned 50 years yesterday and now I am officially middle aged.

To my biggest surprise, I don't really feel it - except occasionally in the morning or if I am sitting too long at computer - in fact, perhaps I am in a better place mentally, spiritually and physically than a decade ago. I have managed to turn my dream into reality and re-located to another country where I wanted to be, building my new life from a scratch, at the age where most of my friends back home think about retirement. The strength, the energy, the intensity is still here + I am healthy so not much difference from before, except that maturity has given me slightly different perspective and I don't really crave company as I used to do when I was younger. It also could be that all those years of working on cruise ships and having to deal with lack of privacy made me into solitary person who loves his own space above anything else but maybe this is just natural process common to everybody. 

I got a wonderful surprise present - famous Viennese cake delivered to my doorstep directly from Vienna with a lovely note + few other things. I have spent the day exactly the way I wanted - without big fuss, initially I wanted simply to treat myself with a lunch in a restaurant and to celebrate it quietly, than changed my mind and ended up drinking with a good friend until we were both pleasantly tipsy - but what surprised me the most was complete lack of attention from my numerous virtual friends on Facebook - for many years I was always very careful to send a message to each and every person on the day of their Birthdays, no matter how casual our acquaintance might be, but now on this very special day when I turned 50, I got a message from exactly two and a half people. Hm. That was a bit cold shower and it made me re-think the whole subject of virtual world, virtual friendships and the enormous time I spent on the Internet for what? For exchanging silly jokes, pictures and spiritual messages that basically mean nothing. Perhaps its good that I had this realisation so from now I won't have expectations that these things are serious or meaningful, since they are not. Obviously nothing can replace the real world and this is all that matters. 

Here's to another 50.