Hi, friends,

A reader told me that Yogi tea turns out to have a very high level of pesticides in their herbal tea blends, and recommended that I switch to Traditional Medicinals. I'm drinking a cup of Traditional Medicinals Immune Zoom Elderberry Echinacea right now, and it's a little cinnamon-forward for me, but I'm sure I'll get used to it. The Traditional Medicinals teabag tag messages are all quotes, not aphorisms, and that's a nice change. I've got "Are not flowers the stars of the earth? --Clara Lucas Balfour" right now.

Tomorrow is my birthday, and usually every year I think a little about all the things I planned to do and failed at doing since my last birthday. I don't set out to make myself feel like a failure, I just start thinking about where I am and where I wish I was slash thought I'd be by now. On the one hand, I never imagined that I'd turn 52 married to someone I really love, after being alone for so long after my divorce. But I also thought I'd have published more books by now, would be making more positive change in the way companies manage people, and would have finished more projects of all sorts.

When my kids were still at home I could use them and caring for them as an excuse to myself for why I haven't done as much as I wanted to. But they're adults off on their own, mostly, so it's time to focus on myself and what I'm getting done.

I remember when I thought I would have it all together by the time I was 40. Ha! I think I should feel lucky to have all these extra years, even if I'm not being as productive as I thought I'd be. Interestingly enough, I think I've been more productive since the coup started than I've been in recent years. Maybe fear and raging anger are driving me to finish my to-do lists, or maybe I'm just realizing that if I don't do it all now, it might never happen because the world could end at any second.

Am I the only one who uses birthdays as times to assess progress? I enjoy my birthday otherwise, but the realization that I'm no longer a prodigy hits me every year.

(If you want to give me something for my birthday, I love rubrics of all sorts and would love you to tell me about a rubric that you enjoy or use regularly. If hitting Reply to this doesn't work, send to my firstname dot my lastname @ gmail)

Love,

Magda

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