Welp, I’m 50! I won’t pretend it doesn’t feel strange. I was excited, mostly referring to myself as pushing 50 throughout 48 and 49 anyway. But then it arrived. And now I’m here. Sitting on a 99% complete novella and an 85% complete third book. About to depart my east coast home for my west coast home and all the logistics that come with it. And my mind won’t stop spinning.

I posted a 50 for 50 on instagram, that highlighted everything it took to get me where I am today. From learning to read and write and putting on plays in the third grade, to dropping out of high school and entering colleged before my peers, to all the travels, to writing and finishing a book. Then another. Then winning awards and ending up on Times Square billboard as a result of it. All those moments – little and big – shaping who I am and how I approach things today.

I had a really hard year last year, that was filled with many highs and many lows. And the lows were the kind that reshape you. And yet here I am, intact, on the other side of it, changed but in one piece. So when I think about all those little moments leading up to today, it makes me realize that there are still moments to be had and those moments will continue to shape me. The only difference now is—I’m 50. And I’m recognizing the impact of those moments immediately, rather than the little ones when I was younger that I didn’t realize what effect it had until much later on.

So as I venture into my 50s, with the lens of a woman whose eyes are wide open, I look forward to more ups and downs and in betweens. And of course finishing my novella and third book—and finally writing the sequel to And Then Ben. A sequel to my first book, just as I enter the sequel to the first half of my life, only let’s hope it’s not filled with a relentless winter and a vague ending.