Today is my fiftieth birthday. I feel it's a bit unseemly to mention this, which is why I do so.

I celebrated this morning with 9:30 am Zumba class. It seemed important (although I did Tweet that any injury would be taken as an omen). I started with crunchy knees and now they feel fine, which tells me that I'll never be able to stop doing this. Given that I'm healthier than I was twenty years ago, and the gym has turned out to be a stress release like no other, literally, I wasn't planning to stop now anyway.

So what's changed? I've spent the last few years wondering if every twinge was something to be ignored, coddled, or seen as a harbinger of doom. My relationship with my body has always been troubled, but that's gotten a bit better (due in large part, no doubt, to the gym). Some changes I'm not at all pleased with, but they're not recent enough to be alarming. Others I don't mind. I thank Hillary Clinton for giving me a bit of pride in my age and gender. I haven't had a huge number of good role models for aging, and every time I saw one of her appearances last year, I felt hope that I could maintain authority and poise as I get older.

What I don't like is being arbitrarily shuttled into a new category I don't care for simply because I woke up today. The "45-54" demographic will give me comfort for a while, and then I guess I'll go through this all over again.

I do have a sense of "What have I accomplished so far and when the heck am I going to get around to doing something significant?" I have also had this feeling every year of my life since I left college. This year is going to bring some great changes and, I hope, some motivation and stability. Those will be worth quite a lot. Enough to counterbalance the age on file with the pharmacy, surely.