Myself: What?
Me: It’s our 41st birthday today!
I: What’s awesome with that? We’re another year older. OLDER! Don’t you get the concept of getting old yet?
Myself: Yeah, like our-feet’s-nearing-the-point-when-it-gets-buried-six-feet-under kind of old. And I don’t mean the getting-stuck-in-one-helluva-bog kind of buried.
Me: C’mon, gurls. It means we’re grown up. Remember, we always said, “When I grow up I’ll be a…” when we were younger?
Myself: Newsflash, gurl. We’ve been there long before now. We’re grown up.
Me: We are? But—but—but…but we’re still not who I wanted us to be! I thought we’ll have time to prepare for that!
I: Ei, birthday girl. Where have you been the last two decades? We’re not Methuselah—that time has passed y’know. It’s not a race to 960 years old anymore. It’s a race to 90…and even then, we might not want to be around looking wrinkly.
Myself: Uhuh. Have you seen 90something women these days? You’d be lucky to see one without a walker…or even walking, for that matter.
I: And let me remind you, gurl: 41 is more than halfway up the 80ish ladder.
Me: So what have we been doing the last 41 years if we’re still not who we wanted to be when we grew up?
Myself: I don’t know about you but we never agreed on who we wanted to be. I wanted to be a doctor.
Myself: But we had the smarts to be one! Or even a lawyer…
I: I elected to be a lawyer, remember? But y’all said it’s too much memorizing and stuff. Absolutely nosebleed-inducing torture.
Myself: Me? I never said that.
Me: I think I was the one who said that. :(
I: And I think it was you, too, who said not to expend too much effort studying because we’re not going to enjoy working anyways.
Me: I did, but look where we are now! We’re not even using the stuff we learned for four years—four long years—in college.
Myself: So, who are we today? I never got ‘round to placing a label on what we are grown up.
I: Writer?
Me: Nah. I believe we’ve agreed a few years ago that we’re just pretending at writerly smarts, heh.
Myself: I think we said we’re master content regurgitators—or whatever that is.
I: I think we did.
Me: Sigh. So, we never grew up, huh?
Myself: Uhuh.
I: I beg to differ. We are grown…or at least a semblance of it. Last I remember, we were deciding on what we were going to be next. As in, we’re through being pretend writers and we’ve decided we’re going to be a real, honest-to-goodness, earning-six-figure-income-a-year writer.
Me: Is there such a thing?
Myself: J. K. Rowling is a billionaire.
I: I think we’ve agreed that we’re way down, down, down the totem poles of writer savvy. Way, way, way down from the J. K. Rowlings of this world.
Myself: Don’t be such a party pooper.
Me: Yeah, remember, it’s our 41st birthday today. It can be the first day of the rest of our life, you know. We still have time.
I: Yeah, but the clock’s winding down. Like there’s only 40 more years to our timeline.
Myself: God willing.
Me: There is that. Still, we’re 41. It’s a new day in a new year. I think, this time, we’ll have to agree on what we are for real.
Myself: Might as well. Let’s not waste time anymore.
I: So what are we going to agree on?
Me: That we’re grownups.
I: Besides that.
Me: That we’re writers.
I: And?
Me: And we’re going to earn a darned good living writing stuff.
Myself: Six figures income, to be exact.
I: Who’s in?
Me: Me!
Myself: Myself!
I: And I, of course.
A long silence ensues.
I, sighing: Then we have to start writing every day.
Me: There is that…
Myself: Bummer.
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