It's All Relative, Mr. Einstein

Age is, that is; relative, I mean.

Since we started the midlifebloggers conversation, a number of people have been weighing in about whether they are or are not midlife bloggers. In a post the other day, Catherine from [The Seventh Notebook] queried whether at 38, she qualifies to join the group. No, she decided; she's not midlife yet, even though she likes hanging out with us and she's doing that whole growing-out-my-gray number that we all think about from time to time. To me, both those facts point to her definite place as a midlifer. Others have gone through complicated mathematical equations, trying to determine if and when they'll be midlife. I hate to break it to you, but if you fall off a bridge tomorrow, then you were midlife in your teens. See, it's all relative. Which means that it's all in our heads.

As I'm working on the MidLifeBloggers website these days and thinking about who we are and what we want and/or need, the one thing I know we don't want--and I've said this before--is to put an age limit on us. You right there, you're just 37, so, nope, off you go for another couple of years. And you over there in the corner, you're 70--too old, too old. The world is already too full of people telling us why we're not right for one reason or another. The blogosphere is just another world and it, too, can operate on the exclusion clause. In fact, that's probably why it sometimes can seem just like highschool.

I'm envisioning MidLifeBloggers.com as a place where we gather to hang out and laugh or cry, to debate and console and teach and learn from each other all about The Great What's Next. We're peers, you know, some of us junior and some of us senior, but we're still all part of the conversation. I know for a fact that the ages of the women on the midlifeblogger blogroll hit every decade from the thirties to the forties to the fifties to the sixties. We all belong here; that's what MidLifeBloggers is about.

Tell me how you're envisioning MidLifeBloggers.com. What do you want it to be? What will make it yours?