While we mark the transitions of early life with rituals—everything from baptisms, communions, and bar and bat mitzvahs to graduations—we usually ignore the more subtle, yet profound, “new beginnings” available to us in midlife.

Recently I read the blog post, “The Life Cycle of a Visionary,” by Lissa and it totally blew me away.  It blew me away for two reasons, one because it felt like truth and two because I realized I was on step four (out of five). 

I once worked in a strip club as a (fully clothed) waitress. While there, I learned that most of the dancers making the big bucks only pretended to get drunk on the $12 mocktail containing only cranberry & orange juice because it made the guys paying for the drink feel like he was going to get somewhere, that the two-and-a-half minute average pole dance on stage was just the right amount of time to scan the crowd for the sucker who would be an easy mark for the $20 lap dance, and that lap dance time was exactly that time when they composed their grocery lists in their heads because doing the same old thing gets tedious, ya know?

You have one life to live. No one else can do it for you. One day you'll die. What will be your life story?