I started exercising for my body. Now I’m discovering what movement does for my head. Annoyingly, the exercise people may have had a point.

Exercise used to be about changing my body. At 56, I’m much more interested in what my body lets me keep doing.

The life we keep saying we want is not mostly made out of extraordinary days. It is mostly made out of Wednesdays. Maybe the goal is to build ordinary days we actually want to be in.

I kept waiting for everything to be settled before I started living. At 56, I have some unfortunate news about that strategy: nothing appears to be settling down.

There comes a point when worrying about your parents’ time starts making you think about your own. Not in a dramatic way. Just differently.

Starting over in your 50s isn’t always graceful, inspirational, or particularly well organized. This is what Upward-ish is about — figuring out what comes next, keeping the useful parts, laughing at the ridiculous ones, and refusing to make the second half the smaller half.