It’s my birthday this month. I turn 59. What do they call it when your birth year and birth age coincide?

As I look back on the last 59 years, I’ve learned a lot of lessons. Perhaps the biggest one is this: Where we are now is not where we are going to be tomorrow.  If things are going great, enjoy them because you’re in the up part of the cycle. If things have gone to shit in a hand-basket, hang on a minute, you’re due some good news.

As y’all know, I was heavily invested in making sure a certain political leader was not successful in his bid to become premier of Ontario. When all was said and done, the pollsters were right and he won. When I bemoaned my failure to my daughter, she quoted some obscure passage from a Terry Pratchett book as a reminder that even when people do dumb things, you can’t just throw up your arms and give up, you’ve got to fight to keep ‘em from destroying themselves.

And so the fight continues. I said I would leave Ontario if he won. I still want to. Having looked at Victoria’s weather, I think it’s a great place to settle in for my final years. The complication is that my daughter just got a job she loves (she was unemployed when I said I’d move, so moving was a no-brainer). I have promised to give her as long as she needs. In the meantime, I’m fixing up my little house. Last week I put a new ceiling and floors in the basement, the last space in the house that needed an upgrade. And I’m working through eliminating anything I don’t want to have to pack. I’ve already gotten rid of 20 huge boxes of stuff: books, kids’ clothes and tchotchkes, CDs, DVDs, and VHS movies and the like. I probably have another 20 to go. (The first 20 were so easy.) The next time I move, I’m going to be much lighter! (Anyone want a piano? A curio cabinet? Come and get them and they’re yours for free. Seriously.)

Everything takes time. Sometimes we become impatient because we want to change things NOW. I guess one of the upsides of getting older is that you’ve had time to strengthen your patience muscles. I am infinitely more patient now than I was when I was 29. And hindsight has proven yet another of my mantras: You CAN have it all, you just can’t have it all at the same time.So I’ll bide my time. And while I wait I’ll keep on believing that as citizens of a first world country, we have a duty to ensure that the most vulnerable are cared for, not mocked or made to feel ashamed of their circumstances.

My sense that Canadians are smarter than Americans has taken a trim. As I watch protests over the pipelines out west, as I watch Conservatism and the religious right catch hold in Canada, as I watch our young people grow increasingly frustrated with their economic insecurity and prospects for the future I know I have to keep speaking up. I want to duck and hide. Really I do. I’m so tired of the Nasties that I could cry. But I’m going to channel my emotions into positive action.

While I’m more like Nanny Ogg than Granny Weatherwax, I have lived my life using my anger to fuel my push forward. Whenever I’ve been told I can’t, I do. So I’ll ride the wave of my fury just like Granny:

“Granny Weatherwax was often angry. She considered it one of her strong points. Genuine anger was one of the world’s greatest creative forces. But you had to learn how to control it. That didn’t mean you let it trickle away. It meant you dammed it carefully, let it develop a working head, let it drown whole valleys of the mind and then, just when the whole structure was about to collapse, opened a tiny pipeline at the base and let the iron-hard stream of wrath power the turbines of revenge.”                          Terry Pratchett

The world is full of inequity. Why is it okay for me to turn on my taps and get clean drinking water while my indigenous sisters and brothers have to buy potable water where they live? Why is the colour of my skin an advantage when my black friends must worry about their children’s safety and must fight doubly hard for equal opportunities? Why am I promised a tax break when my daughter has to figure out how to live on a less-than-livable wage?

For my birthday this year, as I’m blowing out my candles, I am wishing for a world (a country, a province, a town) where everyone has enough to eat, children don’t die because they are crippled with anxiety/depression or the thousands of other forms of Crazy that destroy our souls, and all of us get to be who we want to be – live true to ourselves – regardless of gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic origin.

Each year I usually set myself one new thing to learn so my brain stays sharp. I’ve learned to knit. I’ve learned to paint. I’ve learned to garden, to cook new foods, to do yoga. I haven’t figured out my new thing for 59 just yet, but I’m open to the universe pointing me in a direction. In the meantime I’ll keep using my voice to help identify things that are beyond “unfair” that MUST be fixed. And when I see “stupid,” I’ll say so.

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a memoire. I’ve played with creative writing in the form of some children’s books, which I’ve put off finishing for far too long. And I’m going to blog more about life, the universe and everything.

I want to thank you for the encouragement and kindness you’ve shown me over the years. And I want to encourage you to keep hope, joy and gratitude front and centre as you live through good and bad times.

To quote our beloved Sir Terry yet again:

“A witch ought never be frightened in the darkest forest, Granny Weatherwax had once told her, because she should be sure in her soul that the most terrifying thing in the forest was her.”