I’m going back into the blogging business.

After a several year hiatus from posting with anything resembling consistency, I’m pulling it together to become a blogger again. I’m revising the site design, rewriting the About Me, and restating the goals that pushed me to begin MidLifeBloggers back in 2007.

It is now, as it was then, all about conversation. How do those of us who are not part of the mainstream cultural conversation find each other? My goals are simple:

• to open the conversation up to our demographic.
• to say there is more to 60+ than health care and grandchildren
• to provide a forum for honest conversation & responses
• to show the full spectrum of 60+ – that’s it’s not just one type

Let’s talk about that demographic. When I closed down the on-line magazine that was MidLifeBloggers, I couldn’t quite shut the door on the site itself. I hadn’t a clue as to what might come next, I just knew that a placeholder name was “Beyond MidLifeBloggers: The Other Side of Sixty.” Simply put, this was going to be my personal blog: I was beyond MidLifeBloggers and I was on the other side of sixty. Que sera, sera and etcetera, etcetera.

Frankly, I thought without the constant attention that the media moguls were telling us we had to put into our brands, mine would shrivel up and die in the land of No Longer Being Actively Nurtured sites. But it didn’t. It kept chugging on with enough advertising pitches to make me think–”hey, maybe I’m not dead. Maybe there’s a world of people on the other side of sixty who know they’re beyond midlife and certainly well past the point of 50 being the new Black or 40 or whatever is in these days. Maybe they need to hear–and express–their own voices.

But of course, I’m no longer on The Other Side of Sixty. I turned seventy last July. So once again, I’m stretching chronology to be inclusive of all ages. The fact is that those of us on the Other Side of Sixty come in all types, cultures, genders and emotional states. I have one 70-something friend who is still jetting around the world as a TV field producer; I have another who has stopped driving and walks with a cane. Both have chosen viable responses to their wants and needs, but I can just hear the critics arguing their choices. If there is one thing that the world would like us to be, it is an Essential Something or Other. You will hew to these commonly understood traits, the Culture Critics say to us–or you will be drummed out of the corps.

Well, I’m not having it. People who know me know I’m a contrarian: On this site, I will write about the good, the bad, the humiliating and the exhilarating about being On The Other Side Of Sixty. I will not pull my punches and, be warned, I do swear. I just want to make some noise for our demographic. If you want to join me, let me know. I’m always big about giving people a place to have their say and see their byline.

Oh, and by the way: I will talk about death.  And farting in public.