Hey, it's Maggie.

This week, we are revisiting some of our favorite poems and reflections from the season so far.

I'm Maggie Smith, and this is The slowdown.

I don't have a five-year plan.

I'm not sure there was ever a time in my life when I did.

In five years, my youngest will be 18 and getting ready to leave home.

My oldest will be 22 and getting ready to begin her adult life.

I suppose one version of a five-year plan for me is supporting my daughter through college

and supporting my son through high school.

But then what?

What's next for me?

The honest answer is, I don't know.

I have five years to think about what I want out of the next stage of my life.

Five years to think about my priorities and what might make me happy and fulfilled and how I might want to use my time and

talents. What are my hopes? I hope, as a writer, I'm still lit up by new ideas. I hope I'm in love and building something lasting. I hope that with the freedom

of becoming an empty nestor, I'm traveling and spending time with friends and having adventures

that were previously more difficult to manage. This is a wish list, though, not anything near a plan.

And I think that's okay. I want to stay flexible and open. I want to focus on how my life feels on the inside, not how it looks from the outside.

I've been talking to my daughter about this too as she finishes high school and starts to think about college.

Where will she go? What will she study? What kind of career might she have later?

All of these are good questions and questions that are natural to ask when we are on the precipice of big changes.

But I keep asking her other questions too. What do you want your days and therefore your

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