January 1st, 2019…Say it out loud and it sounds ridiculous. But maybe that’s because I was born in 1945. So 2019 was too far away for me to even consider for much of my life.

My Facebook feed is full of posts welcoming the New Year…or not…or claiming immunity from negativity…or not. I am not inclined to make grand gestures. So this will do for me:

In 2019, I am starting a podcast, called The Other Side of 60. It is known informally among the few in the know as #TOS60.

As soon as I finished those sentences, I sat. Well, actually, I peed, cleaned out the bathtub drain, and walked back to my desk to admit that the writing of them had me  almost paralyzed with fear.

How dare I even think that I could do a podcast? Yes, I’m the founder of MidLifeBloggers.com and that had a pretty good run back in the day. But in today’s media world? Who would listen? Why would they listen? And what would I say?

The answers to those hark back to MidLifeBloggers. I started that, the first on-line website magazine for and by people in midlife. I put no age restrictions on it because my overriding goal was inclusivity. This was the time when mommybloggers took all the time and attention given women on the internet. This was also the time when monetization first became a thing. Put those things together, and those of us who were no longer in the first decades of childrearing, those of us who had never had a child to raise, were pretty much off the radar of any of the new wonders offered by Web 2.0. We had been, pretty much, erased.

That drove me crazy. So one day, in a fit of pique, I bought the MidLifeBloggers.com url and invited other people, women and men, bloggers or not, to join me in creating a place where the multiplicity of our voices would be heard. The rest, as they say, is history.

So this, then, is what I’m at again with The Other Side of 60. We are, those of us, 60+, 70+, 80+ and beyond, a mixed lot. There is no essential older woman, no matter how often savvy marketing ploys tell you the single road to fulfillment as an older woman is ……..fill in the blank…….  

As part of this foray into podcasting, I had to answer some questions. Like, who is my ideal listener and what problem am I solving with my podcast. To this, I said:

My ideal listener is anywhere from 60 to 100+ because what characterizes them is not their specific age but their attitude to life. They are very much still engaged in living as fully as they can. They want to experience, explore, learn, enjoy, create, and find satisfaction in the big and small things of life. TOS60 offers them a place to share, learn from others, get expert opinion

I am solving the problem all of us face as we move from middle age to the years 60, 70, 80 and beyond: how do I find relevance in the world I live in? What gives meaning to my life? What takes away from it? What can I do, how can I be proactive in creating the life on the other side of 60 that makes me feel…..

Tomorrow I’ll share some of the nuts and bolts of #TOS60, as well as some of my programming ideas. In the meantime, as with MidLifeBloggers, I’m throwing this venture open to whoever wants to join in. Let me know if that’s you.