I feel most fortunate

I realized a milestone the other night. I have reached the extent of my mid-life crisis. It came about this way. I was watching an episode of the old TV show Northern Exposure. Yes, that's right, I have the whole series on DVD and am slowly working through it. I liked it when it first came out and I like it now despite the "Alaska errors" and the outlandish supposedly Alaska plots. As a writer of fiction I can see many of the adventures in "Exposure" happening here with just a slight push from a writer's imagination.
In this episode Holling Vencoeur, owner of the Brick bar, learned of an uncle's death at the age of 110. Holling at 63 went into a mid-life crisis believing his life was half over given the longevity of the his male relatives.
How old was I when I thought my life was half over? Right, it was around 36 when I started looking at the life I was living and the life I wanted to be living.Thus began my adventure into the woods, onto the big ocean and through six books.
Holling dealt with his by rounding up every potato in Cicily and heading out to his still which had been owned by his father and his father before him. He began distilling vodka and if we are to believe this, it seemed like he drank most of what he made.
I went about it a different way. I knew I was going to build a cabin in the woods at some point. So I made a list of the tools I would need and every time I took home a paycheck I bought something off that list.
So between me and Holling, in my mind our mid-life crises were resolved. With that resolution, my mind jumped to the present, sitting here in the deep woods and contemplating life and then the realization, "holy crap," I am twice that old now. I've outlived my mid-life crisis, lived two halves of an average life and here I am. What am I supposed to do now?
For one thing, with only two days to go it looks like I will survive 2016. If anybody's been paying attention that's been no small feat at my age. So many great musicians died this year you would think someone was killing them off. Writers, actors, politicians, so many people we loved and then Princess Leia … and her mother.
The world seems emptier without them. And unfortunately it's not over. Most of the rock musicians I grew up with are in their 70s now so bracing for continued announcements.
So what is my good fortune? I lived through this horrible year. I am still standing or sitting anyway but at times now I feel like Slim Pickens riding that nuke earthward shouting Yahoo all to the tune of "I'll see you again, don't know where, don't know when."
And there is this: Keith Richards reportedly is still alive. So maybe it's all right to look forward to another ride around the sun with some measure of optimism based on having.survived the past year.

An addendum: Until I read the comment below, I hadn't considered the glass half-full/half-empty paradigm. I suppose as the years pass the glass grows larger and the volume of the halves changes as does the total for the whole glass. It's almost a catch 22, as you get closer to a full glass, the glass increases in size making it impossible ever to fill it. I guess we keep striving, despite the futility of it and that's all right particularly for anyone with a creative nature. The day you accept anything you've done you're finished anyway. There is a quote credited to the great impressionist Renoir on his death bed. At 94 when asked what he thought of his body of work, he said, "I begin to show promise." In other words his glass never filled to the brim, at least not to his satisfactison, despite his best efforts. And, look what he accomplished. What hope is there for the rest of us? Perhaps the answer lies in the very real threat at the end of the comment which should give us more reason than ever to strive on.