There is something about sitting in a cabin in the Norwegian Highlands, with mountains outside the window and enough silence to hear yourself think, that makes certain ideas feel clearer. This morning, as I sat at the dining table with my laptop, I found myself thinking about the woman I will be when I turn 50. Not in the usual way, with a list of things I need to achieve before my birthday or some elaborate reinvention plan that promises to transform me into a shinier, healthier, more successful version of myself. Something about this year feels different. I don’t want to arrive at 50 having spent the previous twelve months trying to become someone else. I want to arrive there knowing myself more deeply.
That is the heart of what I’m calling The 49-to-50 Project, which begins on my 49th birthday, 19 October 2026, and runs until I turn 50 on 19 October 2027. It will be a year-long, publicly documented journey through the five areas of life that sit at the heart of Midlife by Design: Identity & Self-Discovery, Health & overall Well-being, Relationships & Connections, Money & Purpose, and Quality of Life. Each month, I will write about what I have actually lived, tried, learned, and discovered across all five areas, rather than following a predetermined twelve-month transformation plan.
And that distinction matters to me enormously.
Because I used to think that reinvention meant deciding who I wanted to become and then working backwards to make it happen. Perhaps that is why so many of us create lists at the beginning of a new year, write down our goals, choose a word, and convince ourselves that if we simply follow the plan closely enough, we will eventually arrive as the woman we imagined. But life doesn’t work like that, particularly not in midlife. We change because we live. We learn things we couldn’t have known before. Circumstances shift. People come and go. Our bodies change. Our priorities change. Sometimes something we were absolutely certain we wanted suddenly doesn’t feel right anymore.
I know this because I’m already experiencing it.
Only a few months ago, I might have confidently told you that the 49-to-50 Project would include an Ayurveda Diploma and the Living Ayurveda Immersion programme. I love the idea of both. They sound fascinating, and they fit beautifully with my interest in holistic well-being. But sitting here now, I have to be honest: I’m not feeling the pull yet. And I’m not going to enrol in something simply because it looks good on the plan. Maybe the connection will come. Maybe it won’t. There is no reason to decide today.
The Yoga Teacher Training is different. That is something I know I want to experience at some point next year, so it belongs in the year ahead. But even there, I don’t need to know exactly when or how every piece will unfold. I am learning to leave some doors open without feeling compelled to walk through them immediately.
That is becoming one of the central ideas of this entire project:
I am not designing the woman I’ll be at 50 in advance; I am meeting her as I go.
What if I stopped trying to become?
For years, I believed fulfilment lived somewhere ahead of me. In the next chapter, the next home, the next version of myself, the next relationship, the next achievement. There was always something slightly beyond my reach that I imagined would finally make everything click into place.
But somewhere along the way, something changed.
I began to realise that I wasn’t actually searching for a completely different life. I was learning how to belong more fully to the one I had already begun creating.
I have a Home I love. I have created work that means something to me. I have raised Khushi on my own. I have built a business around the things I care deeply about. I have travelled, created, cooked, baked, walked, photographed, written, decluttered, simplified and filled my life with little rituals that make ordinary days feel beautiful. I have become increasingly comfortable with my own company. I have learnt that solitude isn’t something to fear; sometimes it is exactly what restores me.
Sitting here in this cabin, with the cool air coming through the doorway, the mountains stretching beyond the terrace, and my belongings scattered around me, I can see that much of the life I once imagined is already here.
So this isn’t a year in which I tear everything down and start again.
It is a year of inhabiting.
Five areas. One life.
The project will continue to be rooted in the five pillars that have always shaped Midlife by Design. I want to explore Identity & Self-Discovery through the question of who I am beneath all the roles I have played and what continues to emerge as I move through this season of life. I want to understand myself more deeply, notice what I’m shedding and what I’m choosing, and keep exploring confidence, self-worth, emotional well-being and the simple act of choosing myself.
Health & overall Well-being will be about learning to listen to my body rather than constantly trying to override it. Menopause, movement, nourishment, energy, sleep, and the rhythms of my body will all have a place here, alongside things I am curious about and want to explore for myself. That includes my growing interest in biohacking and chrononutrition, which I want to approach as lived experimentation rather than another rigid programme to follow. I may discover something transformative, I may discover something isn’t for me, or I may simply learn more about how my own body works. That’s the point.
Relationships & Connections will probably be one of the most interesting pillars of all. Midlife changes our relationships in ways we don’t always anticipate, whether we’re navigating family, friendship, community, loneliness, intimacy or the possibility of partnership. I am already discovering this in real time as I begin putting myself back into circulation after a period where pain, surgery, and recovery kept me largely at Home. I don’t know what this year will bring in my relationships, and I don’t intend to manufacture an outcome. I simply want to be open enough for life to introduce me to people and experiences I might otherwise miss.
Money & Purpose will explore what sustainable ambition looks like for me now. I still want to create, contribute, build, and grow, but I am no longer interested in burning myself out to prove that I can. I want to build a business that supports the life I want rather than becoming the life itself. There will be books, projects, collaborations, events, and all the things that naturally emerge, but I want to remain curious about what success actually means to me at 49 rather than automatically carrying forward definitions that belonged to a younger woman.
And then there is Quality of Life, which perhaps sits underneath everything else. This is the Home I have created, the way I move through my days, the rituals and rhythms that make life feel like mine, the beauty I create around me, the seasons, food, travel, creativity, solitude, community and all the little things that make an ordinary Tuesday worth remembering. I have spent years learning that quality of life isn’t some frivolous extra we get once the serious work is done. It is the whole point.
These five pillars aren’t five separate projects. They are five ways of looking at one life, and every monthly essay will touch on all of them. I don’t want to decide that January is about health, February is about relationships, and March is about money. Real life doesn’t work in neat monthly categories, and neither will this project.
I don’t know what the year will bring
That is perhaps what excites me most.
I don’t have the next twelve months mapped out. I know some things are already on the horizon. My book launches on my 49th birthday, the project begins, and there are other milestones already in the diary, including my Yoga Teacher Training at some point during the year. There are collaborations that may happen, conversations I haven’t had yet, and ideas that haven’t even occurred to me.
But I don’t want to know everything.
I want some space for life to interrupt the plan. I want to wake up one morning and realise that something I thought I wanted doesn’t feel right anymore. I want to discover something unexpectedly fascinating. I want to meet people who change how I think. I want to try things that scare me a little. I want to stop doing things that no longer serve me. I want to follow curiosity when it appears.
Most importantly, I want to pay attention because this isn’t an experiment conducted from a distance. I am the experiment.
Why I’m doing it publicly
I could do all of this privately. In fact, it would probably be easier. I could keep a private journal, make a list of goals, quietly try things, and only tell people about the bits that worked. I could wait until October 2027 and write a beautifully polished retrospective about everything I learnt.
But that isn’t what interests me.
I want to document the middle.
The mornings when something works and the mornings when it doesn’t. The experiments that surprise me. The things I try and abandon. The conversations that change something inside me. The moments when I feel incredibly clear and the moments when I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.
I want to write about the ordinary parts too, because that’s where most of life happens.
There will be no polished transformation narrative where everything magically falls into place because I turned 49. There will simply be a woman living her life, paying attention to what is happening and sharing what she learns along the way.
That feels much more honest to me.
And perhaps more useful to other women, too.
Because I don’t think we need another woman standing at the finish line telling us how she transformed her life. I think we need more women willing to say, This is what it looks like while I’m still figuring it out.
The year is already beginning to take shape
There are some beautiful things already woven into the year ahead. My Yoga Teacher Training will become part of my exploration at some point, while other possibilities, such as Ayurveda, can remain possibilities until they genuinely call me. My health journey will include experiments and collaborations that emerge naturally, including the Geno3 DNA and Health Insights collaboration, while Quality of Life will include some wonderfully tactile and offline moments too, such as the 12 Davincified paint-by-numbers canvases. The plan is to paint one canvas each month as an unplugged, screen-free practice, which feels particularly appropriate after what I’ve learnt here in the cabin about how difficult it can be for me to simply sit still.
There will also be things I cannot possibly plan for yet.
The person I haven’t met.
The conversation I haven’t had.
The idea that hasn’t arrived.
The opportunity I don’t know exists.
The part of myself I haven’t discovered.
That’s where the magic lives.
And then there is #85WeeksToFifty
Running alongside the 49-to-50 Project is #85WeeksToFifty, my weekly interview countdown to 50. They will run throughout this entire year. I already have interviews scheduled through October 2026, and I’m now reaching out for the remaining 52 conversations.
These conversations will bring in different voices across the five pillars, offering perspectives from coaches, authors, practitioners, experts and thought leaders. The interviews are the companion heartbeat to the project, giving me and the women following along an opportunity to hear how other people think about identity, health, relationships, work, money, and quality of life.
The beauty of having both is that one is my lived experience, while the other brings in the experiences and wisdom of other people.
Together, they create a much bigger conversation about what it means to live intentionally through midlife.
I don’t know who I’ll be at 50
And I think I’m finally okay with that.
The old version of me would probably have wanted a plan. She would have wanted to know what the transformation would look like, what she would achieve, what she would learn, and exactly who she would become by the time she reached the other side.
But I’m sitting here in a cabin in the Norwegian Highlands, surrounded by mountains, old journals, paintbrushes, tea and the remnants of a very busy year, and I feel differently now.
I don’t want to design the woman I’ll be at 50 in advance.
I want to meet her. I want to notice her arriving slowly through the choices I make, the people I meet, the things I try, the things I let go of, the boundaries I hold, the risks I take, the mornings I spend alone, the work I create, the way I care for my body, the relationships I nurture, and the ordinary beauty I allow myself to experience.
I want to see what happens when I stop reaching quite so desperately for the next version of myself and start paying attention to the woman already sitting here.
Perhaps she knows more than I think she does. Perhaps she needs less than I think she does. Perhaps she doesn’t need to become at all. Perhaps she simply needs to belong.
Walk with me
The 49-to-50 Project begins on 19 October 2026, my 49th birthday, and closes on 19 October 2027, when I turn 50. The year will begin with a Life Audit across all five pillars, followed by monthly essays from October onwards, and it will close with a return to that same audit in October 2027.
I don’t know exactly where this year will take me.
And that’s the whole point.
I’m not standing here at 49 with a blueprint for the woman I intend to become at 50.
I’m standing at the beginning of a year with my eyes open, my life already beautifully underway and enough curiosity to see what happens next.
This is Midlife by Design, Not by Default.
Not a transformation project.
Not a glow-up.
Not a reinvention performed for an audience.
Just one woman, living her life deliberately, paying attention, experimenting, learning, letting go, becoming, and occasionally changing her mind.
And meeting herself as she goes.
Welcome to my 49-to-50 year ❤️
~ Kiran x
Kiransinghuk.com | The Sattva Collective
CHECK OUT LAST YEAR’S DAY 5 ENTRY
The Cabin Diaries - Day 5: Wellness as a Way of Living
Since arriving at the cabin in the Norwegian Highlands six days ago, my days have taken on a rhythm that feels both unfamiliar and deeply natural.
There is so much in this essay that I love, Kiran, but the part that really stayed with me was what you said about not wanting to design the woman you will be at 50, but rather “meeting her as you go.” As a woman a few steps ahead of you on that timeline, that has certainly been my experience as well. In my 20s and 30s, and even for much of my 40s, I was actively trying to build the architecture of what I thought a good life was supposed to look like—adding the right pieces, playing the right roles, contorting myself when necessary to make it all fit. It wasn’t until I reached 50 that I began to understand that becoming wasn’t about adding more at all. It was about stripping away the layers of expectation and identity I had accumulated along the way and getting curious about the woman underneath. I didn’t need to design her. I needed to finally meet her. And what a joy it has been to discover that she was there all along.