Hello, 60! - So, I did a thing.

Well first, here's the why . . .

I'm turning 60 this year — the big six-oh. Honestly, I've been struggling with the number for several months now. It just seems like a huge number. And I don't feel that number fits me. Like, not at all. All sorts of things have been going through my head. First, I never thought I'd make it this long, so I'm pretty grateful for that. Phew! But otherwise, it's mostly been negative thoughts. I'm single at 59, and I've been thinking, what woman in her right mind will want to date someone whose age starts with a six?! Thankfully, I have a girlfriend now, so hopefully I don't have to worry about that anymore. But, nonetheless, let's just say the whole idea has been taking a toll on me mentally.

As the first few hints of Fall (a few chilly days, football, etc.) hit, it began to look inevitable. November 24th is coming, and I'm going to be 60. So, what should I do? Well, I could throw a party. Or I could just ease into it quietly and ignore the whole affair. Or, I could go do some momentous thing to mark the milestone. Hike the Appalachian Trail or get a tattoo on my forehead, both about equally feasible. Then, something started to bubble inside me. What if I decided to do a bunch of things? What if I made a whole year of it? What if I made a list of 60 things to do and made the whole year an adventure of sorts? Yeah, that started to feel really good.

So, I started doing what I always do. I started making a list (IYKYK), and that got my brain working and my juices flowing. I started talking to people about it. I even asked my Facebook friends to give me ideas. I took my ideas and my friends' ideas and asked Claude to chip in too. And then I iterated . . .

Soon I became pretty obsessed with the list but also started to realize my ideas were less about doing things and more about becoming a better me in the process. Pivoting toward the person I want to be. Creating habits and ways of being that would better serve me and those around me for the next chapter of life. My ideas became more equal parts adventure and experience, and the experiences became more about seeing and helping others, healing things inside me that need attention, addressing my many missteps, expressing gratitude for those I failed to properly thank, and so forth. This is where the whole thing became truly exciting for me. I intentionally tried to flip most of the items on my list to include a way to pay it forward, lift someone up, give back, or say thanks. My list became not a list of things to do and grand adventures but more a list of purposeful intentions. I had a fully baked idea. Live a year on purpose, with a plan, intentionally!

The third third . . .

I began to look at my life in thirds. I started to call this chapter my "third third." And, after a few weeks, I had my list of intentions. It seemed a little unwieldy and all over the place, so I had Claude help me divide my list into categories, and I tried to cover all the areas that I felt pivoted me toward the type of full human I'd like to be. This list of intentions includes things that say thank you, make amends, heal what needs healing, lift someone else up, honor where I've been, and build toward where I'm headed.

So, now what . . .

Well, if you've read this far, you may be genuinely interested. Thanks for staying with me! When I mentioned this idea to friends, more than a few asked to come along for the ride. I liked that . . . a little accountability, a little company, makes everything better. Some were even inspired enough to say they would like to do something similar, perhaps. The complexity of managing my list and categories combined with this concept of others sharing my outcomes and allowing others to follow along gave me an idea.

I need to build an app for that . . .

I made one of my intentions to curate the list of intentions and then build an app (website/blog/app) to share the list with anyone who cared enough to follow along. So, I built this: a place to track the list, post about the journey, and share it with anyone who wants to follow along. If you have questions, want to provide some encouragement, or just give a nudge to keep going, I'd love to hear from you. Enjoy the ride!

And now for the truly sadistic, here's the how . . .

Okay, in case you're wondering, I built this little site/app from scratch . . . from my own little brain to the basic functionality of this app in a few days. A few more days tweaking it, and then several days testing, loading up my list and all of the content. The cool thing . . . I didn't write a single line of code. No SQL. No CSS. No HTML even. How then? Simple. AI.

I think we are living in one of the most amazing times in human existence. And we are only scratching the surface of what's to come. AI will change life as we know it. I'll save that conversation for later. For now, I'll keep this pretty cut and dried. To build Hello, 60! I used three primary AI tools: Claude, Lovable, and ChatGPT (specifically ChatGPT Images).

First, I used Claude to build a Functional Spec. I literally just described to Claude what I wanted to build and how I wanted it to function and flow, and asked it to build this into a Functional Spec that could be used to seed the development of a vibe-coded app on the Lovable platform. In maybe two hours, I had a 50+ page functional spec describing the site/app completely.

Next, I used Claude to build a Design Spec. This piece of work was all about the look and feel, navigation, color scheme, fonts, etc. I pointed Claude at a blog I had built once on Wix.com and asked it to borrow liberally from that site. :-) Claude said that was helpful, but ultimately asked me to provide some screen captures of the site, which I did. From that, it built a full Design Spec in about an hour or so.

From here, I needed a Technical Spec, along with all of the prompts that I would need to feed Lovable in order to actually build this thing that I had dreamed up just a few days earlier. So, I asked Claude to take the Functional Spec and Design Spec and do just that. To be safe, I had the tools check each other. I'd ask Claude to do something and then feed that answer to Lovable and tell it this is what Claude said. Inevitably, Lovable would correct a few things and tell me to tell Claude this new info. A few iterations of this and I had them singing from the same sheet of music. Now, in my hot little hands, I had the full Tech Spec and, more importantly, some 120 prompts to feed Lovable, along with some directions, sequencing guidance, and testing recommendations.

Now it's build time. I fed the prompts to Lovable in the appropriate sequence and did some testing as I went along, publishing iterations of the app/site with each successive series of prompts. In a matter of 4-5 hours, I had an 80-90% viable app in place. I spent another evening or two fine tuning things and adding minor functionality, safeguards, small navigation tweaks, etc. until I had the app/site you see here now.

Now the fun began. I had built a back-end admin site, of course, to accompany the public facing app/site. So, I used the admin tool to load up my intentions and categories. Finally, I needed images that evoked a sense of many of the intentions. I will ultimately replace those images with images with real images as I fulfill each intention, but these aspirational images hold the place initially. This is where I turned to ChatGPT's image generator. I spent several days describing in detail every image I wanted for each intention. I added those to the media gallery in the admin back-end, and voilà — here we are!! More than you ever wanted to know, I'm sure.