Recently I showed how I’ve accepted the identity of “middle aged” when I bookmarked the Next Avenue website on my computer.

Click & add. Call it a form of Digital Age self-therapy.

Hosted by PBS, Next Avenue is a content-rich source of articles and blog posts containing information and advice especially for folks who have reached the age 50 threshold. Its main menu includes categories such as “Health & Well Being,” “Money & Security,” “Work & Purpose,” “Living & Learning,” and “Caregiving.”

I first clicked to the site with the grudging ‘tude of every 50+ guy who thinks of himself as being 25 at heart. Once I discovered what was there, however, I kept going back.

Finally, after repeated visits, I realized it was time to make the ultimate digital commitment: I bookmarked it, on multiple devices, no less.

Now and tomorrow

Next Avenue maintains a healthy focus on the present and the future. Its contents are immediately relevant to me. I can’t say that I follow all the sage advice provided — witness the cinnamon roll I polished off for breakfast the other day — but it’s there for the taking.

In addition, as someone on the younger end of Next Avenue‘s intended base audience (an increasingly unusual situation), it provides me with a preview of the years to come. We Americans, especially, are socially programmed to resist, even dread, anything to do with aging. But one welcomed aspect of my creeping emotional maturity is the realization that the experiences, insights, and stories of folks a generation ahead of us can yield a lot of helpful lessons.