I just turned 40 recently. The day came and went without ceremony. It’s not that I wanted a celebration of any kind. It’s just that I expected it to feel more momentous. 40. 40. 40, Freakin' years old.

 If I live to be 80, I’m halfway there. Although I think I have done a lot, and have done most of the milestone things like getting married, having kids, buying the first home all of which I am truly grateful for. I can’t help but feel like its all downhill from here. Sure, I’ve done more than many. I have friends in their late 40’s that have never been married, nor have had kids. Hell, I even have a friend that is a 47 year old virgin. (He’s got sexual identity problems which he hides by immersing himself in religion.)

I can hear now distinctly, a clock ticking. I wake up many mornings now in a cold sweat, after hearing a voice just before awakening shouting “Be great before it’s too late”.

I used to think I was living a charmed life, I mean I thought I was happy. Until my father in-law recently reminded me that I hadn’t accomplished anything in life yet. I have a nice house, great kids, and a beautiful wife that adores me. She has stuck by me through all of our struggles for 20 years. When 911 happened, I immediately took action to relocate to Florida, dropped everything and just moved. We always talked about moving there “someday”. It’s a beautiful place to live, why wait till I’m retired?

 In my career, I chose my own path. Readily quit jobs that did not make me happy, and never took shit from any boss. I never sold out. I experimented with every fantasy job that I wanted to try. The travelling Executive, The Radio Station Jock, the Newspaper publisher, the Magazine Executive and several others. I even found time to serve in the Army, which to me were some of the most fantastic times I ever had. It was like living in a Frat house… Girls, Beer and Girls.

When I had any whims to be entrepreneurial, I never hesitated to try it. Sure, I never got rich, but I was always true to myself. My wife never tried to stop me. Sometimes I think about whether that made me selfish in some ways, I never possessed that sacrificial gene that men of old, and some today have. That gene that makes them leave their families behind in pursuit of a better life, another country, a road warrior job etc. Me? I never leave the house. I watched both my kids being born, take their first step, their first recital. First day in High School. I have passed up many high level opportunities and assignments which would have paid me well into the 6 figures, but they would have taken me away from my family… being there was always my first priority. Sometimes I wonder if they would have preferred a bigger, steadier paycheck, and if somehow that would have fit the mold of father more than my presence. That maybe my version of “being there” and their version is different.

I have had the idyllic dream to work from home all my life, and every chance I got to do it, I did it. For 15 years, I was a mobile DJ and that meant that I could be home all week with my little girls. While on weekends I got to play Rock Star. I would take jobs here and there to stabilize my income, but at least 6 months out of the year, I worked from home. That decision did cost me. Everything in life is a trade-off, and this one tops the list. The battle is always over money and the time to enjoy it.

 I did not maximize my income potential during those peak years. Today, I have high blood pressure, am overweight and too competitive and cynical to work for someone else with the enthusiasm and exuberance I had when I was 23. You know they say, “Once a mind has been stretched it can never go back to its original configuration.” The funny thing is that my friends with the plain ordinary jobs at Fed-Ex, Construction, or even a little Ad Firm in Soho, today have seemingly surpassed my career, boasting huge salaries, bonuses and such, because they stayed over time and have grown through the ranks. Since I never stayed anywhere, I can’t claim that Job Equity.

In all fairness, 15 years ago, a couple of them did invite me to apply when they were going to apply for the job. At the time, working for the man, seemed beneath me and my trajectory seemed to shoot me straight past an ordinary income. I would not sell out to “the man”, I would be a warrior and learn to fend for myself. “To be financially independent of a job.” The holy grail. I truly became a victim of my own warped beliefs.

Don’t get me wrong, I have made a lot of money in my life, but unfortunately, when I made the money, I had no wisdom and squandered it. Now that I have better understanding, I have no money. Life gives you the pieces of the puzzle, scattered throughout your life, never all at once. But alas, as the song says, “you can’t always get what you want, but you get what you need.”

I DON’T RUN ANYMORE. Like I mentioned before I am embarrassingly out of shape now। Thankfully, I never drank hard liquor, smoked cigarettes, or used drugs…but nevertheless, food became my drug of choice. Combine that and the fact that I lead a very sedentary lifestyle in front of this computer. Today my work consists of the telephone and the computer screen. Sometimes when I lay in bed lately, I get this overwhelming sensation of wanting to run. Run fast. I even fantasize about jumping off of things, like I used to do as a teenager. My friends and I used to do these games called “routines”, basically like follow the leader, only that we would jump off of rooftops, walk over construction platforms and other wildly stupid things, that you never think consequently about when you are a kid. Growing up in the Ghettos of Brooklyn, NY: abandoned buildings were our playgrounds.

Last summer, while my wife and kids were on vacation in New York, I stayed behind in Florida. One day I got so bored and I felt particularly energetic and blissful , I decided to film a video for Youtube, So I went to a construction site and jumped off of a 4ft loading dock for a scene and shattered my knee. I was off my feet for 2 months. Is this what they call a mid-life crisis? I feel like something inside me is screaming to be young again and to be let out, but the body won’t cooperate.

40 Freakin' years old। I still can’t believe it. So what if all I listen to is music from the 80’s. So what if all I like to watch now is Columbo , Good Times and The Twilight Zone on box sets. I’ve developed this crazy obsession for black and white TV. It calms me. It takes me back to a simpler time. TV land is my favorite channel on cable. Am I ready for AARP?

 Another thing that has developed lately is that as I watch movies on cable, or Hulu।com, I note the date that the movies were made. To realize that movies I remember fondly were made 25 years ago scares the shit out of me. My favorite stars I grew up with are only a few years older than me and they are in their late 40’s . That happened when???? I feel like it was yesterday!!! I can’t make the connection. It’s as if time stood still for me. I feel like I’m finally waking from a long sleep like Rip Van Winkle. I’m in denial.

So what is next for this crazy life of mine? Deadline dates have come and gone. I missed the “I’ll be a millionaire by 35” date. I’m still not famous. Becoming a famous actor, singer or performer never came to pass. I was actually quite good as a singer, never amounted to anything more than Weddings and New Years parties. It’s like that line in “The Fountainhead” by Ayn Rand where she says:

“The best of mankind’s youth start out in life with varying degrees of longing, wistfulness, passion and agonized confusion. For most of them it is a foggy, groping, undefined sense made of raw pain and incommunicable happiness. It is a sense of enormous expectation, the sense that one’s life is important, that great achievements are within one’s capacity, and that great things lie ahead. It does not matter that only a few in each generation will grasp and achieve the full reality of man’s proper stature-and that the rest will betray it. It is those few that I have always sought to address. The rest are no concern of mine; it is not me that they betray: It is their own souls.”

Until recently, I was still that youthful, confident young man with a sense of entitlement, “I’m here damn it, Give me what is mine।” Lately, I reflect more on what’s to come and how ill prepared I am to greet it. The only thing I can hope for at this juncture, is that God has mercy and has not yet been bored to tears of my failure to parlay the opportunities he has given me so far, and may still consider me a worthwhile investment.

I find solace in the stories of other Late Bloomers like Ray Kroc and Colonel Sanders, Mother Theresa and Nelson Mandela, whose brightest flame did not burn until they were in the 3rd quarter of the game।

 It’s not over till the FAT lady sings. As for my father- in -law and his opinion that I have somehow wasted my life…his opinions and what he may think of me is none of my business.