In some years you’ll be 40. Time passes whether you use it or not. Try to use it.
The hard part is realizing when it’s time to become a beginner (because you’ve stopped growing) and try something new. Choosing the new thing is tough.
You know it's time when you look back at things you did years ago and find them still pretty stunning. The future within that discipline can only hold different variations of that feeling. The only way to change this is by branching out and come back with fresh perspectives.
Gotten everything I set out to do done in this life, so at this point I'm still around by the time 40 rolls around, then something has gone really awry.
Something is wrong with my left knee that makes physical exertion painful. Walking is okay but it really doesn't take a whole lot to make it painful enough that I have to sit down for 4 or 5 hours to recover.
Something else wrong in the chest that makes breathing uncomfortable most days; like I was lying down and like fully grown St Bernard is sitting on of me. Occasionally feels like God taking a long thin ice pick and just jabbing it slowly through the ribs.
I can manage most of it with aspirin and alcohol but obviously that brings with it a slew of it's own risks. Add in deteriorating eyesight, constant fights with insomnia that leave me tired most day, and teeth that are wearing away fast enough that it's scaring my dentist.
It's not that 40 sounds depressingly old. It's that I'm already old and now getting older. It's been a good life mind you, and I've gotten everything that I was supposed to out of it; university degree and a job. There's little else that I care enough about to make me want to stay beyond for what I have to.
That is my favorite rebuttal to that overused quote