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I’ll Be 50 This Year — It’s Sobering
Reflections on a life that didn’t go according to plan
I’ll be 50 this year. It’s sobering. I might be dead in another 20 years. I feel I haven’t lived enough! I need to make the most of the next few decades.
Our Western culture forces most of us to earn to live, and live to earn. As a result, I feel I may have spent too much time chasing career progression and money. Not that I had a choice when I was young. My parents insisted.
By the time I was older and in a position to make different choices, I was deeply invested in the treadmill of the 9-to-5.
I’m glad I abandoned employment in my mid-30s to go freelance, though. I’d liked to have done that from the start, but my parents wouldn’t let me while I lived at home.
It’s a catch 22. Once you have commercial rent or a mortgage to pay, you need the security of a regular income. So playing at being a freelance writer with no contacts and no track record is probably not a good idea unless you have support, and my parents weren’t supportive. They just wanted rent and they wanted me out of the house for the day.
Now I’m approaching 50, I feel I spent too much time working in whatever jobs I could get. My dreams were abandoned along the way, except one. The writer thing…
