The world turns at its own pace, caring not for the wants and needs of any individual, especially not me. Time goes by whether I do or don’t do. Aging is a process that can’t be paused, ceased, or rolled back. Regardless of wants, we as people are forced to go forward. Today I am still in the crowd of the 20 somethings but I am quickly approaching 30. I don’t think people are old with regard to age until their 70 and I’m a firm believer in the mantra of “you’re only as old as you feel.” Yet, regardless I can’t help to feel that becoming a man of 30 years of age is a turning point.
I say a turning point because I’ll no longer be in my 20s. Teenage kids look at people who’re thirty as old because their parents are 30 something or maybe even 40 something. In their minds, I can be cool, but I’m still old. The fact that I’ve been losing my hairline since I was 21 doesn’t help my case for youth in the minds of the younger generations.
These revelations got me thinking further about my life and what it will turn out to be when I’m 70 and hopefully retired in a little over 40 years. I think, will I have enough money to be comfortable for another 15-30 years. Will I be able to leave my children, if I have them… much more than was ever left to me? How many vacations will I be able to comfortably take? When I look back on my life will I be satisfied? What will my family, other people, and the world think of me? What will I have left behind?
The reason I think about my legacy so much is because I am a writer. I’ve published one novel, The Virgin 
Surgeon, which is the prized possession of my own heart, mind, wants, dreams and inspirations. But my own personal success pales in comparison to someone like William Shakespeare. William’s been dead nearly 500 years but he’s still talked about today as if he wrote his great tragedies yesterday. They are studied in school today by kids who can barely understand the English he used. Countless plays and movies have been made about his tales and more recently the man himself. I wonder if I’ll be able to produce writing as inspiring to have my name echo through the histories. I know J.K. Rowling’s will, regardless of what people think about her Harry Potter series (loved it by the way). Then there’s Stephen King, George R.R. Martin, Suzanne Collins, and a host of other names that are surely not to be forgotten for the next two or three centuries.
Further than my dream of being an author is all of the other interests that I have. Will I be able to put them in motion and make them turn the world upside down. I look to someone like Mark Zuckerberg because we were in school at the same time. Facebook was just for college students when he was at Harvard and I was at Temple. Just 8 years later he’s worth $19 billion dollars or so and I’m still figuring it out. There’s nothing wrong with that, most people aren’t billionaires and I’m not even 30, not just yet.
So yeah, I’ve got time, just not forever. Over the past couple of weeks I’ve thought about this and had a talk with my grandmother, the last surviving of my grandparents. She helped me to put things into perspective. Her words were, “Don’t just sit around and punch a clock. Don’t allow life to pass you buy. God didn’t put all those things in your head for you to not put it to use. And you’ve put into too much time in your studies to not reach your full potential.” I had to thank her, as that conversation happened over the airwaves from Georgia to New Jersey. Thus, she’s not watching me and only her faith allowed her to have to give me these words. They were much an echo of my own thinking. Therefore, I do not intend to let life pass me by and my legacy will be what I make it. What that will be will come in time. I cannot forecast it, but I can set things into motion.
Until next write…
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