A Strange Trip: 50 Circuits Around the Sun

I turned 50 years old this week. It’s so weird. I don’t feel like I’m 50. I certainly don’t act like it. I feel like I’m just getting started. Like I am just beginning to understand what’s important and how the world works.

Definitely not where I thought I would be when I got to this age. I honestly thought I’d be much further along financially. I thought I’d have all my family stuff figured out and definitely thought my path would been much smoother. I foolishly thought in my younger age that I’d have everything figured out and that I’d be riding the wave up at this point.

But as my online hero Justin Waller says:“ You can tell the size of a man by the size of his problems.”

If this is the case I think I’m probably a very big man, considering the last few weeks. Big problems with my family, problems with my investment portfolio, accounts receivables & cash flow problems personally, compounded by big challenges in my various businesses. Trouble comes in 3 or in this case 4. Nothing as devastating or catastrophic like in 2001 or 2020 for me but still feels disconcerting.

All of is massively painful yet I acknowledge due to my own miscalculations and mistakes. But pain means you are alive. And if you are alive you can do something about it.

Another more positive perspective is that this is the inevitable result of massive growth. Literally growing pains. I see this in startups. And it’s exactly the same in life. It means that we are pushing hard and to the extreme which causes the breakage. It means we are growing. Pain leads to growth. And if you are not growing, you are dying.

I remind myself as I remind my companies, just keep pushing and keep moving. It’s not over until you quit. And if you go down, you go down fighting hard. So here is to being 50 years old and having 50 more trips around the sun.

Thanks for indulging me and thanks for being a reader.