Living a Life Worthy of Your Potential

I will turn 40-years old in roughly six months. Where most people seem to freak out about turning 40, I am actually quite excited. It seems that when turning 40 people are crestfallen. Their glory days are over. They’ve reached their peak in life and it’s been downhill ever since. They’re looking older and they’re feeling older. They feel as if there's nothing to look forward to.

Whereas for me, well, I feel just the opposite has happened. I look back to high school or college or my 20’s and even now my 30’s and think how NOT together my life has been. For most of my 39-years on this earth I wouldn’t consider them glory days in any way.

Mostly because I don’t feel I’ve reached my full potential yet. I feel like my life is still unfurling. I feel like I have yet to hit it big.

When I was a kid I knew I was meant to be a star. I was always cast as the lead in the school play and I just loved the attention. I loved pretending to be somebody else for a short while and entertaining people. Life was grand. I was a kid. That’s the way life should be.

But post-puberty and starting high school, feelings of insecurity arose within me. Little did I know my insecurities were not because I was less of a person than my peers, but because I was gay and didn’t quite understand the feelings that I was experiencing inside. As is common when you’re gay and in the closet (even to yourself) feeling different than your peers can cause you to feel like there is something wrong with yourself. Tack on the general insecurities of being a gangly teen and well, definitely not a high point in life for me.

College was a great place to hit the restart button. High school was behind me and college meant an entirely new group of people who didn’t know me from before. I could be whoever I wanted to be. Though I had managed to grow into myself more, and college was more fun than I had ever had in my life up until that point, I was still in the closet to myself and everyone else and that didn’t provide me with the chance to live the fullest life I was capable of living.

By the time I was in my 20’s I had begun coming out to groups of people, but I had to relearn what life meant to me. For me that meant being social. I didn’t have a strong work ethic in my 20’s and rather than expending energy chasing the dreams I thought I wanted so desperately in college, I focused my attention on happy hours and nightclubs and house parties.

By my 30’s I pretty much had my life down to an exact science. I was the friend people would call up when they wanted to go out and have a crazy evening but still not seem like the wildest person in the bunch. I had lost track of who I was and what I wanted. Life was like the movie “Groundhog Day”: the same thing repeating over and over and over again with nothing changing, with no way out.

However, sometimes life can make you realize that you’ve gone down the wrong path. You’re staring ahead at the darkness and know deep down inside that this isn’t the way you’re supposed to go, so you make a turn, and you’re not sure it’s the correct turn, but it sure feels better than forging ahead into darkness. And sure that turn involves climbing some big hills and the terrain can be rocky and sharp and cold and rainy, but eventually it levels out and gets smooth and warm and sunny and you know that you made a smart decision.

But enough nature analogies about life. The point is, only a few years ago did I feel like I finally “started” living a life worthy of my potential.

And I’m not “there” yet, wherever “there” may be. In college I always thought I’d be writing, directing, producing and starring in my own films. That dream hasn’t gone away. No matter how hard I try to forget about it, push it away, erase it from my mind, it just keeps coming back. I don’t yet know how I’m going to get that accomplished, I just know it’s something that deserves a chance.

And that’s why, as I approach 40, I recognize that I haven’t peaked. I’m extremely far from peaking. And that’s exciting! I’ve seen and done and learned so much in life and to think that my journey is not over but just beginning is rather wonderful. To be able to pursue my dreams with the maturity and knowledge and strength that I’ve collected over the past 39-years is a gift.

Here’s to continuing down the path…