Are you over 50 and frustrated?

I am. I just turned 57 the other day. My girlfriend, a schoolteacher, is on break this week for April vacation. She asked me if maybe—just maybe—I could play hooky for a day and go do something together. Nothing dramatic. Just spend the day outside, doing nothing of consequence, simply because the weather’s getting nice and we happen to love each other’s company.

It should have been a simple decision.

But, of course, my employer has other ideas. I’ve been reminded—politely but firmly—that vacation days require a week’s notice. And even then, there’s no guarantee they’ll be approved. I could, theoretically, call in sick. But if they’ve scheduled me for a special task, like they have on Wednesday, that’s simply out of the question.

What’s more, if I do take a sick day, the mountain of work I handle at one of our accounts won’t magically get done by someone else. It’ll just be waiting for me when I return, slightly stinkier from the extra time sitting around.

And so I find myself, at 57 years old, being told I can’t take a pleasant day with my partner, outside in the spring sunshine. Not because I’m unwilling, or because I’ve been irresponsible, but because of rules. Because of systems. Because someone else decided that I should not have that choice.

This is not what I signed up for when I began working decades ago. In fact, it’s not what I envisioned life would become. At some point, the contract got rewritten—silently, incrementally—and I became something like an indentured servant.

And so yes, part of me says: fuck this.

But I’m also a grown-up, in the most binding sense of the word. I have responsibilities. I bought things. I signed mortgages. I pay bills. I live in a world that requires money in exchange for continuity. I can’t just rage-quit life and take off on a whim—not unless I have another income stream waiting in the wings. And currently, I don’t.

So instead, I’ve started building something—something of my own. A path where I don’t answer to someone else’s whim, where I’m not always waiting for permission. But I don’t have the luxury of youth. I can’t go live in a flat with three roommates and eat instant noodles while I figure it all out. That ship has sailed, and honestly, I’m not nostalgic for it.

Sure, minimalism has its appeal. And there’s a noble honesty in needing less. But I also like my stuff. I like sleeping indoors, in the same bed every night. I like having a home. I like certain luxuries. Hell, I like a lot of luxuries.

And the answer to being underpaid and overworked isn’t to renounce all comfort and live in some aesthetic austerity, like a monk who’s taken a vow of silent resentment. That’s not liberation; it’s surrender dressed up as virtue.

The problem, of course, is time. There’s less of it now. Less time in the day to build this new life. And, if we’re being honest, less time in life to enjoy it once it’s built. But time moves forward no matter what. In ten years, I will still be ten years older, whether I put in the work or not. So I might as well put in the work.

That work, by the way, doesn’t yield immediate dividends. I recently went back to the gym after a long hiatus. I’ve worked out seven of the last nine days, and I’ve been eating better. And I am still, objectively, fat and out of shape. Which is both irritating and completely expected.

Progress doesn’t show itself at first. I know this from recovery. There was a long stretch where it felt like nothing was changing. But gradually—without much fanfare—my perspective on life began to shift. I stopped being ruled by substances. I started being able to feel emotions without getting drowned in them. They still come, of course. But their frequency, intensity, and duration have diminished. The funks don’t last as long. The hopelessness doesn’t cling quite so tightly.

But it took time. Real time. Not weeks. Not months. Years.

And building a life outside of someone else’s payroll—building a way to earn money that’s not predicated on obedience—is going to take time, too. Even just growing a following online, with actual purpose instead of random virality, is slow work. And I’m not willing to fake it. I’m not willing to become a caricature of myself just to go viral. That means it will probably take longer. So be it.

Yes, it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating that I can’t take a day off to be with the woman I love. It’s frustrating that my debts won’t be magically erased next month. It’s frustrating that I won’t be quitting my job anytime soon—maybe not for years. Maybe not for ten. It’s frustrating because I’ve spent so much of my life working, and only now am I realizing that the life I wanted was never going to appear unless I built it myself.

But that doesn’t mean I should give up. And it doesn’t mean you should either.

It just means that change—especially change that matters—can feel like swimming upstream with a sack of bricks tied to your back. And when you’re closer to 100 than to zero, that swim feels a bit colder, a bit longer, and a lot more important.

Still, I believe it’s worth it.

This is the only life I get. The only one. And if I want to steer it somewhere new, I have to be willing to persist. I have to be able to hold steady even when the winds of doubt and fatigue and cynicism start blowing hard. I have to train myself to recognize the voice that says “this will never work” and answer it—not with delusion, but with defiance.

I’m grateful that I have people around me—my girlfriend, my friends—who can shift my perspective when mine gets stuck. They remind me that I’m worth it. That I’m not broken. That I’m capable.

Because the wounds left by childhood, by society, by the slow grind of decades of work—they don’t go away easily. They echo. They whisper things you’d never say to anyone else, but somehow tolerate when directed at yourself. It takes repetition, and patience, and no small amount of self-compassion to fight them.

But I’ve done hard things before. I’ve survived. I’ve changed.

And if I’ve done those things, I can do this too.