I Just Turned Sixty. No, I Don't Have Sixty Pieces of Advice.

But I might have one.

For the audio version of this article, read by the author, go here.

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I recently turned sixty. Don’t worry, I don’t have a list of sixty pieces of advice I’ve learned over the years.

Recently, I referred to myself as “middle-aged.” To which a friend quipped, “Oh, really? So you’re planning to live to be a hundred and twenty?”

Later, I did a a Google search on “middle-aged” and, at least according to Merriam-Webster, it means:

Noun: the period of life from about 45 to about 64.

I thought about throwing this in my friend’s face, but you know the old political expression: if you’re explaining, you’re losing.

The truth is, my friend had a point: no matter how Merriam-Webster defines my age, there’s now considerably less time in front of me than there is behind.

Previously, getting older has never bothered me. Turning thirty, forty, and fifty didn’t faze me at all.

It’s partly because my life has mostly only gotten better with each passing decade.

But as I approached my sixtieth, something did feel different.

But what? Did I see myself in some new way now? Less capable? Less relevant? Was I worried about dying?

I pondered my feelings, trying to figure it out. But it didn’t seem like any of that.

Brent and I are currently in Sydney, Australia, in a beach suburb called Cronulla. It’s a very special place to me because when I had lived here as a high school exchange student, the experience had transformed me.

Me, circa 1982, except less gay.

As soon as we arrived Cronulla, I started planning all of the things I wanted to do:

• Catch up with old friends.

• Hike the nearby Royal National Park.

• Hike the other nearby park, Kamay National Park.

• Also walk the coastline to the north and south.

• Spend the afternoons body-surfing in the water and swimming in the rock pools.

• Walk the Esplanade and catch the sunrise every morning and the sunset every night.

• Take loads of pictures.

• And oh, yeah, continue my full-time job producing this very newsletter with Brent.

Looking back, I can see I may have been being a little, uh, manic.

Making matters worse, Sydney’s spring weather wasn’t cooperating. I couldn’t do half the stuff I wanted.

I started to feel very, very frustrated. Mania turned to, well, panic. Because I really wanted to do all of the things on my list.

No, I needed to do them.