When Ivan the Terrible Becomes Ivan the Not-So-Hot

You have reached an age that has more to do with experience than any hint of chronology.  Had you in fact been more precocious, you might well have reached this age some years ago, because it is arguable that even some years ago, you'd had enough variety in experience to allow you to reach the age of which you now speak.

You'd had experiences in career, romantic relationships, friendships, educational opportunities, and the omnibus assortments of reversal and frustration that appear in life.  While accruing these experiences, your reading tastes ran toward the noir, which seemed to agree with your sense that sometimes you'd hit one out of the park,other times not even seeing the one coming because it was so fast and had such a spin on it.

Nevertheless.

Whether naivete, witlessness, or some idiosyncratic cocktail of your being reared, you remain positive, well beyond neutral in your dreams, aspirations, and the things you attempt.

So then, what is this age you speak of, the age of which you are now a card-carrying member, which you can whip out much the way you do with your membership card for the Montecito Y?

It is the age of reckoning the potential for disappointment or failure in a venture, then risking it anyway.  It is the age of knowing with a certainty which things have the potential to make you happy, and it is a belief in the instincts of discovering the company of potentially happy persons.

Even though reading and writing have caused you moments of frustration in the past--and will do so in the future--you know the great likelihood each has for getting to to come of age and to remain engaged with yourself and them in that meeting ground.

When, as the poet--don't go getting cute now--as William Fucking Wordsworth says, when "The World is too much with us--" you are of an age where the world doesn't have to fucking win.  You can win, at least to the point of spending as much time doing things you enjoy, things that contribute to your growth and happiness as possible, things where story exists and writers and poets have some say in how the story progresses.