Depends on when you ask me. On a good day, I feel energetic and full of potential, excited at what may lie before me. On a bad day (usually as I am trying to get to sleep at night, or somewhere in the wee small hours of the morning ) I worry that I am kidding myself, and that it is over.  (Whatever “it” is.)

My mother frequently said, “Age is a state of mind.” Well, yes. But no. I may feel completely sprightly on any given day, but the calendar and the mirror discreetly clear their throats, and remind me of certain inevitable realities.

I am too old to apply to certain jobs. The struggle for me is to not let that small, specific truth morph into a sense that I am too old to apply to any jobs.

I know that age discrimination in employment is illegal; I also know that it exists. What’s a grownup to do?

My solution for now is to keep “Age out of mind.”

I will never really be able to know whether it is, in fact “too late.” Unless of course I make it so, by giving up.