I can still remember walking out of the house that my two children were in, knowing that I was not ever going back there. It was devastating, but I could not fathom or handle another day there. I was mid-thirties, working in advertising as a creative director, in my prime. When the dust settled and the custody and child support was worked out, it dawned on me that by the time I was done paying it — when, somehow, these little grade schoolers were off on their own — I’d be an old man. Something about that worried me.
That moment came, two years ago. I’m that old man now. But none of my fears came true.
A lot has changed since then, of course. And that’s what you can’t conceive of when you’re in your mid-thirties — that you’re not going to be the same person in your fifties that you are now. Which is to say that predicting the future, or even projecting into the future, is in fact looking at the present with some slight cosmetic changes. It’s not unlike a sci-fi movie or futuristic architecture. The issues being solved in those films and designs are of this time, even if the costumes and lines are attempting to paint the future. We are, always, tethered to the now and even our thoughts or fears about the future are really about today’s concerns, not the future’s.
I knew creativity was my field of choice from early on and, in fact, that has been a…
