I was at work, putting some zinnias back onto the table when the song came on.

"No matter what you are
I will always be with you
Doesn’t matter what you do, girl
Oohh girl, with you."

It was an old song by Badfinger. Today, hardly anyone knows who they were. But for me, I was suddenly back in my old dorm room. And when I say old, I really mean old. When I moved in, the dorm had just been condemned for the third time. Necessity forced the school to keep the dorm open; there just wasn’t anywhere for the students to live.

I wasn't complaining, though. It was a lot better than living in my car. It was also kind of cool to live in such a building. It had been built in 1903 and was unlike anything I had ever seen. It had a set of stairs that went up to a large landing. When on the landing you were faced with three doors. The middle one led directly onto the second floor. If you took the right hand door, there was a straight flight of stairs that led to the third floor. The left hand door had a stairway that curved around and led to the forth floor. Where was the first floor? You had to go behind the stairs leading up to the landing and take the stairs down. This was definitely not the place to live if you often came home drunk . It was great on the weekends to sit outside and watch parents try to find their son's room.

If you looked at the dorm from directly overhead, the building looked like a figure eight. The middle section of the eight was where the bathrooms/showers were located. The insides of the eight were interior courtyards, windows opened into them. I lived in a room at the top of the eight, facing into the courtyard. I had a lovely view of the bathroom walls for each floor. The room itself was just as inviting. It was a room for four people. We had two lights that could use up to a sixty-watt bulb and a sink, battleship gray walls and a concrete floor. My roommate Randy tried to decorate. He would take the campus newspaper The Battalion and read it every day. He would then scatter it across the floor. I wasn't his mother, so I didn't pick it up. After a couple of weeks you couldn't even see the concrete.

My favorite part of the room was the beds. They were official World War II, army issue bunk beds. Each mattress came with it’s own body indentation. For all I know those were the outlines of soldiers from back then. I’m not sure if a mattress can last that long but it sure felt like it was from the 40’s. It was always strange to look at your bed and see a human outline imprinted there. It was as if the invisible man had dropped by for a nap.

It’s funny how a song can so vividly bring back memories. Now I can’t decide if it is humor, pathos or irony at work in my life. I’m at work, standing upon a concrete floor and remembering the concrete floor of my old dorm room.

Tonight when I leave work, I’ll go home to a house that has a concrete floor. My back still hurts from pulling all the carpet and tack strips out. It had to be done though.

It was only a year ago that I was visiting my wife in the hospital. I remember the tile floors. I stared at those floors for a long time. They were sterile and lifeless, their gloss a blank slate on which to write my fear. That was such a scary time for us. When I took her to the doctor, and then the hospital, we didn’t know what was going on. It looked like she was dying. That’s almost what happened. At least when we left the hospital, we could put a name to our fear. Emphysema, it’s a horrible word. It’s hard to pronounce, hard to spell and hard to live with. No more cigarettes. No more dogs. Giving up the dogs was just as hard to do as stopping smoking. It also meant no more carpets to collect and hold dust and mold. It was hard work but well worth it. Now I’ve come full circle. I started my adult life with concrete floors. Now I not only have them at work but home as well. Hard and unyielding, stark and utilitarian; there has to be a metaphor there somewhere. Concrete surrounds me. It supports my past and paves my future.

It was strange, but when I was sixteen I firmly believed in two completely incompatible things. The first was that I would live forever. Of course the young always believe that. If not, we wouldn't do a tenth of the things that we try when we’re young.

I remember the summer we spent cliff jumping. It wasn't tall as cliffs went but the water was only a foot deep next to the cliff and five foot at the deepest. We would scale the cliff and take a running start, leaping out into space and falling into the water below. I don't know who tried it first. I do know that none of us checked to see how deep the water was before we began. Then, with water pouring from our bodies, we would climb the slippery and crumbling rocks of the cliff to jump again. We would do this until an adult showed up to run us off. When you are young, you are invincible; you will live forever. There is nothing that you do or will try that can dent that belief in your own immortality. Cuts, bruises and broken bones were a reality that couldn't influence belief.

At the same time that I knew I was immortal, I also firmly believed that I wouldn't live past the age of thirty-three. I couldn't imagine anything fun happening once I reached such an old age. Who would want such an empty and boring life?

Obviously both can't be true. In fact, I now know that both are false. I'm staring fifty years old in the face and the invincibility of youth is just a bittersweet memory. Battered knees from playing lacrosse has led to one knee surgery and the prospect of more operations.

A car accident on the 4th of July has left me with a bad back, as well. It was the bicentennial. The tall ships came in and my back went out. Life after thirty-three isn't the bleak wasteland I pictured it in my youth, but sometimes it feels close to it. What's happened to my life?

When I was young I was going to change the world. I would make a difference. I'd work doing something I loved making lots of money. I would travel, and life would be fulfilling and exciting. As I look back, I can see that things didn’t go exactly as planned. I've completed works that are good. I've made a difference in a few lives. Yet the victories are small and few. The world isn't any better. If anything, our society has gotten worse. It doesn’t appear that I’ve made much of a difference. Broken dreams, a job I hate, living paycheck to paycheck; it doesn’t add up to something of which I’m proud.

Is this a midlife crisis? I don't want a convertible or a young girlfriend. Well, if my wife would let me, I wouldn't mind a young girlfriend. Of course no young woman is going to be interested in an old, poor, broken-down guy. Damn, I'm depressed.

It's a funny thing about depression. It makes you feel tired and all you want to do is lay around. So how do you know if you are depressed? Maybe it's just a cold, or you need a nap. Most naps are short, and yet I feel like I could sleep all day. It could be a cold; other people are coming down with the flu or strep throat.

I remember that I used to have bouts of depression when I was in high school. At least I think it was depression. It may have just been raging hormones. In retrospect, it was probably depression brought on by raging hormones. I didn’t enjoy playing sports or cold showers that much. Whenever I was depressed back then, I would go into the bedroom and sit in the dark, listening to my stereo. I built up quite a collection of sad songs that I would listen to over and over. Sometimes I even enjoyed being depressed. Unfortunately, I don’t seem to enjoy depression these days.

As G.I. Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle." There isn't anything wrong with being depressed. I've got plenty of reasons. It's how you respond to that depression that's important. Doing nothing is a choice. It amazes me that so many people choose "nothing" as their option. It’s like they think everything will be better if they ignore the problem. I hope those folk never come face to face with a hungry lion. Ignoring that type of problem will only have one outcome, and that will be quick. Growing out my hair and putting it into a ponytail and buying a convertible are one choice. Deciding upon that is just so pathetic. What would my friends think if I became a stereotype? They'd probably see the humor in it. I still think that I'll choose something else.

Choices are really fun. Just thinking about the options available is better than any movie and cheaper than a therapist. I could just leave everything and everybody behind and join the circus or grab my passport and see how far around the world I could get while just bumming around. Maybe I could get even with everyone who has ever given me grief or problems. I could sneak up behind them, tap them on the shoulder and when they turn around, hit them in the face with a cream pie. If you thought I was going to do something violent, maybe you are the one feeling stressed. No, if I'm going to grow as a person but more importantly, be happy with myself, then I need to choose an option which is optimistic and hopeful.

Making a career change at 50 is almost expected of you in our society. Getting away from the company I work for would certainly take care of a lot of stress in my life. I could also end up with another job that I don't enjoy and has as much if not more stress. If I do make a career move then it needs to be thought out and focused. I need to really figure out what I want to do for the next 15 years because the older you get, the fewer choices are available. Maybe I would be happy doing the same thing but just for somebody else. I'll think about it though.

There are other things that I can do. First of all, I can stop using age as an excuse. I'm getting older, of course I'm not as active and gaining weight.You can't listen to that kind of music, you're too old. Act your age. If I'm 50, it doesn't matter how I act. I am that age. I'm going to change. I'm going to change the way that I want. No more excuses! I'll do the things that I want, the things that I enjoy. What do I like? What do I want to do? It's time to plan.

Another one of my early passions was writing. I loved to write both poetry and stories. When my folks challenged me concerning my constant scribbling, I made them a bet. I told them that I would stop if they didn’t like what I wrote. "Show me any picture and I’ll write a story about it within 30 minutes." To their surprise, I was able to write a story within the time allotted and they did like it. After that I was allowed to write in peace.

Over time though, both passions seemed to fade. Maybe fade isn’t the right word. I got married. We had children. Suddenly I had different priorities and less time for solitary pastimes. I’m not complaining. As far as I was concerned it was a much better deal. I enjoyed everything about being a father. However, now they are grown up and gone. Maybe now, like the perennials I grow, my passions should be renewed, reawakened to life and bursting forth to bloom.

Just because playing music and writing were passions of my youth doesn’t mean that I can’t embrace them again. Such pursuits are anything but childish. Nor is it an attempt to be the hippie of my youth. I have no need to recreate an unrealistic and idealized era. I’m not 18 anymore and don’t have the body or looks to play wild child. Besides, I don’t like going around barefoot. I’ve also had too many psychology classes to be comfortable with the idea of expressing my sexuality by buying a sports car or big gun. The Freudian symbolism is just too overt for my liking.

Creativity, making something new. That’s the path I want to follow. It allows me to recapture the joys of youth without acting as a child. It frees me to express myself and reclaim my joy of living. I think that I’ll start by writing a story about being middle-aged.

There used to be a lot of things that I loved to do. They filled my days with joy and were a promise of joy for the future. I’ve always enjoyed music. I not only listened to it but also taught myself to play the guitar. I would sit and play for hours. Once I finally learned what I was doing I started to write my own songs, as well. Of course, I wasn’t alone in this dream. Almost everyone I knew had the desire to be a rock star. Half the kids in my school were in a garage band. Some people thought I was pretty good. If I was outside while playing, such as in the park, I was often asked what clubs I played. Of course, I was presented with a different viewpoint at home. My mother just wanted me to be quiet and stop playing. My brother and sisters had their own unique way to express their feelings. Whenever I played, they would howl like coyotes under a full moon. They found that very funny and never seemed to tire of doing it. Maybe that’s why I liked to play my guitar in the park.