49 Today: Why I Write, and Why I Wish I Started Sooner














Today I turned 49.


That’s a strange sentence to type. Not because I’m afraid of the number—but because I’m honestly surprised to see it on the calendar. Somewhere along the way, life stopped being a race toward “what’s next” and became more about remembering what already happened. Lately, I find myself spending more time reflecting than planning. Not in a sad way—just in a “wow, that actually happened?” way.


I’ve been thinking about the value of capturing moments. Not the polished, posed stuff—real moments. The kind that slip through the cracks unless you write them down. The kind you forget until something random brings them back.


That’s why I started writing this blog.


I wish I had started at 22. Back then, I thought I had it all figured out. I had energy, big ideas, and just enough cluelessness to think I was invincible. What would 22-year-old me have written about? Probably something cringey. Probably something about music, ambition, or some job I thought was going to be my forever career.


In the MySpace days, I blogged a little—and honestly, it was fairly successful, if your metric was trying to outrank Tila Tequila. (And for a few glorious days, I did. So there’s that.)


At 12? Forget it. I was certain I knew everything. I didn’t need advice. I needed a time machine and a mute button.


Now I’m 49. The knees are noisier. The recovery time from anything is twice as long. But the clarity that comes with age? I wouldn’t trade it for all the instant recovery time in the world.


One of the biggest reasons I started this blog was because I don’t want to lose the little stories—the stuff I lived through and laughed at. The things I learned the hard way. The shop stories. The family chaos. The road trips that turned into misadventures. The wise people I’ve met and the dumb mistakes I’ve made. The tragedy and the beauty of it all. The stuff that makes life life.


Writing slows time down. It gives me a minute to think. It gives future me something to look back on. And maybe, one day, it’ll give my kids—or their kids—a glimpse into how this strange brain of mine worked.


I’m older than the U.S. Bicentennial celebration. That’s wild to think about. I remember landlines, video stores, and rolling down windows with a crank. I remember the sound of a modem connecting, the smell of a shop full of Bondo dust, and what it felt like to be young and dumb with zero awareness of how fast life moves.


Just tonight, I was trying to explain to Alida that back in the day, we didn’t have cell phones. If we were going anywhere or doing anything, we’d leave notes for each other on the kitchen table saying where we were and when we’d be back. That was our “location sharing.”


And now here I am. Middle-aged… if we’re being generous. More likely, I’ve graduated to some sort of historical status. “Middle-aged” is what they call people who might make it to 100. That’s probably not me. So let’s say I’m somewhere between halftime and late in the third quarter. Still scrappy. Still in the game.


This past year has been one of the strangest, busiest, and most beautiful of my life. So much happened. And it’s tempting to just move on to the next thing. But I want to remember it. I want to sit in it for a minute. That’s what writing lets me do.


So that’s why I blog.


Not for likes. Not for clout. Not because blogging is “back” (or because it ever really went away). I blog because stories matter. Because time is a thief. And because writing is how I keep a few things from being stolen.


If you’re reading this—thank you. If you’ve been following these stories as I go, I can’t tell you how much that means. If you’re just stumbling in now, welcome to the middle. This is where things start to get weird and wonderful in a different way.


I’m 49 today.


Let’s see what kind of trouble we can get into before 50.


— Nate



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