How Old Do I have to be...?

A friend's update on Facebook the other day on how old does one have to be before they realize what they really want got me thinking about this existential question.

As I approach my first wedding anniversary and leave behind my 28th birthday the question resonates with more than just laconic possibilities.Its a panic ridden, sweat inducing, mind numbing ? mark staring at you in the face, demanding a precise answer and Gawd! help you if you dither.

I have 3 years work experience to show and that's fast turning redundant with every passing day of unemployment.(And I am not sure how to write H4, cant work- as a reason on my resume). A sabbatical sounds better. Like I worked my ass off for 3 years and am now enjoying a well deserved but vaguely defined break while each friend's career update drives me into a frenzy about my non-status (literally, I hardly update my status since I do nothing, so I have nothing to say)

So going back to the question- when should i really be worried? Right now? At 30? Or when I can no longer look myself in the mirror? Or should I cast away this question with as much abandon as a kid would cast off his kite into the winds? Each of us knowing full well that questions such as these have no real answers and the right thing to do would be to let ourselves be buffeted by the wind any which way it pleases.

Its about the journey they say and right now those waters look stagnant too.An impasse to collect your past and think about your future.How about I use this question not to judge my age and my list of achievements but to ask myself if there's something out there worth doing and would I mind if it came to me only at 60.There is a chance that the peaceful mountains of Montana might help me become a bestseller or at the very best a blogger!

Or can I twist the question around and ask myself:
- How old do I have to be to know that family means everything to me and I would even sacrifice a career for it
- How old do I have to be to know that the older I get the more books I would have read and it could(humbly emphasize) have made me more wiser
-How old do I have to be to know that one of the wisest ways to have spent time is to have traveled to new places, tried new foods and made new friends and that none of this really requires a lot of money
- How old do I have to be to know that you may not have much, but what little you do have can be shared and when you do it makes you happy.So happy!
- How old do I have to be to know that there are no real answers just as there are no real questions?
-How old do I have to be.....?