So here we are. Year number forty nine of my much enjoyed life. But as approach fifty there is a gnawing inside me that tells me I am old. I don't feel old but the numbers don't lie. And so as I look back on my life and contemplate things I've done or even things I haven't done, it is the number fifty that has caused me to take notice. Rather than look at as the end of my youth, I have vowed to look at as a beginning of my adulthood. After all, Fifty is the new...35? And so I have decided to attack this milestone like Charlie Sheen would a house filled with hookers and cocaine. There are certain things I have vowed in the past, call them resolutions if you will, that I ended about twenty four hours after the new years champagne and scotch wore off. But who was I doing them for? Was there really a reason I need to cut back on sweets and run more? I don't like to run. And I love sweets! And so these resolutions slid into the abyss of all resolutions, waiting to be dragged back out the following year, along with a few new ones, and be paraded around for hours on end only to leave me feeling like I had failed again.

But alas, I approach this not as resolutions being made but as a stepping point for me. There are things I have wanted to do for myself that I have managed for the past thirty some odd years to push into next year. Although one of those things, running with the bulls in Pamplona, Spain I was able to cross off that list last year. Well, next year is here. And so for the next eleven months I will be chronicling my journey as I attempt to write a novel (I have completed one that took almost three years and made as much sense as a Lindsay Lohan confessional), begin a brand new job run by a CEO and executive team barely out of their twenties, and take on challenges such as volunteering once a month at various places . And I will share the trials and tribulations I face as I go down this road being a father of two teenagers and a husband to a tolerant woman who sometimes should receive sainthood. As we take this journey, I am sure you will experience some of those moments and would agree with me. I will be as open and honest as possible, regardless if one or a thousand people read this. I have no idea where this road will take me or how I will navigate it. However, I do know that once a week I will blog, regardless of my mood, my failures or accomplishments. And I know at the end of this year I will have something to look back on or perhaps share with my wife and kids. For I will not be letting them know I am doing this. I look forward to this journey and have fastened my seatbelt.