I wish that in my teens, I didn't thiink dreams were just goals with better lighting. But somewhere between the third failed startup, the fourth existential crisis, and the slow realization that “networking” was just code for pretending to like wine, my ambitions quietly curled up and died in a pile of unread self-help books. Middle age didn’t arrive with wisdom—it showed up like a software update I didn’t ask for, full of bugs and slower processing. My knees creak louder than my career prospects, and I now consider a good night’s sleep a spiritual experience.