It Is Not Too Late
Your passions are in reach. I know from experience.
I want to say something about society’s timelines. Fuck them.
I write these words on June 1, 2025, at age fifty-nine. I turn sixty in November. I did not publish my first book Occult America until age forty-three in 2009. I did not receive my first royalty check until this year.
I earn my living—that includes raising two sons with zero inherited wealth (dad was a Legal Aid Society attorney and mom was a medical secretary)—strictly as an artist, which in my case means writing, speaking, narrating, and doing television. I regard myself first and chiefly as a writer without which none of my other activities would be possible (or would be any good, for that matter).
Here are the facts: I worked in corporate publishing for twenty-seven years—until Penguin Random House fired me in 2017—and during that time I socked away a lot of money in index funds, which I heartily recommend if you want independent means and do not wish to rent, flip, or manage real estate. I like Rich Dad Poor Dad. But if you read between the lines, the author’s sole recommendation is real estate, which is good if you are Mr. Fixit but I am not.
Now, barring extreme countervailing measures—which do exist—there is literally no timeline for producing whatever work is your passion, other than matters of physical survival and health. (No small consideration but daily, most of the time for most of us, okay.)
My secret formula, if I have any, is to work constantly, when I am not with my few loved ones, chiefly my partner, two sons, and my sister and her family. I have no friends, who generally turn out to be Marcus Brutus anyway. I am happy.
Casting aside recitative wisdom, my spiritual practices are aspirational and acquisitive to use terms least favorable to me, which every seeker ought to. I believe those efforts help. If you are curious about my practices and those I recommend, I explore them in historical and methodological detail in my 2025 book Practical Magick, among others.
If you hold a day job that supports your passion, as publishing did my writing, that certainly helps; I realize, too, that it is not always possible. But as a friend pointed out, “You wouldn’t believe how many great artists held day jobs.”
In my day job I noticed this: the most lasting books I published (usually on spiritual traditions and social topics) were written by authors already well into middle-age. I saw this occur repeatedly. For this reason, among pettier ones, I revile “thirty under thirty” lists.
I believe that working on your dreams keeps you young, a fact suggested by Harvard psychologist Ellen Langer. In studies by Langer—the subject of controversy but their results never upended—elderly subjects experienced physical and mental improvements—including increased strength and flexibility, recovered memory and cognitive function, and improved mood and vitality—when immersed in nostalgic settings populated with stimuli from their youth, including vintage books, music, and movies. In Langer’s work, settings that evoke feelings of youth actually seem to summon the reappearance of youthful traits, extending even to improved eyesight.*
I have made the same observation about aesthetics and appearance, which magickian and Church of Satan founder Anton LaVey termed “total environment.” I am not preachy about appearance. You do what works for you, on every level, barring nothing.
Back to writing. In my thirties, I thought I had left it behind. After college (from which I carried little debt: $700 per semester at Stony Brook) I took a job as a police reporter at a Pennsylvania daily. I was too sensitive for it. I returned home and eventually settled into work in book publishing. It paid well (after a while) and I accomplished some things of which I am proud—but I could never escape the stomach-knotting truth that I settled for the second-best path of facilitator versus creator. That was my self-assessment, at least.
I have told the story elsewhere and will not repeat it here but when I reawakened to myself as a writer around 2003 (thanks to a propitious offer to a write a freelance article), it was as though the last glacial period had ended. From that point, I never stopped honing my ability as a historian and author. Within four years, I had a book contract. The one that just paid out a royalty this year.
When I tell you it is not too late—and, in fact, it is not late at all—I speak from lived experience. I cannot imagine my life (or nearly anyone’s) is exclusive.
I have profefred metaphysical arguments to defend my point. But on the level of principle alone, I offer you this truth. Make it yours.
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*See “What If Age Is Nothing but a Mind- Set?” by Bruce Grierson in The New York Times Magazine, October 22, 2014. Researchers often dispute older studies, such as Langer’s 1981 aging study, based on newer standards of methodology or those touted as such. But this phenomenon affects our view of all past clinical work, as it will affect how future researchers view today’s practices, since methods inevitably change. More recently, researchers have linked reversal of greying hair to de-stressing: “Quantitative mapping of human hair greying and reversal in relation to life stress” by Ayelet M Rosenberg, et al., eLife, 10:e67437, 2021.
I particularly appreciate this at this exact time in my life. I am 56 years old, and, after being a solitary practitioner and pilgrim for over 30 years, I just got accepted into the University of Minnesota in Religious Studies. It has also been my experience that one does not have to pursue things at the set time that society expects. I didn’t take up cycling and long distance bike touring until I was already in my 50s. That got me clean from a decade of substance use and opened up the world for me in entirely new ways at the time my peers all seemed to be settling in to late middle age narratives about being too old for this and that. These linear, conformist, and largely capitalist ideas about who you are supposed to be at such and such an age are such colossal bullshit. Thank you for that reminder. We follow the compass of our own souls; it’s a lifelong pilgrimage.
"I have no friends, who generally turn out to be Marcus Brutus anyway. I am happy."
I, too, discovered that accepting how "friendship" is something that loses value as one grows older and becomes more focused on their own pursuits indeed brings happiness.