Having recently reached the age where I can start drawing Social Security, I had a decision to make, and to me, a major decision. A decision that went beyond the issue of dollars and cents. Will I be able to make it on a limited income? The answer is, barely. And I mean scrape the bottom of the barrel barely.

To complicate matters, there were emotional issues to deal with. You see, I love to write, and like this article, I’ve been published here and there, but I want to do more. Lots more. I want to become a published author. You know, one of those books you pay money for at bookstores. But writing is not simple.

Contrary to what you may envision, like the scenes in movies where the writer yanks the last page out of a typewriter and cheers because it’s done, that’s not the way it happens. It takes time. Hours. Weeks. Months. Sometimes years, and doing it in my spare time like I’ve been doing for the past several years, who knows, it may never get completed.

So here I am. Faced with an opportunity to spend more time doing what I love doing, or grinding it out at a job I hate to avoid living a near substandard existence.

This has not all come to me as a sudden revelation. I’ve been dwelling on it for some time now. Go after the money or follow my heart?

Reflecting on that point, following my heart, I think back to my youth. Back when the only thing I wanted to do was become a professional race car driver, and I cannot watch an auto race without feeling a pang inside me somewhere. Then I start going through the Would’a-Should’a-Could’a syndrome. Obviously, I’m too old to take up auto racing as a new career, but writing is not out of the picture. So here we go again. I’ve already forfeited one dream. Am I willing to forfeit another? Am I willing to pay the price to fulfill my second dream, or let it slip away like the first one?

We’re done with me now. The whole point of this article is, what was your Would’a-Should’a-Could’a? To have been a writer? An artist, actor or actress, dancer, teacher, preacher, musician, singer, photographer?

Whatever it is or was, I have wonderful news for you. It’s not too late to pursue your dream.

As far as those of you who might tend to use your age as an excuse, here are some case histories: Jessie Lee Brown Foveaux, of Manhattan, was 98 when she received a million-dollar advance for her autobiography. Peg Phillips who played Ruth-Ann Miller, the gravely voiced owner of the general store in the TV series “Northern Exposure” was an accountant and took up acting at the tender age of 65. Grandma Moses didn’t start painting until she was in her 70s. Ray Kroc was in his mid-50s when he acquired the franchise rights from the McDonald brothers and put the fast-food chain on the road to where it is today. Sarah “Sadie” Delaney and her sister, Elizabeth Delaney, who together co-authored the book “Having Our Say,” that was later turned into a Broadway play, were both 100 when their book was published. After Elizabeth died, Sarah wrote another book titled “The Delaney Sisters’ Book of Everyday Wisdom.” She was 106 at the time.

These are but a few examples of people who didn’t let the fire in their dreams die out, merely rekindling them at a later date.

So what about your dreams? Now that you’re rid of the encumbrances of your working years, the cornucopia of debt, children to raise, college tuitions to pay, isn’t it time to stop lamenting over what you wish you’d done and rekindled those dreams? Make the decision today to pick up where you left off and turn those Would’a-Should’a-Could’a’s into I wills-I am-I dids.

Look me up in your local bookstore someday.