The author of this blog just past the half a century age mark! That round number deserved some special treatment. I was meaning to do a mid-year review of my annual objectives and recent personal development, but I will also take the chance to make a quick, mid life assessment.
Let us just get started with the question: how does it feel to be half a century old?
How I feel about being half a century old
Turning half a century actually feels great. I am much more empowered in my life that at any point in time before:
- At peace with myself.
- Established in my life and career.
- Financially in control.
- In better shape than in my last 20 years.
- An insanely sexy girlfriend 20 years younger than me.
In contrast, if I look back into where I was in my twenties, none of that was true, nor did it look like it would ever be granted. I still had plenty of questions regarding the “why” and the “how” of my interactions with other people – which made me question myself.
I was just about to start a career, with no idea if I would succeed or not. In my beginnings I wasn’t earning much, and had a few debts to pay off. It was also about the time when I started neglecting myself. I didn’t know yet that I was about to embark into a journey of excessive weight.
And back then, although I was able to get girlfriends once in a while, I still didn’t know how to do that consistently. Which meant that I could sometimes spend a whole sexless year in between two consecutive girlfriends.
Of course, the other side of the coin is you start to get the feeling that there is more time past behind you, than time left ahead of you. There is also a certain sense of “it’s now or never”.
All things considered though, my present self is much more satisfied about life than I was back in my twenties.
Being half a century is a good place to be in life!
In better shape than in the last 20 years
This one deserves a special mention. It is not absolutely obvious why you would be better at 50 than at 30. But let us say than in the last few years I devoted part of my new freedom to work on my diet and physical condition. It is a matter of time spent and priority. I will write about the details in future Health section posts!
More free than ever
I am more free than I have ever been since 1998. Back then, my post doctoral contract in Japan gave me very comfortable revenues as well as plenty of holidays. During these two years I traveled many times, within Japan, and between Japan and France. But after that, life went all towards less freedom:
- Spent a lot of time towards getting my career on the right track
- Got a wife, who started spending my hard earned money into expensive clothes and international phone calls
- The same wife who also attempted to rule my life and educate me on how I should live it 🙂
- Then I got children, who gave me lots of joy but also demanded a lot of time
- Mortgages appeared in the picture. At some point I had near 400 000 euros of debt
- Then came worries regarding divorce, then divorce settlements
- Right after divorce, I was spending all my vacations to visit my children, and never got a life of my own apart from that
Things got better since 2014. I decided I had to take vacations and pleasure time for myself, in addition to also visiting kids. And I started getting girlfriends again after twenty years! Eventually, I learned to get girlfriends consistently, got better, and attracted sexier and younger girls.
Knowing that you can get a new girl in your bed within two weeks if you put in the effort, contributes to the sense of freedom – as you don’t have to stick to an unsatisfying relationship if you don’t want to.
In addition to getting more free time for myself, my current job provides me with a lots of holidays, as well as the means to travel anywhere in the world, as often as I want to, while still able to save for my retirement.
So yeah, I am now more free than I ever was!
Some update from the last few months
The return of my insanely sexy Kenyan girlfriend
Let us call her miss N. Long story short: She is extremely sexy, the sort of hourglass body shape that keeps my testosterone levels elevated, while at the same time extremely smart and educated. I met her in 2017 via Instagram, and a couple of weeks after we started chatting, I just happened to have a 4 days weekend with no plans – so I just decided to visit Nairobi and meet her. All went well :-), and we continued to meet regularly, until October 2018 – when she texted me out of the blue that she was going back to her ex.
In my January post, I wrote about this:
I am not too concerned about that. She may well be back the very next time she fights her guy.
BlackDragon, on his blog, explains how he sees a 94% return rate on the women that leave him. I am myself experiencing something similar, with about one in three of my past women attempting a come-back after things were ended. So I sort of expected to see her coming back.
But my prophecy became true sooner than expected: she resumed communication some time in January. Our text exchanges became more regular, and finally culminated in our reunion meeting in April, then again in June. We made love all the time, until our abs became sore and our bodies bruised.
For now, that makes me a happy man. Let us see if we can keep this alive in spite of the long distance. If this can survive for another year, there may well be more serious plans for the future.
Some lessons
But in the process, I learned a couple of important lessons.
First, something had been playing against me since our first meeting in 2017. Back then, I had told her “Well I’m in my late forties, I already have two kids, and don’t see myself having more kids at my age”.
It is one of the things I usually say to a girl I just met, in order to keep expectations low. It turns out that because of that statement, and although she kept seeing me and liked me, she always viewed this as a relationship dead end. With this statement, I had closed myself a door in the future.
In Seduction parlance, it was the ultimate boyfriend dis-qualifier! It worked beyond expectations, even working against me when I was hoping to upgrade our relationship to something more meaningful.
I had already experienced something similar in 2015 – 2017. My first girlfriend at some point expressed a desire for children – which I turned down. We kept seeing each other for some time but one day she disappeared out of the radar. A year later, I discovered that she actually got a child from another man.
With younger women, that is the law: Sooner or later, she will want children. If she can’t get that from you, she’ll leave you and get it from another man. I leave it to you, dear Reader, to meditate on this fact of life, and its consequences 🙂
Needless to say, getting back with miss N. involved softening my position on the topic of having children. It is everybody’s birthright on this planet to have a progeny. If you deny them their right upfront, you are closing yourself some doors.
The Third Girl from March: rise and fall
After our initial meeting described in this blog post, I actually tried to meet regularly with this very beautiful girl. It made sense to me, back then, because I was a bit tired of having short, meaningless sexual encounters. So for some time, we started to see each other once, or twice a week, for a couple of months.
But it didn’t really work. She turned out to be quite the pain in the ass – the kind to constantly rub me in the wrong way. The last time we met, she made a remark and our conversation was about to turn into an argument. I cut it short before it even get there… and drove her back home. There are no more plans to meet now.
And that was before I got back together with miss N. Now the situation is changed. I don’t have room for a second relationship, and I would actually prefer something light and casual.
2019 objectives review
Let us now turn to my mid year 2019 objectives review.
It turns out that the objectives I set for myself early January, were very ambitious in terms of the time they required. They also didn’t take into account the return of miss N into my life.
Let us review them however and see how I performed.
Blogging objectives
- 20 new posts
- Travel and Journal sections
- Launching my professional Finance blog
On the posts objectives I am not faring too bad, with 10 new posts in the first six months. But with the upcoming summer vacation – where I will be in full time daddy mode – I am not sure I can keep up to the promised two posts a month. So I may be short on my objective of 20 for this year. My Journal section is now up and running, but I still need to start the Travel section. Regarding my professional Blog, this is a big project, still in my future plans. But it is going to consume a lot of time, when I am already overstretched. The idea is still on, but it is preferable to defer the implementation to next year, where I anticipate I’ll have more free time.
Women objectives
- At least 10 new women, of which 6 from Doha
Well so far this year I got myself three new women, all from Doha. But I didn’t anticipate the early return of miss N in the picture, which took time and resources away. Plus I got myself a bit dragged into that Third Girl. Overall I am way behind schedule for this objective to complete. Overall, I don’t think I will meet this objective. Moving forward, my priority is now to manage my ongoing distance relationship with miss N. There will be many trips involved. I may do 2 or 3 more “easy pickings” if I have the chance until year end. In total, I may end up with 5 or 6 “new” girls this year, my lowest in 5 years. It doesn’t matter, as I’m not seeking big numbers now.
Social objectives
- Go out on my own in social places, at least once a month
- Go out with other people, at least once a month
I did manage to meet the second part (going out with others).
The issue here is that, once I have put in the time for my gym, plus the time with women and travels, I don’t have much time left during the week. When I stretched myself in March, doing both gym and dating, I quickly became exhausted – unable to recover – and I had to forego the mid-week gym session.
It is already a lot. Instead of trying to do too much things badly, I’d rather do less things better. I will seek to continue to meet the second part of the objective, and just drop the first part.
Travel
- At least one new city this year
Actually I only ended up going to Paris so far, as well as Nairobi to visit miss N. Both are not properly speaking a “new city”. Since 2016, though, I didn’t have so much opportunities to visit Paris, the city of my youth, and was kind of missing it. So I finally scrapped my plans to visit Bucharest, and spent 10 days in Paris.
As of today, there is a plan to visit Kuala Lumpur in December with my children, so the objective is still up and running.
Health
- Getting to 15% body fat or below while maintaining current lean mass
- Increasing my lifts
On this one I am doing good! As per my latest estimate, I am now about 12.5 kg of body fat out of 81 kg total. This is around 15.5%. The 15% is not reached yet, but I’m not far off, and there’s 6 months left. The objective is still on track!
And I did increase all my lifts. Here are the new best lifts:
- Deadlift: 130 kg for 5 reps / 135 kg for 3 reps.
- Squats: 115 kg for 5 reps
- Barbell Row: 81 kg for 5 reps
- Overhead Press: 44 kg for 5 reps / 51 kg for one rep
- Bench Press: 70 kg for 5 reps
All my lifts increased by about 5 kg, except the squats who increased by 15 kg.
Conclusion: updated objectives for the remainder of the year
Based on these remarks and projections, let me restate my updated objectives for the remainder of 2019.
Blogging objectives:
- 20 new posts goal maintained, but 18 probably more realistic
- Travel and Journal sections
Women objectives:
- 8 women (new ones or “returning” ones) for the whole of 2019
- Manage my long distance relationship with miss N
Social objectives:
- Go out with other people, at least once a month
Travel:
- At least one new city this year. Most probably Kuala Lumpur in December
Health:
- Getting to 15% body fat or below while maintaining current lean mass
- Increase my lifts further. Another further 5 kg to each 5RM seems realistic from now to year end.
And that’s it for today!
Yours,
