“It is never too late to be what you might have been.”
-- George Eliot

A few weeks ago, I went to my friend's house for lunch. I first met Ruth when we were both fresh-faced 19 year-olds with our whole lives ahead of us, and now we were meeting to celebrate her retirement.

Wait... WHAT???

How the heck did that happen?

Yesterday was my 59th birthday. It feels so strange to write that as I still feel 28 in my head (my body is a different matter!)

But age does change the way we think. Over the last few years I've found my focus shifting from striving for striving's sake to much more concentrated considerations. I'm no less ambitious, but I'm more thoughtful about how I want to spend my time and why.

There is very definitely more time behind me than ahead of me now and this has a way of concentrating the mind.

If I'm not careful, it also has a way of inspiring regret. If only I had made this turn instead of that one ... what would have happened if I had made that choice instead of that one .... how would my life have been different if I had not taken that job or made that move? And of course the biggie ... why didn't I become an artist much earlier in life?

This is the hardest one for many of us to deal with. When we finally find our way into our art, we look back and wonder about all the time that passed without it. Just imagine if we had put all that youthful energy into our paintings! Where might we be now?

But I don't allow myself to spend long in these regrets because I think they are an illusion. First and most obviously, the past is gone and there's nothing we can do about that. But also, without everything we've done previously, we wouldn't be us now - and it's the "us" of now that is the artist we've become.

So I allow no time for ruminating on what might have been ... but I am fascinated by the past in the sense that it leads us to the present moment. Everything that happens is a building block - some small, some large - that creates the foundation for today.

I'm turning this fascination with my past into a new project - a series I'm calling "Pieces of Me."

These works will be made of collage and paint, and will incorporate collage that is personal to me. Journals, paperwork, letters, tickets, and personal memorabilia will all combine to create the fabric of new works on wood panel. I'm sure I'll also paint and add mixed media, although I don't yet know how that will look. And I will include my own handmade collage papers, as these represent my present.

I think this series will be cathartic - and it will also help me retrieve my memories. I am notorious among friends and family for remembering very little of my life. Through these collages, I plan to recover some of what I've lost.

Perhaps there's also something about celebration in this ... the idea is still clarifying so I am not 100% sure, but I think there's something about acknowledging the richness of life and the importance of the everyday. We are always heading towards something significant (a better job or a holiday or a new house) and yet when we look back, most of our life is made up of bank statements and christmas cards and insurance documents and old cheque books and school reports and childhood drawings.

I love how this is all still coalescing, just as the first of the pieces is still under construction

This is the way art comes - or at least the way it comes to me. I have to follow the nudges that I don't understand. I have to do the thing, with no idea what it means. And then at some point, the meaning reveals itself and I am amazed to find out that it makes perfect sense.

In this case, the project that has presented itself to me makes sense not only from an artistic perspective, but also from a personal one.

By making this work, I will honour my past. I will celebrate those days that I sometimes regret. No, they were not wasted - they were stepping stones to this moment, when I could embark on this work. Work I quite literally could not have made without them.

I'm sharing this because I think this sense of it being too late is common among artists. I often hear it during my courses or in my artist community. People feel that they are in their 60s or 70s or 80s and now i's just too late for them. My response is always "are you dead? if not, it's not too late."

That may sound glib but I'm deadly serious. It takes a few weeks or months to make an amazing work of art. If you get on with it, you may make something astounding - and that work could not have been made by a younger version of you.

So when you feel the sense of regret over time passing you by, use that as fuel. That's your motivation to ensure you don't waste another moment.