Hey! This is the Daily Overpass! My name is Eric and I make apps. Now today, I want
to talk about milestone birthdays and what am I doing with my life?
This past week, a member of my family turned 40, had a big milestone birthday.
So, I sent her an email on her birthday. I know I should have sent a card. I'm
really terrible about sending birthday cards. The thing is, you have to be able
to send it all the way from England, after the post office to find out how
much it cost, all that kind of stuff. It takes like a week and I'm
just really bad about it. But so, I did send an email on the day. I sent
her an email saying, "Hey, happy birthday! I just want you to know that I'm thinking
about you. I hope you have a great day! And hey, this is like a big birthday for
you. Isn't it you turning 40 today?" And she emailed back saying, "Yeah, I'm not
quite sure how I feel about that." And I kind of laughed a bit
because you know when it comes to those milestone birthdays, nobody is more
neurotic than I am. Every time- yeah, every time I've had one of those
birthdays in the past, it's been like this huge thing. I guess, huge drama to
everyone around me because I just can't let it go. Alright,
right now, I'm 45. When I turned 45, that was fine.
In fact, I'm kind of getting used to being a little bit older. Somebody
sent me an e-mail a few weeks ago and they said., you know, it was a younger
person who's just starting out in apps. They said- he said, "You're like my
YouTube dad." And I thought, "YouTube dad?" Not brother, not- you know? (laughs)
But, okay. I guess- I get it. You know, when you're 45, you can't hide
it anymore. But, when I turn- so when I turned 30, this was- I could
remember when I turned 30. I was like 29 and I had like a year to go and I can
remember talking to somebody. He had turned- he was like in his early 30's
and to be, you know, I thought we weren't- I didn't consider us to be
that different in terms of age. But he was past that 30 threshold and
I took- and I was talking to him and he says, "God, I can't believe
next year I'm gonna turn 30. Now, it wasn't so much that I was- I
feared adding, you know, having that age. That's not what it's
about. It's that, what have I been doing with my life. That was -
was the the concern, thinking, you know, "God, when my parents were 30,
they were blah.. blah.. blah.." And you started comparing yourself to all
these other people. Even for like today, I don't- you know, I'm so
glad that I wasn't- you got like Zuckerberg and everything. I'm sure
there's loads of people in technology out there who are constantly looking at
Zuckerberg thinking, "I'm a failure!" Because I didn't- wasn't hit
success when I was, whatever, twenty something. But anyway, so when I turned 30,
what he said to me was, he said, "Eric, you know what? When I turned 30,
I was a bit stressed about it. But you know, I I made it through it. You know, and
I'm fine. It's just one of those things. Just a milestone. You
get through it. See how I didn't have any trouble. I'm fine."
I remember thinking, and this is terrible to say this. I
remember thinking, '"Yeah, but I don't want to be like you. You're super
successful." I wanted to be super successful by the time I was thirty.
But, you know, I wasn't. So, anyway, when I turned 30, yeah, around this
time, I was working in- I was working in a job that I really couldn't
stand. I was going into an office every day and I was just like- I just- -
I guess, can't stand this place. And it was- I was a permanent employee.
I'd been there for a few years and you know what, I hated the place after one
month. Like I knew I had to leave and I was like looking for other jobs. But
nothing was really- nothing ever came up and I'm just going into the
office and it was just- it was just soul- destroying. Like you go in and it's just
like your shoulders slump, you're just like, "God..." (sighs) You know, I just- it's
like you leave your personality at the door, one of those kind of places.
It just was not a good experience. So, when I turned 30
I think, the first thing I did was I I started taking like Taekwondo
classes. I started taking like- you know, enrolled in Taekwondo and I did it
for like three years. So I'm 30 years old, I'm going
down to to learn Taekwondo and there were some other grown-ups there.
But there were a lot of kids, so like, you're 30 years old, there's like 10 and
12 year olds with you and all this kind of stuff. That was one of
the things I did and eventually I ended up quitting that job. I ended up
quitting without having anything else to go to. It was like this- just
this- I was just so fed up with the whole thing. I've talked about all this
before. It was actually a really traumatic experience. I talked about it
and I did a video called "Getting to where you weren't supposed to
be" or something, like way back in the early Daily ones. In which I
talked about all that But you know, the big thing about that was, I quit that
job and I went out. I became a contractor and you know, luckily everything
worked out. But there was a few months there of being in really bad shape.
You know, struggling to- for money, all this kind
of stuff. But in the end, I became a contractor and then
I started Overpass and even though, that the first ten years
of Overpass, I hardly ever did anything except for take on contract jobs. I mean,
I set up the website and all that kind of stuff, but you know, never did anything.
Now, when I turned 40, you know, the whole thing- the whole
your neurosis kicked into action again. So, when I turned 40,
it's like just before I turned 40, there were several things that just made me
start to feel really, really old. Yeah, the first was, I was working in this-
I was working as a contractor for this company and we were doing some pretty
cool stuff, working with different stuff. But they said, we're gonna change
direction and we're gonna start working with SharePoint, cuz SharePoint is really
awesome. I started working with SharePoint and if you
haven't used a SharePoint in a corporate environment... Okay, this is my opinion.
Don't get upset. I think it is the most sluggish boring piece of software
in the world. Nobody hates SharePoint more than I did. It was just something
like, when you're working with something, where you can't do anything that's cool
anymore. Everything's like, "oh, document management. oh, look at the business cases of this..."
all discussed any of it, It's just everything was just- and it performed
slowly and have a lot of control over the interface, all this kind of stuff. And
you were working with technology that was actually several years
older and then to keep up with everything else. You're working with big
system's mainframe system and it just felt like, you know, like work was just
sort of this that gives just everything was just burning slowly. The
second thing was, right before- a few months before I turned 30 or
probably about a month before- no, before I turned 40, I
threw my back out. It was like, because when you're a contractor,you're
always working in- you're working in offices a lot of times. So, you're going
there and you know, unlike a permanent employee where you based on
your seniority and the best seat, everybody knows where the best
seat is, with the adjustable and everything. So, I had a seat that was like
broken and it's just I always got the worst seat, but that's like
you get paid a lot, which is good. But you always get the worst seat. Which is
I'll take it whatever. So, I could- I was sitting there and
then after a while my back started to hurt. And it just started, just
a lower back pain. And I wasn't exercising a lot. It wasn't, you
know, I'd go for runs every so often, but I wasn't doing a lot.
I wasn't doing back exercises. And then just yet one day, my back
completely gave out. It was one of those where you have the spasms that go up your
back- you're just like you take a step (grunts) Yeah, it's just- I remember I
couldn't walk, I had to call in sick and I was like working from home. Like
you know you're bad when we you have to call in sick, and groan "I can't breathe.."
And I had to go visit see the doctor and the doctor says,
"Well, you're just getting older!" (laughs) So, he says, "You know, these
kind of things happen. You do these exercises, everything .." And so now,
I am very careful about my back. I do hyperextensions up in the gym
and you go to the gym with all those guys. But back then, it was just like it -
you know, back problems, I was working with SharePoint and
the other thing was we went on up the summer holiday, I always go- like we went
to China one year, we went to go back to the States a lot obviously and
then this year, we did what my wife was always wanted. To go on a canal boat
holiday. Which I don't know if you, guys, have ever been on a canal boat or steam
canal boats like in England. But there's these canals, they get these boats that
go like two miles an hour. It's leisurely and
relaxing and therapeutic. And just- it's like- it just made me feel much older.
When I was in the canal boat, steering this canal boat, you know, you're
just feeling old. So, when I turned 40, the first
thing I did was, I had this beard I was growing. A beard for like, you know,
six or seven years. it's like so people just knew me out had this beard.
It was turning all grey and everything. The first thing I did was
shave that thing off. You know, and then eventually ended up-
then I also released the app. That was my first app when I
turned 40. It was just right before that I started looking at other things to
gain. I gotta start investing in something, I don't want to just be this
going from contract to contract to contract. So, I released the
first app. And then also, eventually within the next year or two,
just stopping contracting all together and just working on
Overpass stuff. Producing a lot of our own apps and it's kind of where we
are now. So, you know, there was a lot of changes.
There's always these milestone birthdays because the thing is I'm 45
now. I know in five years time, when I turned 50, Oh man, I'm gonna completely
lose it. I don't know what I'm gonna do. Maybe, I'll dye my hair, maybe
I'll start wearing gold chains, I don't know. Yes kids, it's up for grabs!
You start- you know, this is the thing, when you're 45, you start
looking at Ray Kroc who started McDonald's, who is is 56 or
Colonel Sanders, who is much older. You don't have anybody else. You started
to run out of people to emulate as a business owner. Anyway, so that's just was
my own things now. And then I've got- when
I got the Mustang a few months ago, this is very much the, you know, I'm getting
older. When am I actually get this thing? I'm gonna get it now and I joke
about it being my midlife crisis car. And here's the thing about midlife
crisis. I love midlife crisis. I can't wait to
get full into my midlife crisis because the thing is, nobody- is I don't think so,
nobody considers himself to be in the middle of a midlife crisis. They
just think, I need to make some changes and it's everybody around them
that looks at them and say, "You know, I said, midlife crisis is such a shame."
He said, "What they're saying is he's not acting the way we expect him
to act anymore."And I think that's good. I think - I think it's
good when you go through those periods of alarm and stress, like what am I
doing with my life. I gotta do do something. I got to get up. I can't -
I've been in this- I've been in this job too long and I've
been doing this too long. I've been not releasing this app too long.
I've been building this too long, I spent too long talking about
videos and not doing videos, all this kind of stuff. And the goal is
that, the 50-year old Eric is not gonna be the same as the 40 year
old.Eric. And the 40 year old Eric was not supposed to be the same as the 30 year
old Eric. And you know, I think it's just great.
I love milestone birthdays but I know they're stressful.
Anyway, if any of f you have the same kind of neuroses around this thing,
either if you have one coming up or if you had real trouble getting through one,
let me know in the comments. I know it's one of those things that you know it
makes me feel less, you know, less strange. Anyway, that's it for today. I'll talk
to you, guys, tomorrow.