I feel the same way. I&#x27;m also in my 40s, and most of my life goals have passed me by. I spent some time and life energy on a doomed startup in my 20s, spent my 30s recovering from the fallout, and now - working as a freelancing nomad programmer - my options for starting something significant suddenly seem very limited.<p>The question is indeed, as you hinted, if those limits are largely self-imposed or not. There are certainly some external penalties, but what really keeps me up at night is the fact that past performance is a huge indicator for future performance. If I want to set out to accomplish anything of scale, I feel I have to delude myself into ignoring the nagging feeling that if nothing ever came out of anything I did in the last 20 years, it&#x27;s more than likely the next (and also last) 20 years will be very similar.