75, a Lifetime of Experience, and a College Degree: What’s Next?

Reflecting on my life journey, I have concluded that achieving your dreams is possible at any age. It took me nearly fifty-eight years from my high school graduation in 1966 to graduate from college this past May with a BA in English-Creative Writing. But during those years, I didn't just sit idle. I accumulated a wealth of life and professional experience, whether from negative or positive lifestyle choices. I’ve enjoyed careers marked by firsts and achievements that made me proud. From Wall Street arbitrage clerk to Radio host and producer to Television journalist, producer, and Executive Producer both on the East and West Coasts, I have soared through hard work, being in the right place at the right time, and perseverance.

As if those were not enough, there was the work with media advocacy organizations during the early seventies. I’ve sat on grants for artists' selection panels and worked with a Yale Dean to create a Latino poetry magazine called Revista. There was a collaborative effort to launch cable television in the nation’s capital in the early eighties during my tenure as the commission's Executive Director, charged with developing the process. In the late eighties, after a nationwide selection process, I was part of a small group selected for a television drama writing fellowship with the American Film Institute. Then there was the small business consultancy, the development and production of a multicultural festival, co-organizing a journalism training program for 16–24-year-olds, and I haven’t even touched the collaborative efforts to resurrect public access production and programming locally, and, oh, yes, that slick print and then digital magazine named Palacio Magazine.

I don’t have time to talk about vending jewelry on K Street in the middle of winter, the motorcycle courier gig, the airport shuttle driving adventure, or bartending at a German Alpine Village joint (I would rather not remember that one).

I mention all these because I’m proud of those efforts and because they have built a foundation for how I have lived my life and filled my experience bank with a wealth of wisdom. This proved invaluable when I entered college at the ripe young age of sixty-six. The intellectual, organizational, and leadership skills I’d learned over the previous fifty years made my college life easier—not too easy, but they sure helped.

Now that I have a college degree, people have asked me what I will do with it. You know, what am I going to be when I grow up? I find myself at 75 years old, armed with a degree in English-Creative Writing, a lifetime of experience, hungry to learn more and to tackle that bucket list of mine, which includes writing projects and travel dreams; the list is longer than it needs to be, and making time for family, friends, and the occasional outing down to Seal Beach to plant my beach chair on the sand and look out at the cargo ships, oil rigs, surfers, and sailboats riding the waves of the Pacific Ocean. It is all soothing. Great therapy.

I refuse to believe that living ends at any age just because of some myths about aging. Our culture has surrendered to the arbitrary schedule, saying, "Okay, you’re seventy-five or eighty-five; time to get that rocky chair.” Tell that to the Rolling Stones. Yes, I know I’m no longer twenty-five or fifty years old. Yes, my body has slowed down (I still do morning walks and go to the gym), and yes, I have an implanted pacemaker in my body (the battery is scheduled for twelve years, so I’ll see you when I’m eighty-seven). Knock on wood, my mind is still, well, it can power the words on this page; I still know right from wrong and can remember much of my life. Names sometimes evaporate into the ether, but did I want to remember those people anyway? Just asking.

I have settled into a life where the search for peace, intellectual curiosity, and caring about my world is as essential today as fifty years ago. I still believe now more than ever that once you stop living, pursuing knowledge and wisdom, new avenues of adventure, well, you’ve killed your own life. There is knowledge and adventure everywhere: driving down Route One from San Francisco and suddenly seeing the Pacific Ocean in front of you, or the first time I came up La Brea Avenue in Inglewood, there was the Hollywood sign in front of me. The sign that I dreamt about as a kid in the South Bronx projects and never imagined that three years later, I would be working in the state of Hollywood. I’ve had the privilege of experiencing life in other countries, states, and cities. I have met so many people from many different walks of life, sucking the knowledge and wisdom from them that they laid down on me. Damn, it’s all been good. Even the bad times have been good because they taught me some heavy stuff. Wiser because of it.

Back to my original point. The challenge now that I’ve graduated from college is what to do next. I haven’t given up on pursuing a Master of Fine Arts (MFA) degree, where I fantasize about working in the theatre. I do want to see the Grand Canyon, walkabout in Australia, sail down the Nile and the Amazon, and hell, why, I ask myself every year, haven’t I been to Mardi Gras in New Orleans and SXSW (South by Southwest) in Austin and what’s with my never visiting my mother’s homeland, the Dominican Republic. I’ve been to my father’s, Puerto Rico.

As you can see, I have a wish list, goals, a desire to conquer life, and optimism and a refusal to let this opportunity—whatever time I will be on this plane—pass by engaging it, wrestling it to the ground so I can mount it and ride it into that black hole, wherever it is. I’ll tell you one thing: I am not going gently into that darkness. Oh, hell no. I have people to see, places to go, and things to do. I am determined to live life to the fullest, to seize every opportunity, and to make the most of my time on this plane. Remember, my pacemaker battery has twelve more years of life in it before I must recharge. Now, that’s optimism.