Don't let anyone tell you you're too old to do something.
I did two things in my 30's that many people said were only for kids.
When I was 33 years old, I signed up for taekwondo. I was training with mostly teenagers and people in their young 20's, but I wasn't the oldest. Parents--not much older than me--picking up their kids from the previous class looked at me like I was some kind of an asshole.
"He must be having a midlife crisis."
I asked one guy, a year younger than me, why he wouldn't sign up and take the class with his son.
He claimed he was "too old" to start marital arts, not realizing I was older than him. "Oh really," I chuckled, "to each his own."
When I started Taekwondo, I could barely do a push-up. During my black belt test, I had kicked through four 1" wooden boards, broke two boards with a spinning axe kick, slammed through three boards with an elbow strike, and punched through an inch-thick slab of concrete with my bare fist.
I also did 50 pushups, 100 crunches, ran 2 miles, and various other high-intensity drills during the endurance test (which is timed), a prerequisite to obtaining your black belt in Kukkiwon-certified Taekwondo.
Too old, my ass.
During my years of training in martial arts, I realized that we don't have to stop doing what we enjoy just because some douchebag concluded that we'd exceeded some imaginary recommended age limit.
We can do whatever we want, so long as we're not infringing upon the rights of others. That's the libertarian philosophy.
As a kid, I was fascinated with skateboarding but was never good at it. I spent many summer days trying to improve my ollies and kickflips. By the time I reached my late teens, I had moved on to other things, but I somehow knew it wasn't the end.
When I was 35, I went to a skate shop and bought a REAL deck, some premium trucks, bearings, and wheels. The guy working at the shop who put my board together was maybe 19 or 20, but he didn't think anything was odd about a 35-year-old dude buying a skateboard.
With my new board, I hit the local skatepark. My decades-old hiatus showed itself immensely. I was terrible, but that didn't stop me. Indeed, I sucked at skateboarding, but I didn't care, I was having fun.
After practicing a few times at the skatepark, I could do an ollie and a kickflip again. I also did some smaller ramps and tested my luck on the halfpipe.
I wasn't trying to be Tony Hawk; I just felt like skateboarding.
I realized there was a massive benefit to skateboarding in your 30's (or any age). It was great exercise.
Exercise can be tedious if you know it's exercise. You may have trouble feeling motivated if you know you're headed to the gym for 30 minutes of training on the elliptical machine.
An excellent way to trick your brain is to make your exercise something you enjoy doing. If skateboarding excites you, get out there and shred it up, no matter how old you are.
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