What the Stoics knew about delayed happiness—and the bill I’m still paying.

I spent the first forty years of my adult life in a waiting room.

Not literally. But I may as well have been sitting there with a numbered ticket, watching the clock, waiting for my real life to begin. I told myself the good stuff—the travel, the writing, the peace, the joy—would start once I had enough. Enough money. Enough security. Enough permission.

I treated “Someday” like a savings account, convinced I was making smart investments by deferring gratification. Starve the soul at 35, feast at 65. That was the plan.

Here’s what I didn’t understand: Joy doesn’t earn interest. It atrophies.

When I finally arrived at my “Someday,” I discovered the currency had collapsed. The account was empty. Worse—I’d forgotten how to spend it even if it wasn’t.

This is the bill I’m still paying. Let me show you the line items so you don’t repeat my mistake.

Line Item #1: The Atrophy of Joy

We tell ourselves the most dangerous lie: I’m just pausing my happiness to secure my future.

We imagine our capacity for joy works like a light switch—that we can flip it off for decades of grinding and flip it back on the day we retire. We are wrong. Psychologists call this the “Hedonic Treadmill.”

We run on this treadmill, sweating and striving for the next promotion or the bigger house, only to find that once the dopamine fades, our happiness resets to the same baseline. You are running a marathon to stay in the same place.

Joy isn’t a switch. Joy is a muscle.

Here’s what the research reveals: when you practice anxiety, urgency, and overwork for years, your emotional responses adapt to optimize for those states, much like your eyes adjust to darkness. You become a stress expert. Meanwhile, your ability to experience peace, presence, and pleasure—the very things you’re working toward—deteriorates.

When I finally reached my “Someday,” I found I didn’t know how to sit still. The silence I’d craved felt suffocating, not peaceful. I had money in the bank, but I was spiritually bankrupt.

You cannot cultivate a garden of peace if you’ve spent a lifetime pouring concrete over the soil.

Line Item #2: The Biological Tax

In my thirties, I postponed a trek through Australia and New Zealand. “I’ll go at 50,” I said. “Once the portfolio hits X.”

Well, I never went. The physical exuberance I would have brought to that trip in my youth was replaced by questions of my endurance.

The science is unforgiving. Muscle changes often begin in the twenties for men and in the forties for women. But the real silent killer of adventure is cartilage.

Peak cartilage volume typically occurs around age 36. After that, the cushioning in your joints begins its inevitable decline.

You can buy the plane ticket later, but you cannot buy back your cartilage.

There is a biological expiration date on “exuberance.” You can hike New Zealand at 65, but you will see it differently than you would have at 35. The mountain hasn’t changed, but the knees climbing it have.

Some experiences require a specific version of you to experience them fully. That version expires. Deferring them doesn’t just delay them—it fundamentally transforms them into something lesser.

Line Item #3: The Stranger Tax

But the most expensive charge? The relational one.

For years, I told my family: “Just let me finish this quarter,” or “Once this project wraps, I’m all yours.” I assumed relationships could be paused like a video game—saved and resumed later without consequence.

But people aren’t non-player characters (NPCs). They don’t freeze while you’re grinding in the spreadsheet dungeon. They grow, change, and evolve—with or without you watching.

When I finally lifted my head, I realized I’d missed the nuance of who they’d become. My partner wasn’t the same person. My children had developed entire personalities, interests, and inner worlds I knew nothing about.

I discovered that intimacy is a perishable skill. You cannot simply hit “resume” on a relationship you paused a decade ago. The version of my partner I wanted to spend time with had evolved into someone else—someone I now had to work double-time to get to know.

I didn’t just lose time; I lost the privilege of witnessing their evolution.

The Delusion: Denying the End

Why do we mortgage our actual lives for a hypothetical future? Because we deny death. We live as if tomorrow is guaranteed. We act like there’s always more time.

The Stoics had a cure for this delusion 2,000 years ago: Memento Mori—Remember you must die. Seneca wrote: “You act like mortals in all that you fear, and like immortals in all that you desire.”

Palliative care nurse Bronnie Ware spent years listening to dying patients share their deepest regrets. The second most common regret she heard—particularly from men—was this: “I wish I hadn’t worked so hard.”

They missed their children’s youth and their partners’ companionship. They realized too late that they never needed the income they thought they did. They just kept lying to themselves that “Someday” would make it worth it.

It never does.

The Protocol: How to Start Living Now

I’m not telling you to quit your job tomorrow and blow your savings on a yacht. That’s recklessness, not wisdom.

I’m telling you to stop treating your life like a dress rehearsal for a retirement that isn’t guaranteed. Here is your protocol to break the cycle today:

1. The China Rule Stop saving the good china. Use the nice plates on a Tuesday. Burn the expensive candle. Wear the outfit you’re “saving.” For what? For when? If it breaks, it breaks. At least it was used by the living.

2. The Someday Audit Open your “Someday” folder right now. What’s in there? Pick one thing—not all of them, just one—and move it to “This Month.” Not 2028. This month.

3. The Micro-Retirement Take a Wednesday off. Not to run errands, but to practice being alive. Go for the hike while your knees still work. Have the two-hour lunch. Be radically present for one entire day.

The Final Invoice

I’m fifty-something now, working hard to pay off this debt and relearning how to live. I am rebuilding atrophied muscles of joy and re-introducing myself to people I should have known all along.

But you? You don’t have to go into debt in the first place.

Here is the invoice waiting for you at the end of the “First Mile” if you don’t stop now:

• The Deposit: Your Life.

• The Expected Yield: Future Freedom.

• The Actual Cost: Atrophied Joy, Biological Decline, Relational Distance.

• The Balance Due: Immediate Action.

Don’t wait 40 years to introduce yourself to your own life.

What’s one thing in your “Someday” folder that you could realistically move to “This Month”? Drop it in the comments—I read every single one, and I promise this community will hold you accountable.