One of my favorite rom-coms from the early 1990s is a little-known film called “Prelude to a Kiss,” starring a luminous Meg Ryan at her quirkiest and a young, handsome Alec Baldwin before he developed a reputation as a narcissistic asshole.
 
It’s basically a body-swapping fantasy, in which Rita (Ryan) gets a kiss from an elderly stranger at her wedding at the precise moment they each wish they were old/young. Hijinks and hilarity ensue as Rita’s soul in the old dude’s body spends most of the movie trying to convince her new husband, Peter (Baldwin), that it’s really her under all that saggy skin and ear hair.
 
When Rita and the old man finally switch back to their own bodies at the end, he says, “Can I give you two a piece of advice? Floss.”

I’m super lucky I get to do what I love for a living, and I’m extremely thankful that I get to do it on my own terms. Every time my little marketing and public relations business successfully completes another 365-day journey around the sun, I consider it to be a major milestone.
 
Six years ago this month, I quit my last corporate job and went out on my own as a freelance writer and media consultant. It is still the best career decision I ever made. Read all about my big leap into entrepreneurship here.

Every single day without exception, I wake up happy to go to work. My heart positively overflows with gratitude for the life and career I have somehow managed to create for myself. (Gross, I know. Go ahead and roll your eyes. I’ll wait.)

Truth bomb coming in hot: Whoever said money can’t buy happiness was never $40,000 in credit card debt.
 
Yeah, yeah. I get the essence of that old maxim —if you’re generally an unhappy person, no accumulation of physical wealth will change that. Misery is a choice, happiness comes from within … yada, yada.
 
For quite a few years now, I’ve chosen gratitude over wallowing, and my life is pretty amazing as a result. I don’t do math very well (I’m a writer, after all), but this fact adds up for me time and again: The more I count my blessings, the better my life gets.
 
All that being said, I am here to tell you that when I made the final payment on my last remaining credit card, the balance of which had been hanging on by its gnarly-ass fingernails for nearly 20 years, I experienced a palpable wave of relief and joy the likes of which I only felt one other time in my life, and that was after the birth of my child.

I’ll be 45 next month. It occurred to me that this milestone birthday likely marks my true “middle age.” Yep, I am officially at the mid-point of my existence. Half dead, as it were.

The women in my family are a sturdy lot, particularly on my mother’s side, many of them living until age 90 or older. So, this is not naïveté on my part. It could actually happen.

I feel fortunate that I’m more than likely going to grow into a wizened little old lady. If I make it another 45 years, I hope I inherit the spunk of my Aunt Pauline, who was still mowing her 2-acre yard in the heat of rural Mississippi summer just weeks before she passed at age 96.

I didn’t mean to do it.

I didn’t intend to carry it so far.

I just wanted a taste. Just a tiny boost. Nothing extreme.

But a taste wasn’t enough. It led to another, and another. I felt myself falling into the deep chasm of obsession. Before I knew it, I was full-on in the madness.

Before I knew it, I had … I had … completely redecorated my living room.

Now, I don’t mean to make light of addiction. True physical and psychological addition — to drugs, alcohol, food, sex — is blinding, brutal and ravaging, and it does not discriminate.