If youth is learning to spread your wings and fly, then I would say to be middle-aged is to fall back to earth.

Once you reach a certain age, the future is no longer a limitless horizon; there is no longer your whole life ahead of you. In fact, most of it is behind you, an extremely unsettling fact the first time you think it.

There is still choice – a lot of choice – left, though some days this doesn’t feel especially true.

And so you stop focusing on the future (or at least I do).

The work of middle age, it seems to me, is to come to grips with what your life has been, which is never quite what you thought (or hoped) it would be.

Lately in my writing I’ve been creating middle-aged protagonists because I think it’s a fascinating stage of life. You are who you are and that is not likely to change, and your past is your past, and while sometimes you try to go back and make it come out differently, you can’t.

If past and future are denied you, you have to shift your attention to the present. What about now? That’s the pressing question. Being present in this moment, with no ability to change the past and little possibility of changing the future, you tend to become a somewhat different person without exactly meaning to; one with fewer plans, less patience, no filter.

Or maybe not you, maybe this is just me. But it’s interesting work and a lot more entertaining than being twenty-five ever was.

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Jennifer Lawler has been a writer-editor for more than twenty-five years and has published more than forty novels and nonfiction books. She is the founder of the online education company Club Ed LLC.