Phoenix

Blogger extraordinaire and Gen Plus guest writer, Cass Brown, of Cancergiggles repute pens some new thoughts on life. For those of you who have not yet met Cass, visit him at his compelling blog, Cancergiggles. Living with a challenging cancer, Cass' methodology is to laugh his way through life. And so far he is beating the odds and has surpassed his due date by quite a bit...which has the medical community somewhat delighted and flummoxed at the same time. And best of all...he's 50 plus. To purchase his book (limited edition and he's working on the next one, so get it while still available) visit our Shop page at Gen Plus. We're thrilled to offer what we believe will soon be a bestseller internationally.

You don't have an excuse for having that "it's all over" attitude just because you are 50. I could have had an excuse, because for me it looked like it really was all over (being dead is the only good excuse, and I was almost there) but for some reason it just seemed to be a waste.

Having taken a 3 year sabbatical from the world, due to some niggles with tumours, surgery and a legal dispute with the Grim Reaper, 9 days before I hit the magic five-oh I started to do something different. It had become increasingly clear that my talents as statesman, diplomat, media tycoon and brain surgeon were being ignored, so I decided that I needed to do something for the hell of it. I started to write.

As a career move, deciding to become a writer is just about as dumb as putting your name down for the next moon landing because I am told that statistically, you have a greater chance of being murdered than getting a book published. It would therefore, be very stupid indeed to waste your time following this sort of dream and you should buckle down and accept that you are of little or no value to society so should spend your time doing jigsaw puzzles until they put you in a retirement home. Unfortunately, this sort of incisive wisdom was not available to me so like an idiot, I went on TV last week to discuss the fact that my first book will be available in the shops here in the UK in a couple of weeks.

I would hate anyone to think that I am advocating that they should take up writing for a living; because the odds really are pretty poor and quite frankly I can really do without the competition. The point however, is that despite what you may tell yourself, the main barrier to achieving what you want, stares out at you from the mirror every morning.