I turned 40 this year. This event did not pass by without some serious introspection. In my head, 40 was a milestone birthday. There were goals I wished to achieve before hitting that magic number. Some I did, some I did not. And because I am a neurotic creative type my failures resonate far more deeply than my successes. So it goes.

I've wanted to make films since I was a teenager. It's how I saw myself spending my life – writing and directing movies. First I wanted to match Robert Rodriguez's achievement of making his first film at 23 (El Mariachi). When I turned 24 without succeeding in this, I set a different goal.

I would make a movie before I turned 30. This didn't happen either. 30 came and went but I was still a young man and believed I had all the time in the world. A new self-imposed deadline was created – as long as I made a film before I turned 40 I wouldn't feel like a failure. That gave myself a cool decade to get my act together.

During this time, technology caught up to my ambitions. With the advent of smartphones, there was no longer any need for crews or expensive camera equipment – problems that held me back in the past. Now, everyone carried a fully functional movie studio in their pocket. There was no excuse preventing me from physically making a film.

I turned 39 and still had no film to my name.

It was impossible to kid myself anymore – if I was going to ever make a movie I needed to do it now. So at the beginning of this year, I put all my other creative projects on hold. That revised Claudette in the Shadows novella I planned on publishing? On hold. Final revisions of my fantasy novel, Lune? On hold. The third Winter novel? On hold.

I directed all my effort into achieving a single goal – I would write a screenplay and I would make a movie based on that screenplay. And I would do it before my 40th birthday.

So I started writing. Months passed and by the time I finished my screenplay, I realised it was too big for me to actually produce. Too expensive, too ambitious. I put it aside and tried to write something smaller, acutely aware that my birthday was approaching. I stopped looking at calendars, too afraid to mark the passing of time. Anxiety took up residence in the pit of my stomach and refused to leave.

I finished this second screenplay and frustratingly realised it was still too big for me to make within my limited resources. I'd burned through most of the year writing unfilmable films. Stupid me.

Gripped by anxiety, I frantically started writing a third screenplay, something set in one location with two people. Something I could actually make.

I finished with a month or so to go before I was to turn 40. Nevertheless, I was too late. Conceivably, I could have shot the film over a couple of weekends and met my self-imposed deadline but that would have required a logistical miracle. The end result would have been rushed, compromised. Despondent, I abandoned the task I'd set for myself. No longer anxious, I now felt like a failure.

My 40th birthday arrived and with it no small amount of regret. I'd had 20 years to make a movie and wasted all that time on procrastination and poorly conceived ideas. I tortured myself with should've's and could've's. I should've moved to LA when I was 20, gotten a job as a Production Assistant, slept on couches, eaten 2 minute noodles for a decade, saved my money, and worked my way up the filmmaking ranks. I could've made short films on weekends and entered them into competitions. Networked. Made connections in the industry. Really gave this whole filmmaking thing my all. I'd wasted the majority of my adult life on fruitless pursuits.

Except I didn't.

While I was failing at being a filmmaker, somehow I became a professional writer. I got an agent, found a publisher, and wrote a couple of books that people liked. I met an amazing woman who agreed to marry me. I travelled, bought a house. Got a job I didn't hate. I became a dad and discovered that being a dad was just about the best thing in the whole world.

So yeah, my 40th birthday was a time of introspection. I failed at being a filmmaker but I'd succeeded in a living a pretty great life. Could I have achieved more? Absolutely, but I could have achieved far less too. Here's hoping I 'fail' just as badly over the next 20 years. I should be so lucky.

MJH

On turning 40